Here is a copy of a post that I made this morning on the macsb mailing list:

As a student at Virginia Tech, I can’t begin to express to you how sad it has been to be so close to the recent events there. Even if you didn’t personally know anyone who was killed, the deep sadness that permeates campus is stifling.

Many of the families involved in the tragedy have very limited resources for transportation, however they have been assisted by the University where possible. Also, counseling for families and other individuals are being coordinated through the university.

For those wanting to assist financially, the university has set up a memorial fund that anyone can donate to. They have done this in order to centralize resources, as well as to prevent fraudulent groups from attempting to take advantage of the tragedy.

On May 2nd, all of our sales will be donated to this fund. I would invite all of you to join us. This would be setup just like the Child’s Play Day that Mike Zornek organized last year that saw such a generous response from the group. Basically whatever your sales are on that day, you go to this site: http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/memorial_fund.php and make a donation.

This is of course all voluntary, I choose May 2nd, because it is the last day of classes for Virginia Tech and seemed fitting somehow. If anyone has any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me via the list or via email.

Also, if anyone is interested in designing a tasteful and fitting logo, (Dave Batton did a great job on the Child’s Play Day logo), that would be great. You can see the ribbon logo that Virginia Tech is using at the lower right corner of their home page: http://www.vt.edu/

Finally, it would be nice if we could post the sponsor list and group donation total in a central place like was done for Child’s Play day. I believe that it was setup on the ironcoder site before, and perhaps it could be there again.

Once we get enough interested sponsors, I’ll set out a press release similar to the one used for Child’s Play Day.

Thanks for your support,

Lee Falin
Polarian

So far response has been great, I’ve received numerous emails from developers wanting to contribute. I’ll post more details as I they come together in the next couple of days.