University loses its safe small-town appeal

Washington: Virginia Tech, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, has been a university on the rise in recent decades.

Though its academic reputation still trails the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, it has become a popular choice for many of the state's best high school students because of its strong standing, its low cost and - until Monday - the safe, small-town atmosphere of Blacksburg.

Virginia Tech is the state's largest university, with more than 26,000 students, one of the nation's top-ranked schools in engineering and architecture.

That marks a long rise for a school that opened in 1872 as Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, tucked away in the Appalachian foothills. Today, the school's formal name is the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University - but it is popularly known as Virginia Tech.

Nearly all students live on or near campus, which features buildings raised with a distinctive native limestone. Virginia Tech operates its own stone quarries, which it mines for new campus buildings.