Power of Repetition

            These “repetitive presentations," according to Michael Osborn, “show us what we already know and accept, but in a manner that attempts to reinforce our acceptance."[34] Whether or not the repetition comes from press prompting or from a president reiterating, the “cumulative effect of repetitive presentation is to imprint certain symbolic configurations upon our minds. . . ."[35] President Steger repeated numerous times the same information, eventually forming Tech’s official narrative account about the timeline of that day.  Michael Calvin McGee has advanced an instructive notion of narrative that provides insight into the practical nature of such a narrative.   McGee wrote: Narration “was the second division of an oration meant to influence interpreters (judges in courts of law) to ratify a particular reading of a collection of facts and act with the privileged reading as a behavioral directive.  Stories, in other words, ‘contextualized’ the need to make decisions in a court of law, not as a determinant, but as a frame."[36] Although President Steger was not in a court of law, he was in the court of Hokie opinion (some would say national opinion) and was attempting to build the context through which both the murders and the recovery could be viewed.