BLACKSBURG, Va. -- The first mention of Virginia Tech's tragic day came 36 minutes into the tour.

Brittany Jones, a Virginia Tech senior who was guiding prospective students around campus, didn't mention it when passing Norris Hall, where most of the deaths occurred in the April shooting rampage.

She didn't address it when talking about engineering, the building's main function. She stayed away from it when apologizing for the many campus construction projects, which this week included a backhoe breaking ground for a memorial to the students and professors killed by the 23-year-old gunman.

But when she pointed out one of the emergency call boxes dotting the campus, she said, "I don't personally like to talk about it, because I think it could happen anywhere. I still feel perfectly safe here. And that's all I want to say about that."

Heading into one of their peak months for campus visits, this is how it will be for many of the 190 "Hokie Ambassadors," Virginia Tech's volunteer student tour guides.

"I don't think my school, my home, should have such a label on it," Jones said after her tour earlier this week. "It's not fair. We have to pick up the pieces."

Virginia Tech offers three tours on most days that classes are in session. University officials say the tours have never been scripted, and guides say administrators haven't dictated how they should handle the tragedy with prospective students and their families.

Student guide leaders on their own suggested altering tour routes so they wouldn't pass directly in front of Norris, where student Seung-Hui Cho killed 30 people and then himself. Most tour guides now choose to walk on a parallel sidewalk about 100 yards away.

Most of the guides also have decided to focus not on that day but on the campus unity afterward -- their goal the same as before, to show their school in its best light.

Robert Bowman, a senior and president of the Ambassadors, broaches the subject of the shootings upfront, although he asks visitors to hold questions about it until after the tour.

"Otherwise, I think the audience would be a little distracted, waiting for it to be mentioned," he said. "You lose your audience when you pass a building everyone's heard about."

He said giving tours and seeing people still interested in his school helped him recover from the trauma of the shootings.

Jones had to wait a few weeks before she was ready. She lost friends to the bullets, and still suffers nightmares and crying spells.

At first, she didn't mention the shootings at all. But when she talked about campus safety, she noticed mothers exchanging looks. So she added her brief comment.

"That's about as much as I can say without getting emotional," Jones said.

Safety was a hot topic for parents even before April 16, said Adam Schmid, a May graduate who gave his final tour this week. He said he was surprised there weren't more questions concerning the shootings.

"I don't know if people maybe think it's a touchy subject," he said.

The two families who made up Jones' tour group this week didn't ask about it before their guide spoke up. They said afterward that they saw the shootings as a random act, and didn't feel Virginia Tech students were more vulnerable than others.

"I would have asked about" safety, Gail Fowler said. "Because at every other college tour I've asked about it."

"She's a mom," her son Scott said.

"It could have happened anywhere," said David Keegan, the other prospective student on the tour. "It's not going to happen again."