No more classes at Norris

BLACKSBURG, Va. — They’ve patched the bullet holes, replaced the ceilings, put in new floors. But never again will there be classes in Norris Hall.

Virginia Tech officials made the announcement yesterday and removed a chain-link fence surrounding the building, taking with it some of the dread the community feels about entering the building where a student killed 30 persons in April.

Norris Hall will reopen June 18 for engineering offices and laboratories. But school officials, mindful that the bloodshed occurred mostly in classrooms, decided to keep classes out permanently.

Gunman Seung-hui Cho took his own life in Norris to end the April 16 killings, which included another two in a dormitory hours earlier.

In the wake of the shootings, dozens of faculty, students, alumni and others contacted the school with suggestions for use of the building that ranged from returning it to classrooms to making it a memorial to knocking it down.

“Erasing the building would not erase what happened,” said Virginia Tech professor Bryan Cloyd, whose daughter, Austin, was killed in Norris. “I think it would be very difficult for students to have their undivided attention on learning in that building, and so converting it from classroom space is necessary. But I’m happy to hear that the university will have some other productive use for it.”

With his pastor by his side, Mr. Cloyd returned for the first time yesterday morning to the classroom where his daughter died.

The three-story structure of local gray limestone will be open for offices and laboratories for the engineering science and mechanics department and civil and environmental engineering department, the primary occupants before the shootings.

“After considering all points of view that were offered, I determined the best course of action to enable the College of Engineering to continue its healing was to move forward with phased reuse of the building,” Tech President Charles W. Steger said.

The College of Engineering was hit hardest in the shootings, with 11 students and three professors killed.

Norris contains sophisticated laboratories that cannot be moved and are essential to engineering programs, officials said.

“We have literally dozens of graduate students whose work is frozen in time and unable to move on to jobs or complete their research,” engineering dean Dick Benson said.

At the same time, officials said they will post security guards and limit access to employees, students and engineering visitors to cut down on sightseers.

The university plans to begin a study this summer on the best long-term use of the building.

Dennis Newman of the electrical engineering department staff said that as long as those who died are honored, he is glad to see Norris reopen.

“I’ve been here 40-some years. It’s always been here,” he said. “It’s a nice-looking building.”

The oblong structure built in the early 1960s holds a fairly prominent place among more than 100 buildings on Virginia Tech’s 2,600-acre campus, beside the administration building and overlooking the main campus lawn.

It was named for Earl B. Norris, engineering dean for 24 years. An online petition to rename the building after Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who barricaded a classroom door so his engineering students could escape before he was shot, has more than 24,000 signatures.

Susan Bowers of Williamsport, Pa., who got her master’s degree in civil engineering last month, said she passes Norris every day on her way to her office in a nearby building.

“It’s a good way to be reminded and say a prayer,” she said, adding that she has noticed others “coming and taking their moment.”

For Mr. Cloyd, spending time in the room where his daughter died was healing in some respects. And he thinks Austin — whom he remembered as pragmatic and frugal — would not have wanted the building demolished.

“As long as the building is there, I think we’ll be reminded of what happened,” he said. “But the building, in a way, is a memorial.”

University officials said they plan to erect a memorial elsewhere on campus.

n AP writer Kristen Gelineau in Richmond contributed to this report.