June 5, 2007Norris Hall will reopenFolks at Virginia Tech have decided what to do with the building where 31 of the 33 shooting victims were killed. Norris Hall will reopen, partially, on June 18. No one will take general assignment classes there, but a lot of engineering offices and labs will be relocated to it. It's part of what officials, including President Charles Steger and engineering department leaders, call a phased re-use. Down the line, engineering offices and labs scattered in three different buildings will move to Norris, making it an Engineering Science and Mechanics and Civil and Environmental Engineering building only. Even though Norris will reopen, tourists won't get a chance to browse around. Security guards will stand outside the building for a while (officials haven't said for how long) to make sure only students and people with a Hokie Passport can enter. Some people had talked about building a memorial on the Norris site, or at least on the second floor, but Tech says that won't happen, either. Instead, they're planning a memorial elsewhere on campus. What do you think of the decision? |
About this blog
Rhode Island native and Virginia Tech reporter Greg Esposito posts on everyday college life, trends and issues affecting the 35,000-plus students in the New River Valley and beyond.
Tim Thornton, who is old enough to have children attending college, is still taking classes and is still fascinated by colleges, the students who populate them and the bureaucrats who operate them. His reporting beat is Radford University.
West Virginia native Anna Mallory blogs on student life topics at Virginia Tech, Radford University, New River Valley Community College -- and beyond.
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Comments
[June 6, 2007 7:34 AM]
E A FitzgeraldI think this is a good idea. Norris needs to used as an academic building. The idea of so many to tear it down and or make a memorial at the site is so short sighted. If we could ask the dead I believe they would tell us not to dwell on their deaths but to go on with life, to do what they no longer can.
[June 6, 2007 10:45 AM]
Mike VordoI understand the expense issues, but I really think that turning Norris into a museum about VA Tech history and offices, is a better solution. The Hokie Nation would, I'm sure, donate any amount necessary to make this happen, including a new build somewhere else to take up the slack. The Memorial should be at the Norris site, rather than somewhere else on campus, and in corperating it into a VT museum setting would be very easy.
Better still would be to tear it down and replace it with a small memorial beside the new building.
[June 7, 2007 5:33 PM]
JakeAs a WWII Veteran, then the President of the American Veteran's Association,an ME Engineering graduate of the Class of 1949, and a personal friend of the then WWI Veteran and Dean of Engineering; Dean Earl Norris,
I speak for many Veterans - WE
highly object to any thoughts
of degrading, renaming or tearing down
the Norris Engineering Building and/or using it for
any purpose other than who it was Dedicated To and for what Purpose: i.e. representative of ALL ENGINEERING
PROGRAMS at VPI/VT !
Get with it - It's a VIRGINIAN
INSTITUTION: Not a wake !