Washing Away the Bloodstains
The Virginia Tech community must consider the fate of Norris Hall.
April 23, 2007 — -- Blood spray, bullet holes and students leaping from second-story windows to flee a rampaging gunman.
Thirty people died inside Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus last week at the hands of Seung-hui Cho. Now the university must decide: Is it ever really possible to wash away the bloodstains or should the building be razed altogether?
"It's in the back of everyone's mind and it has been for days and will continue to be," said Liz Hart, a Virginia Tech senior and spokesman for the university's student government association. "Just the fact that we're talking about our options makes students feel better."
Among the student body, two camps have emerged with differing but perhaps equally valid points of view about the future of the multimillion dollar building.
One group of students say that tearing down the building would simply validate Cho's rampage. "Are we going to let that one man be strong enough to tear down a building?" asked Hart.
But others are eager to see the building gone. "There's a strong positive sentiment about just talking about taking it down," she said.
Either way, students say they will offer input as university officials consider what to do with the building. Cost, feasibility and of course the symbolic implications are all issues on the table.
"Our administration will listen to us," Hart said. "We're the ones who are going to be in the buildings."
Norris went from an academic building to a killing field last Monday as Cho chained shut the building's entrances and systematically opened fire in four second-floor classrooms.
Cho killed 30 people in Norris, injured dozens more and then shot himself in a building stairwell.
After three days of evidence collection from the Norris Hall crime scene, the Virginia State Police handed over control of the building to university officials, who promptly shuttered Norris Hall for the remainder of the academic year.
While that decision may have been clear-cut, a broader discussion about the long-term future of Norris Hall has already begun on the Blacksburg, Va., campus.
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