I never thought the building should be razed. From AP–
BLACKSBURG, Va. – The Virginia Tech classroom wing where a student gunman killed 30 people and himself and wounded two dozen others last spring will be turned into a place to study peace, the school announced Thursday.
Having vowed never again to use Norris Hall for general classes, school officials said the rooms will house the new Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention.
“It was an opportunity for something new and different and hopeful to emerge,” said provost Mark McNamee, who headed a campus task force that reviewed proposals for the use of Norris Hall.
Besides the peace center, the second-floor classrooms where Seung-Hui Cho killed 30 of his 32 victims will host an interactive learning space.
After the April 16 killings, ideas for the future of the three-story gray stone building ranged from restoring classes as usual to turning the building into a memorial or razing it.
Don’t make fun of what the hall is going to be used for. I’d love to live in a world where there was no war and violence. It is an ideal, but not realistic. If anything let the Hall stand as a monument to a horrible tragedy that I pray never happens again.
I still believe the hall should be renamed in honor of Professor Liviu Librescu whose actions saved many of his students. That would bring closure so far as to the Hall’s future.
As for the news of how state of Virginia and VA Tech deal with any compensation to the victims families and the threat of a lawsuit, I’ll blog about that tomorrow.
