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Last week's dispute between gun control advocates supporting a protest at Virginia Tech and university officials and students who thought it would detract from ceremonies to honor April 16 victims has been resolved.

Protesters will hold a 32-person lie-in Wednesday on the Drillfield, two hours later than previously planned, on the one-year anniversary of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.

The protest will be at 2 p.m. on the far west side of the Drillfield, near West Campus Drive. The plan is a slight departure from an announcement earlier this month from the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence that the protest would take place at noon. But those two hours will make a big difference, say those involved with the compromise.

Under the original schedule, the protest would have come on the heels of university commemoration events scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on the Drillfield. Tech spokesman Larry Hincker initially said no students had applied for an assembly permit for that day. Tech doesn't allow groups not affiliated with the university to assemble on campus, and groups that do protest need a permit.

The university will hold events and activities on the Drillfield throughout the day -- highlighted by the morning ceremonies and a candlelight vigil that night. Hincker said last week that Tech wouldn't be giving out permits to groups to protest there, citing the busy schedule and the "solemnity" of the day. But discussions late last week between student lie-in organizer Alison St. Onge and the university led to the compromise.

Jay Poole, director of Tech's Office of Recovery and Support, contacted the Brady Campaign last week and helped facilitate the agreement. Poole's office is designed to improve communication between Tech and families of the April 16 victims. Poole said he's heard from families on both sides of the issue -- those who support the protest and those who feel it's disrespectful.

Poole met with St. Onge, a Tech senior, on Friday and they agreed to the change. Her group now has a permit to protest opposite Tech's War Memorial. St. Onge organized the protest to honor her friend, Nicole White, who was killed April 16, and never wanted to mar the other events on campus, Poole said.

"Once everyone understood what everyone else was trying to do there really wasn't any controversy," he said.

Michael Stover, a Tech junior who sponsored legislation the Student Government Association passed last week asking people not to protest on campus Wednesday, said he's satisfied with the new plan. When he first heard about the lie-in, he thought it would be held near the April 16 memorial just as the morning ceremonies were ending. The university will read the names of each of the 32 victims followed by short tributes that morning.

"The fact that they're avoiding the actual memorial ceremony, I am thankful for that," Stover said. "I know tons and tons of people who are going to be very open and vulnerable at that exact moment."

The lie-in movement was begun shortly after the April 16 shootings by Abigail Spangler, a mother of two from Alexandria. She is the founder of ProtestEasyGuns.com. The group held a lie-in outside the Capitol in Richmond in January as legislators considered a bill to close the state's so-called "gun show loophole."

Spangler has dubbed Wednesday National Lie-In Day. She's helping coordinate 80 lie-ins across the country that day. But she was quick to point out that the protest at Tech is not being organized by her organization or the Brady Campaign, but by Tech students.

Spangler rattled off a list of family members of April 16 victims who plan to attend the lie-in at Tech.

"People, when they talk about ProtestEasyGuns, they're talking a lot about these victims' families themselves," she said.