Photo by Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Suzanne Grimes (left), whose son survived the shootings April 16, looks over the memorial on the Virginia Tech Drillfield Monday. The atmosphere there was quieter than most of campus as students stopped to pay their respects.

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BLACKSBURG -- Student affairs staff sat in a tent on Virginia Tech's Drillfield late Monday morning, eager to help.

But the cookie trays they had available were mostly full and the tissue box had barely been touched. A few students stopped to scan the fliers to direct students to resources in Tech's Cook Counseling Center.

As they crossed campus for the first classes of fall semester, more students stopped to check out the posters on sale nearby. Raunchy photos of Johnny Cash and a reproduction of Salvador Dali's "Paysage aux Papillons" drew dozens.

A day after the dedication of a memorial to honor 32 victims killed on campus April 16 and a day after 25 people were sickened by carbon monoxide at a Blacksburg apartment building, most Tech students seemed to enjoy a relatively normal first day of fall semester. More normal than the circuslike atmosphere that accompanied the first day of classes after the shootings in the spring and far more typical than the start of classes last August, when a gunman forced the school to shut down.

"I think people are ready to get back to normal," said Daniel Maine, a sophomore from Charlottesville and member of Tech's water ski/wake board team.

He sat on a 23-foot MB B52 ski boat on the Drillfield, trying to recruit new members. Nearby, other students gave away Icee Pops.

"It seems pretty normal," said his friend Barrett Hill, a junior from Annapolis, Md., as the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" played in the background.

The upbeat atmosphere evident through most of the campus, filled again with chatting students, was muted at the new memorial, however. Students slowly walked around it, looking at the 32 stones. Some dropped letters off to lost friends, others touched specific stones and walked away.

Suzanne Grimes, mother of Kevin Sterne, a student wounded in the shooting in Norris Hall, wiped tears from her face as she read the names of some of her son's classmates etched in stone.

While she said she's grateful her son is alive, he has a long road ahead to rehabilitate severe nerve damage to his leg. She said the administration should be held accountable for not doing more to warn students between the first and second round of shootings on April 16.

"It just makes you wonder if they could live with the things they didn't take care of that day," she said.

Tech President Charles Steger has said that nothing about the initial shootings suggested a larger crisis would unfold and the university responded appropriately to what officials thought was a domestic incident.

Nearby another relative of a victim from April 16 handed Bibles out to students as part of a group of The Gideons International members who visit the campus at the beginning of every year.

"If you're a Gideon, you pass out Bibles," said Larry Cloyd, explaining why he was on campus.

Later, he admitted that this setting was more meaningful than others. He's the grandfather of Austin Cloyd, one of the students killed in Norris Hall.

"She was a great girl. If she lived she would've amounted to ..." Cloyd's voice trailed off. "It's a sad thing."

Retired faculty member Clifford Randall was also handing out Bibles. Standing at the memorial Monday, he mentioned Sunday's carbon monoxide poisoning at a Collegiate Suites apartment building in Blacksburg.

"It's been one whammy after another," he said.

Randall said the energy and enthusiasm of the new students makes him feel better.

Ishwar Puri, head of Tech's department of engineering science and mechanics, saw that enthusiasm from students who visited his office on the second floor of Norris Hall on Monday. It was a day to re-establish community, and Puri said students, administrators, police and faculty did just that.

"There's a new positive spirit," he said.

Sitting outside Squires Student Center about noon, Katie Rup, a junior from Long Island, N.Y., said neither of her professors mentioned the shootings in her two morning classes. She's glad they didn't. No one will forget what happened, Rup said, but she just wanted to enjoy being back at Tech on Monday.

A friend in New York did call her Monday morning after hearing about the carbon monoxide poisoning Sunday. It was the first Rup had heard about it. She said she doubts her friend would have known about the incident if it didn't involve Tech students.

"If anything happens here, it's going to be blown out of proportion," she said.

Media were on campus Monday, but the attention wasn't nearly as intense as it was in the spring.

Junior Adeel Khan, president of the student government association, said he understands the media attention.

"The whole world wants to know how we're doing," he said. "And we're doing well."

Staff writer Donna Alvis-Banks contributed to this report.