Sunday, August 19, 2007
'We've never done this before'
Faculty and students have mixed feelings about returning to work and study in Norris Hall.
Photo by Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times
Ishwar Puri, head of Virginia Tech’s department of engineering science and mechanics, has a lab and office on the second floor of Norris Hall, the building where 31 people were killed April 16.
Related
Video
Special section
Complete coverage
BLACKSBURG -- Nathan Post smiled as the machine in Norris Hall's basement began to do its thing -- pushing and pulling the sample of high-grade Fiberglas to simulate the strain ocean waves put on ships.
In Post's world, the words are a little more specific. The sample was an E-glass vinyl ester composite. And the machine was a servo-hydraulic load frame, designed to see how much stress the material could take as part of a Navy-sponsored research project.
Post's work was interrupted when Norris closed for more than two months after shootings there April 16 took the lives of 31 people, including two professors in Virginia Tech's department of engineering science and mechanics and a professor and eight students in civil and environmental engineering.
In addition to the human toll, the ESM department's home for nearly 50 years became the site of the worst school shooting in U.S. history. Images of police surrounding it and wounded students being carried from it were sent all over the world.
Post, a graduate student in ESM, said he is happy to be back to the labs where he was working that morning.
"By getting back to work, we're honoring those people that we lost," he said.
While emotions about the shootings are still evolving, many of the roughly 215 students and 23 faculty in ESM say they are looking forward to a new school year and getting back to work. In many ways, the feelings of those in the department, which is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary, reflect the general mood of the university. Students, faculty and staff acknowledge that they're forever changed but yearn to get back to some semblance of normalcy.
But ESM department head Ishwar Puri doesn't think the department should strive to get back to where it was before the shootings. As Puri sees it, his department and the university can seize a moment to become something greater.
"Let's say a person suffers a serious illness. The question then is that after that serious illness is eradicated do you just go back to being what you were before then, or does this life event give you some kind of resolve? Does it give you some kind of motivation to do something?"
Puri thinks the community's reaction to the shootings is an example of how strength can be revealed by tragedy.
"Virginia Tech became, not a pariah, it became not a blighted place because of what happened," he said. "In many ways it became a crucible for the hopes, the aspirations, the compassion of the entire world."
Whether that spirit continues as part of the long-term recovery remains to be seen.
Almost immediately after the shootings, people began floating ideas about what to do with Norris. Some wanted to bulldoze it; others wanted to turn it into a memorial. The university announced in April that traditional classes would never be held there again.
Puri and other faculty told the administration they wanted to return. In June, Tech reopened Norris for laboratories and offices, although it hasn't released specific plans for the classrooms where the shootings occurred.
Puri moved back into his office, about 20 steps from the hallway where the shootings occurred. Re-establishing a community there to do the type of work that has characterized the building's 47-year history would be a victory.
"I don't want this to be a ghostly place where my faculty members work and are startled at every footstep coming down the hall, at every crack they hear, of every door slamming," he said. "We've done a lot of good in this building. The building did not do bad things to us."
Puri came to Tech in August 2004. He admits he struggles with decisions on a daily basis. He knows that he doesn't speak for everyone when he talks about coming back to Norris.
For a department that has made its reputation by collaborating with other disciplines, this creates a difficult dichotomy: ESM inhabits a building that people in other departments may not want to set foot in.
Engineering dean Richard Benson will not be coming back to Norris Hall. He's temporarily in Whittemore Hall and is awaiting word of a permanent location. He said he understands that some people draw strength by reclaiming their building.
"But there's others who said, 'I can't bear to go back there. It was awful. Every day I walk in that building it'll be April 16 over and over and over again.' That's legitimate, too."
It's difficult to gauge sentiment on Norris because many people with reservations about returning voice their opinions privately, Benson said.
"I think some people don't want it to look like they're weak, they're afraid, they can't handle it," he said. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with those people. ... They're human. They're reacting as they ought to."
Benson said he thinks all faculty members with offices in Norris are planning to return. But feelings and emotions change, and the college is planning to be flexible.
Scott Case, associate department head of ESM, said other departments have helped them through the ordeal. Civil and environmental engineering is offering lab space in Patton Hall for a fluid mechanics lab normally taught in Norris. A class Case planned to teach in Norris, where his office is, will now be taught in Hillcrest Hall, halfway across campus.
The department has plans for satellite labs, alternative courses and other means to accommodate students who don't want to participate in labs that will still be in Norris. Students have been generally upbeat, but Case doesn't know what kind of demand there is going to be for these alternatives.
"Certainly it's not going to be without bumps along the road, because we've never done this before," he said.
One unintended consequence of moving classes out of Norris is the end of chance encounters between faculty with offices in the building and students going to and from classes there. Mike Hyer, a professor who has been teaching in the department since 1978, said he will miss that.
"If I didn't like students, I'd go work in industry somewhere," he said.
Fred Cook is hopeful that, regardless of the classroom situation, the department will continue to draw closer together. A fifth-year senior who is president of the department's student group, Cook said he got to know many students last spring who were once just faces in the hall. It started the Wednesday after the shootings, when the department's students, staff and faculty met with counselors to talk about what they were going through.
Students followed that up with social outings, such as going to Tech baseball games.
Cook said he's spoken with Puri about ideas he has for this year, such as a community service project for ESM. He also hopes that department meetings, similar to the one the week of the shootings, will become routine.
Puri thinks open, community discussion about the shootings and their fallout is needed for the department and Tech to move forward. Not talking about it doesn't make the memories go away.
"For those of us who were involved in the events, for those of us who lost friends, who lost colleagues, for those of us who visited students ... for those of us who were steps away from the gunshots being fired and could hear them one, by one, by one, we will never forget what happened."
