Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Norris Hall quietly reopens to Tech students, faculty
Monday marked the first day people could enter the building after the April 16 shootings.
Video by Seth M. Gitner
BLACKSBURG -- Little activity happened around the one opened door of Virginia Tech's Norris Hall on Monday, the first day the building was open to the university community since the April 16 shootings.
Dave Simmons, machine shop supervisor for the department of engineering science and mechanics, said a handful of people worked in a couple of laboratories on the building's first floor Monday morning.
But other than that, things were quiet. The machine shop and several research labs are on the first floor of Norris, and several projects were halted while the building was closed for the past two months.
"Our focus right now is on just trying to get back to normal," Simmons said.
Access to the building is limited to between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., and one door on the Burruss Hall side of the building is the only entrance.
Two security guards sat just inside the entrance to check visitors in Monday. Virginia Tech identification is required to enter the building.
"It's going to take about a week or two to get everybody back in the building," said Ishwar Puri, engineering science and mechanics department head.
Crews are working to refurbish rooms and remove asbestos in some areas of the building, Puri said. The asbestos removal has made sections of the first and third floors, directly above and below the site of the shootings, off-limits. This includes some first-floor labs.
"I think next Monday you would see much more activity than you saw today if you went by, and then the following Monday, you'd see much more than that," Puri said.
Puri said the university is limiting access to the building as a precaution against people who might want to get a "vicarious thrill" by going inside.
He's hopeful that next week faculty and students in his department will have around-the-clock key access to Norris. The classrooms on the second floor are locked, and there's a counselor on hand for visitors.
Puri, whose office was on the second floor of Norris, hopes to be moved into his new office on the building's third floor by July 16.
"It feels like the first day of the rest of the life of our program," he said. "I think we re-enter the building with a sense of hope."
