Virginia Tech - The Future of Norris Hall

Several months ago, I was sent a link regarding proposals for The Future of Norris Hall. I avoided going to the link for personal reasons which I cannot explain - then or now. I have scanned the proposals. Part of me says that the greatest tribute to the men and women whose lives were so insanely taken (by a student who should not have even been at Virginia Tech in the first place but rather confined to a mental institution based on court records) would be to open the classrooms as classrooms befitting the study and academic excellence the students were pursuing and the faculty were setting forth. I don't know. One proposal speaks to a Center for Transformative Learning. My first thought on this option was that - try as we might - we can make no rational sense of the wanton slaughter of the men and women who were killed there and in the dorm. We cannot make rational sense of insanity. We can never be successful in somehow, even in a well-meaning but in some sense convoluted way, setting the tone of "can't we all just get along," can't we transform the world; can't we try to bring people together "in peace". We must remember that people of different backgrounds with different cultures did not murder the students and faculty at Norris Hall or those two young people in the dorm. People of different backgrounds and different cultures were coming together and studying as one. One insane young man murdered them all; one pychopathic killer let loose among them killed them. Our system of "compassion" killed those students and faculty when a system more responsible to the law-abiding, sane citizens it is "designed" to protect would have set aside the insanity of "political correctness" and locked "insanity" away. Even a judge in court papers said the young man was an imminent threat. Insanity is insanity and cannot be understood or somehow, although not intended, rationalized and "rewarded" through our attempts to make sense of the senseless. Evil exists in this world; evil must be fought with force and sanity; the only thing that will "save" others is sanity in our laws and rational, common-sense enforcement of those laws. Many people knew that the murderer was a "ticking bomb." Those folks have "blood on their hands" and they have to live with that for the rest of their days. How do we help them? Can we? Should we? I believe their burden is one no one can salve. I did not have a loved one taken from me on April 16, 2007; but God granted me the chance to speak with two women who were permanently touched by the insanity: one a mother whose daughter was murdered and later, a young woman who lost a young man who was to become her husband and helpmate through life. The day following Tech's graduation activities in May, barely two weeks following the murders, I was on campus at the memorial. Later, I stopped by the permanent memorial for the students and faculty in September 2007. In a most extraordinary way, the men and women who lost their lives have been honored with such "under-stated" elegance that one is instantly humbled at the simplicity and grandeur of the memorial. Tech got it right - 100% right. With no real right to offer an opinion, I would offer one anyway and say, open Norris Hall and all of its classrooms to academic pursuits; put engraved plaques on a wall by the door - inside and outside - of each room in honor of the students and faculty murdered there; and with reverence, let these plaques remind students and faculty of the honor in which those men and women are to be held that the men and women who follow them in academic pursuits must not let their lives be lost in vane, that the students and faculty that follow are walking on hallowed ground and must uphold standards of excellence for themselves in honor of those who were taken from us. We must not diminish their loss by changing the use of these classrooms. We honor them by facing their loss head-on, by walking into their classrooms and by honoring them right where they fell. At Pine Ridge in South Dakota, one can stand at the mass grave of the men, women, and children slaughtered at Wounded Knee. No center for understanding mars the landscape or distracts from the gravity of the loss... The majesty of the place is overwhelming in its simplicity; no museum, just a monument at the mass grave with the names of many murdered there and prairie grass billowing all around. One can almost hear the whispers of those lost as the wind touches the skin on a warm day in June... I am reminded of a memorial to the juniors from Tech who lost their lives serving in World War II (?) or was it the Korean War - their names are on a memorial on campus; the seniors graduated and then they too went off to war; the juniors went off to war first and didn't return. That memorial, in its humble silence, speaks to the sacrifice and to the loss felt by those left behind. Let the same simple elegance speak for the sacrifice and unity we all felt when banners reading "we are all Hokies" flashed across America. May God bless you and comfort you all in your loss... And especially to the young woman in her Hokie orange t-shirt as she pours out her tears, may God somehow touch your broken heart... Addition - the following is a comment from Dr. D. I have added it here because it should not be lost as comments often are. Dr. D's points are well-taken. ~~~~~ I have not been on the Tech campus since well before the shooting, but I cannot imagine using this building for anything other than its original purpose. Appropriate plaques, marking where people were gunned down, should certainly be posted, and the memory of the tragedy should be kept in mind by the campus. To turn the building to some other purpose seems to me to be a mistake; it needs to continue its original function. We have erred, I think, in trying to make our campuses gun free zones. Many campuses do not even have the campus police armed. This means that when a shooter appears on campus, he knows that he will face no armed opposition at all. I think we would all be much more safe if the concealed carry laws were allowed to operate on campus as in most other places. I would not carry a gun myself, but I know lots of people who would. I think we would all benefit from the fact that a shooter would know that he would likely face one or more armed opponents wherever he went. We delude ourselves when we think we can assure a completely gun-free environment; we only assure that the shooter will have the only gun. ~~~~~