The Virginia Tech Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention will open its doors to the public for the first time this Friday.
The ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. with opening remarks taking place, followed by tours of the renovated wing on the second floor, front wing of Norris Hall. The six new rooms will house the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics and the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention. These spaces will occupy the Global and Technology Center, meeting and administrative work, team projects, a biomechanics laboratory, an undergraduate learning center where students can work with other students or teachers, and the biomechanics laboratory and cluster research center.
Jerzy Nowak, Tech professor and husband to victim Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, founded the center.
It is our hope that this center will help in some ways, to redefine many of the notions that have become associated with Norris in the past two years. Many students have never had classes in Norris, and the only knowledge they have of the building consists of what one can surmise from the outside looking in.
The building itself has become some sort of permanent fixture and for many, a constant reminder of what happened. In its current state, Norris has a sort of strange, depressing power over our campus. Many have never even stepped foot into the building, perhaps because for most of us there's never really been a reason to revisit that specific time and place.
Hopefully the opening of this renovated wing will replace much of the negativity that has revolved around those classrooms with positive energy for the future, and in some small way show future students that good things can come from a place where so much sadness once dwelled.
Norris is always going to be a place where 30 people senselessly died. That will never change, but what can change are our attitudes regarding the future of the building. While some people have argued that Norris should never have reopened, or should have been torn down, or classes should have resumed as usual, the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention honors the memory of what happened, while bettering students for the future. The educational opportunities that will come from the center will redefine how future generations of students perceive Norris.
The timing of the ceremonial reopening of the second floor wing also comes at an appropriate time as it allows people the opportunity to maybe begin to view Norris in a different way before the two-year anniversary of the April 16 shootings next week. We're sure the range of reactions to this opportunity will vary. Some people will want to attend, others won't. Some people will be genuinely interested in the new opportunities the center offers, and some people will be drawn out by curiosity of past events. Regardless of your reasoning, the reopening of that wing will provide many people with a small amount of closure, to go forward with their lives, while feeling comfortable with Norris' future presence on our campus.
The editorial board is composed of David Grant, David Harries and Laurel Colella.