Norris Gallery
Norris Hall was opened Thursday for the media, as university officials guided reporters, photographers and members of the broadcast media through the building. The second floor has no visual reminders of April 16: The floor tiles, ceiling tiles and classroom doors have all been replaced and the walls have been patched and repainted.
Larry Hincker, associate vice president of University Relations, said that the university opened the doors to the media because of requests to see the second floor.
The second floor does not resemble the same floor of April 16 in any way other than the floorplan. The university has renovated the building, spending $75,000 after the $320,000 cost of the initial clean-up. The university has also spent $20,000 to move some equipment out of the building and other equipment into the building to accommodate both the department of material science engineering and the department of civil and environmental engineering.
The clean-up took two to three weeks, and began one week after April 16.
Norris Hall was closed on April 16 after Seung-Hui Cho killed 30 people in the building before taking his own life. The building will open on June 18 for students, faculty and staff. Only one entrance — the entrance between Norris and Holden Halls — will be open, and it will be guarded by a security guard until a swipe card unit can be installed.
On the second floor, all doors were replaced and whiteboards were installed. The doors do not have doorknobs and will be continuously locked. Only the police have a key, Hincker said.
The whiteboards were installed even though the rooms will never be used for general-purpose classrooms. The rooms had blackboards on and before April 16.
The whiteboards restore the rooms to a sense of normalcy, said Mark Owczarski, director of news and information with University Relations. They were installed for families to give them a feel for what the rooms looked like, he said.
Norris has three entrances and each was chained shut by Cho on April 16. The university has replaced all door handles in Norris to make them push-buttoned doors.
Police gained access into the building by shooting the locks of the machine shop doors — not considered an entrance to the building — with a shotgun.
The walk through Norris also included a look at three of the 16 labs in the building. The labs are the largest reason Norris will remain to be used.
Dave Simmons, the lab manager and head of the machine shop, explained that the machine shop in Norris affected research done throughout the university and the Corporate Research Center, not just in the building. Many departments use that shop due to its sophistication and space.
“When this shop was shut down, it shut down research for the whole university,” he said.
