Virginia Tech To Reopen Norris Hall

Tuesday, June 5th 2007, 10:10 am

By: News On 6

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) _ The classroom building where a gunman killed 30 people and himself on the Virginia Tech campus will be reopened for offices and laboratories later this month, the university announced Tuesday.

Norris Hall will not be used for classrooms, as it was when student Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting rampage in the building April 16 after killing two people in a dormitory.

The building will be opened June 18 for the Engineering Science and Mechanics and Civil and Environmental Engineering departments. They had been the primary occupants of the building April 16, when student Cho killed 32 students and faculty members on campus.

Following the shootings, dozens of faculty, students, alumni and others contacted the school with suggestions for use of the building, ranging from using it as classroom space to making it a memorial to knocking it down.

``After considering all points of view that were offered, I determined the best course of action to enable the College of Engineering to continue its healing was to move forward with phased reuse of the building,'' university president Charles Steger said in a statement.