Virginia Tech remembers its dead -- but life goes on
BLACKSBURG, Virginia (AFP) — The corridor walls of Norris Hall are posted with the usual notices for university clubs, social events and rooms for rent, while inside its engineering labs students are hard at work.
The Virginia Tech building shows no sign of the tragedy that took place here a year ago Wednesday, when its doors were chained shut by a mentally disturbed student who gunned down 30 people inside before killing himself.
But just a few steps away, a semi-circle of 32 granite blocks for each of the people that Cho Seung-Hui killed on April 16, 2007, including the two he shot dead in a campus dormitory earlier that morning, are a lasting memorial.
They are marked with the names of the 27 students and five lecturers who died, and by each one lies a yellow rose. The one for Leslie Geraldine Sherman is adorned with a card and a plastic tiara for the 21st birthday she never saw.
The massacre has branded this university in southwestern Virginia farm country as the site of the worse school shooting in US history.
But on a chilly April morning, Virginia Tech's 2,600-acre campus looks like many others, with students laughing together and chatting on mobile phones as they walk to and from classes.
"Everybody is back to doing what they need to do," 21-year-old student Antoine Claiborne told AFP Monday as he headed out onto the drill field in the center of the campus where the April 16 memorial is located.
There have been many changes here since the shooting, many of them related to security. Campus police have hired 11 new staff, nine of them uniformed patrol officers, and locks have been placed on the classroom doors.
This last measure is intended for use in an emergency, officials said, although one student told AFP that her English teacher last semester had insisted on locking the door during every class.
University pass cards are now required to get into all faculty and residential buildings, whereas previously they were only needed at night, and the student alert system has been bolstered.
An investigation by the state of Virginia criticized university authorities for their slow response on April 16. An email alert was sent out more than two hours after the first shootings, by which time Cho was only minutes away from his murderous killing spree in Norris Hall.
Larry Hincker, associate vice-president for university relations, said it was impossible to completely lock down a campus the size of Virginia Tech's, with its 29,000 students, but noted that security had been tightened.
The university has also hired three new counselors and a new case manager to ensure that troubled students -- like Cho, who was briefly admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 2005 -- do not fall between the cracks.
Despite the tragedy, life on campus was continuing as normal, he said -- and applications to Virginia Tech are up six percent on last year. "People still want to be part of this program," Hincker said.
Tyler Deacon, 19, was not put off from starting here in August, saying that if anything, the tragedy "put a positive light on Virginia Tech because everybody came together as one. We're more united than other campuses."
Another student, who asked not to be named, said that in some ways, his life was changed for the better.
"I just realized that these kids, they were just like me. They were nothing special. And I kind of look at that as life is too short, so I try to make the best of things and try to be as happy as I can now," he said.
Freshman Joanna Martinez, 18, said there was still a "lingering feeling" on campus following the shooting, even if people are no longer as outwardly upset.
"It's there all the time, but no one really talks about it. It's like the big elephant in the room," she told AFP.
Martinez said she hoped the ceremonies marking the one-year anniversary Wednesday, which include a candlelit vigil, would help.
There is some concern here that the high-profile day of events may yet bring more pain. Although residents say they have moved on, the mere mention of the anniversary brought tears to the eyes of one local at a bar in town Monday.
But Hincker said the plans had been worked out with the families of victims. "We've worked to try to have an event that's respectful... to remember the lives that were lost," he said.
There was a briefly a granite stone placed at the drill field memorial for Cho, a 23-year-old South Korea-born English major, but it was soon removed.
"I think there's a lot of sympathy for the (Cho) family. But for the murderer, no. He was a mass murderer. We're not going to commemorate him," Hincker said.
