It was a sunny day on the Virginia Tech campus. Students lounged in the grass, lobbed Frisbees and played guitar. It was hard to believe that just two years earlier in this very place, Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting rampage, killing 32 people before turning the gun on himself.
On the second anniversary of the massacre, Virginia Tech held a commemoration and illustrated how the university has healed since.
A 3.2-mile “Run in Remembrance” was held on Thursday morning. The distance represented a 10th of a mile for each of the 32 slain Hokies. According to Virginia Tech’s Collegiate Times student newspaper, the run drew more than 4,000 participants.
At a noon ceremony, three wreaths were placed on the April 16 Memorial at the Drillfield, a grassy field in the center of campus.
“One wreath will be in memory of those who lost their lives that day, a second will honor survivors, and a third will recognize members of the Hokie family that have passed away since April 2007,” states the memorial Web site.
The April 16 Memorial consists of a half-circle with 32 stone markers bearing the names of the slain.
Omar Samaha, a 2006 Virginia Tech graduate, lost his sister Reema two years ago.
“It’s always hard for me to come back here. Obviously I get choked up at the memorial service and stuff. But it’s good, because I come back here and I remember my sister,”
Samaha said. “I remember that day. I
remember the other victims and survivors, and I take with me a renewed sense of energy.”
Samaha now works with Americans United for Safe Streets. The group is seeking to close Virginia’s so-called gun show loophole, which allows independent vendors to sell firearms at gun shows without conducting background checks on buyers.
Samaha recently appeared on the television newsmagazines “60 Minutes” and “20/20,” explaining his cause.
The killing spree at Tech on April 16, 2007, was the deadliest school shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. Cho, who had a history of mental illness, killed two students at a dormitory and then gunned down 30 in the classrooms at Norris Hall.
Norris Hall has been converted into the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention. The center is located on the remodeled second floor where slain instructors Christopher James Bishop and Jocelyne Couture-Nowak were conducting class when the shooting occurred.
Norris Hall, which reopened in 2007, houses College of Engineering offices and laboratories but no classrooms to date. The center is headed by professor Jerzy Nowak, who lost his wife in the attack.
Jill Casten, an agriculture and extended education graduate student, works for the Center for Peace studies and Violence Prevention.
“With the new space, we’re just hoping to provide something positive here in Norris Hall,” Casten said. “We’ve got a lot of goals for the center, mainly all student focused. We already have a student organization, Students for Non-Violence, that we’ve already started. We’re pretty excited about getting students from across campus involved in that and different projects we’re doing.”
The center, which was established on July 1, 2008 will officially move into Norris Hall this week.
“The mass of people there, the community aspect of it, is really nice, and there’s just kind of a calm mood on campus today,” said Nicole Motylinski, a Virginia Tech hospitality and tourism management major.
“It’s not as loud as it usually can be . more somber and more calm. People just want to relax. People just want to be around friends and family. It’s nice,” Motylinski said.