Virginia Tech shootings target engineering facility A venerable engineering building was the scene of horrific violence on April 16, as Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho gunned down 30 people teaching and studying in Norris Hall. The rampage has once again focused scrutiny on campus security infrastructure and operations.
Whether Cho, an English major, had some specific reason for targeting the engineering building was unknown at press time. It is also unclear whether two bomb threats directed at multiple engineering facilities on the Blacksburg campus the previous week had any connection to the April 16 shootings.
Norris Hall is a two-wing Gothic-style facility containing classrooms and labs, as well as offices for the department of engineering science and mechanics and the dean’s office for the College of Engineering. It was built between 1960 and ’62. The second floor of the older, west wing was the scene of the rampage.
Cho entered the building around 9:40 a.m., some two hours after two students were shot in a campus dorm. He appeared to have planned the attack, since he carried chains to secure three building entrances from the inside, as well as knives and two semiautomatic handguns. The majority of victims were studying in two adjacent general-purpose classrooms, being used that day for German and French instruction.
Civil and environmental engineering professor G.V. Loganathan and two of his students were killed in an advanced hydrology class across the hall from the language classes. Aeronautical engineering professor Liviu Librescu was killed while teaching a solid mechanics class next door to Loganathan. Librescu died after barring the door, which did not have a lock, with his body to give students time to jump from windows. Also killed at Norris was biomechanical engineering professor Kevin Granata, who died after leaving his second-floor office to investigate what was happening.
The west wing of the building had no special security measures—unsurprising since it is used mainly for classrooms and offices. Virginia Tech officials were criticized by some parties for being slow to issue a general campus alert after the first shooting.
Stratfor, a prominent strategic intelligence and forecasting consulting firm based in Austin, Texas, says the incident exposes once again the difficulty of securing facilities in an open environment such as Tech’s sprawling 2,600-acre campus. CCTV coverage, metal detectors, ID badges and keycards, locks, and biometric devices have a role in securing labs, depending on the work taking place inside, but would typically be seen as overkill for a general classroom facility such as the Norris Hall west wing. Some campuses, including Tech, do have emergency warning sirens, but policies regarding when sirens should be activated (outside of weather emergencies) are often murky.
Stratfor urges closer scrutiny of students displaying psychological warning signs, even if no overt threats have been made. In addition, says Stratfor analyst Fred Burton, “Perhaps one of the biggest lessons from this attack will be the need for large institutions to have redundant and overlapping notification systems that will convey clear and consistent instructions.”
Meanwhile, Tech provost and VP/
academic affairs Mark G. McNamee announced that Norris Hall will no longer be used for classes in its current form. University officials are reportedly discussing whether to tear the building down and replace it with a new research/classroom facility; renovate it to reduce the connection with the current tragedy; or otherwise transform it into some type of memorial.
