A Plea for Norris Hall

Michael Bishop, the father of German professor Jamie Bishop, who was killed in the massacre at Virginia Tech in April, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post, urging Virginia Tech to establish a center for the study of international peace and crime prevention in Norris Hall, the site of the shootings. Virginia Tech recently announced that it would refurbish the building and use it for research and office space.

Mr. Bishop writes: “We recognize the importance of Norris Hall as an engineering facility and applaud its remodeling, but we also champion the notion that two or three classrooms devoted to international peace and crime prevention would stand as a permanent memorial and a bold statement of the university’s determination to convert calamity into positive action.”

Virginia Tech was bound to struggle with the fate of Norris Hall and the creation of any memorial to the fallen. A recent story in The Chronicle outlines some of the difficulties colleges have faced in memorializing those killed in tragedies.