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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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Classes Resume at Virginia Tech, With Most Students Returning
More coverage: Links to all of The Chronicle's coverage of the shootings at Virginia Tech.
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Most of Virginia Tech's students were back as classes resumed here on Monday, university administrators said. While the campus sought to regain some normalcy a week after a deadly shooting spree, the moods among the students ranged widely, the officials said.
"We're seeing the resolute, the confused, the angry, and the numb," said Edward F.D. Spencer, the university's associate vice president for student affairs. He said the array of reactions reflected the various ways that individuals respond to death.
Over all, classroom attendance was at about 75 percent, administrators said. Staff members at campus residence halls reported that from 80 percent to 90 percent of their residents had returned.
Mr. Spencer said that he expects that, from now on, a "small trickle of students" will begin to leave campus each day until May 13, when the dormitories are set to close for the semester.
Students have been given the choice of how they want to finish the remaining weeks of the semester. In each course, they have the option of taking the grade that they had earned for their work up until April 16, the day of the shooting rampage that claimed 33 lives, including the gunman's. They can also finish some or all of the remaining papers and tests.
Many students have opted to take the grade they had earned to this point, Mr. Spencer said, though some of them are still coming to class, where they are taking notes and reconnecting with their classmates.
Lay Nam Chang, dean of the College of Science, said that the general tone of today's classroom discussions was "somber." Yet students, he added, also were "engaged and focused."
Faculty members reported that they experienced a fair amount of normal behavior in their classrooms, added Mark G. McNamee, the university's provost and vice president for academic affairs. "The same students who sit in the last row were still nodding off in class," he said one faculty member told him.
Many faculty members were using a "buddy system" for at least today, Mr. Chang said, in which they took another professor or instructor into their classroom with them. That gave them additional support in case they or their students needed extra help of any kind, he said.
Faculty members had received training and guidance, including from members of the university's Center for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, last week about how to return to class, lead student discussions about the tragedy, and watch for signs that a student might need help coping.
No classes were held in Norris Hall, the academic building where most of the victims of last week's rampage were killed, and Mr. McNamee, the provost, said at a news briefing that the building would never be used for classes again.
All other options for the building's future remain on the table, he said, including reopening it for use in some form or tearing it down.
Norris Hall contains classrooms, offices, and research space. The university had previously announced that the building, which remains ringed by yellow crime-scene tape, would be closed for the rest of the semester. Classes that had met in Norris Hall have been relocated to various spaces across the campus.