Virginia Tech Finds the Positive in the Midst of Pain

It was just two years ago this Thursday that Seung-Hui Cho began his murderous rampage at Virginia Tech. The date, April 16, 2007, will always be a painful one for the Tech community, the victims’ families and the survivors.

But out of the pain and horror of that day, Virginia Tech is finding ways to move forward and to cope.

Just this last Friday, Tech officially reopened Norris Hall, the academic building where Cho killed 30 of his 32 victims. The west wing of the second floor, where Cho went on his rampage, will now house the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention. The classrooms that Cho turned into shooting galleries have been converted into the home of an institute dedicated to preventing such tragedies in the future.

In a poignant, but telling, sidenote to the reopening of Norris, the university introduced Jerzy Nowak as the peace studies center director. His wife, French teacher Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, was one of the 30 people Cho murdered April 16.

One of the first projects Nowak and his staff of two graduate assistants and a secretary are working on is a symposium focusing on violence prevention, scheduled for October 2010. (According to The Associated Press, the university, in conjunction with the center, is also developing a peace studies minor.)

The Cho massacre has been used by any number of people seeking to advance one agenda after another — some good, other bad.

In the wake of the killings, the Virginia General Assembly moved to fix the state’s mental health system which, quite plainly, had broken, failing to protect Cho from himself or society from Cho. Gun-rights activists see Norris Hall as their Alamo in a crusade to allow students on campuses across the country to arm themselves as protection against future Seung-Hui Chos.

What we hope comes from the tragedy as a result of the peace studies center’s work is a heightened awareness of the inherent value of each and every individual. From Columbine in 1999 to Virginia Tech in 2007 and to this day, after the fact authorities say the shooter was someone who felt cut off from and spurned by the rest of the world. The anger in people like Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and Cho reached a point where they saw other people as inanimate objects, as unfeeling and as empty inside as they themselves. And that’s why they felt no compunction at all in butchering other human beings.

If Tech’s peace center teaches the world nothing else, it would be a success if just one person is pulled back from the black abyss and comes to realize his own self-worth ... and that of others.