Students Stay Away As Classes Resume At Kenya's Garissa University.

When classes resumed on Monday at Garissa University, where the Somalia-based militant group Al Shabab killed 148 people last April, many here saw it as a second chance for the region.

The dormitory where more than 100 students died has been repaired and renamed. A grove of trees was planted on the front lawn in memory of the dead. But bullet holes remain in the building walls and some windows are still shattered. The bulk of the school’s remaining 800 students have transferred to another university; none have re-enrolled so far. The university will never be the same, but that could be a good thing -- some say that since its opening, the university has failed to serve the region as much as it should. When it opened in 2011 after nearly a decade of local campaigning, it was hailed as a sign that Kenya's long marginalized north – where Al Shabab militants posed a growing threat – was finally being connected to the rest of the country.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting supported the reporting for this story.