News
10 years later: Hamilton remembers the tragedy of Sept.11
By Allison Eck '12
September 8, 2011
On Sept. 11, 2001, Hamilton administration and staff spent the entire day tracking down the students located in New York City. Housing and transportation needed to be arranged for the students, whose Battery Park apartment building was located just eight blocks from the World Trade Center. Said Dean of Students Nancy Thompson: “One student jumped on the Staten Island ferry; others ran out of the apartment with just flip-flops and pajamas on.” Many of them had no identification, money or credit cards on them when they were evacuated.
These added complications were hard on a campus whose president was not on the Hill at the time. In fact, President Eugene Tobin was in a taxi in Manhattan. He was on the phone with Meredith Bonham, senior associate dean of students for strategic initiatives, when the planes struck and could see the towers crumbling outside his cab window.
“In a crisis, you really want a leader,” Bonham said. “You want someone to be telling you, this is what you do, and this is where you can all find some comfort. And we didn’t have him, which was hard.”
This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the attacks, which means that students, faculty and administrators will be taking some time to look back on how they dealt with the commotion and turmoil of that day.
For administrators in particular, 9/11 tested the College’s emergency response system, when dealing with the students living in NYC. The situation was not unlike what happened last week with Hurricane Irene; in both cases, students were evacuated and temporarily brought back to campus. The difference? Today Hamilton is more efficient at mobilizing in the event of a national disaster. Thompson and Bonham said that both 9/11 and the Virginia Tech shootings of 2007, among other things, prompted the College to develop a better system and make use of advanced technologies like Reverse 911. Bonham chairs the Hamilton Emergency Response Team (HERT), which is modeled on the same system that police agencies use. Each person on the team has a clearly defined role in the greater emergency response algorithm. Mock drills occur on campus every once in a while to keep the team well-practiced.
“Back then it was really a lot of good people with very good intentions and wonderful capabilities who were jumping in and saying ‘okay, here’s what we need to do,’ but it wasn’t as systematized as it would be today,” said Bonham. Now everyone knows his or her own role in the process, and as result, it took the team just about an hour to implement the necessary steps to ensure students’ safety.
To assuage students’ anxiety that day, administrators put out coffee, snacks and TVs in various places on campus. Many students, though, retreated to the comforts of their dorm rooms and mulled over the constant media updates privately. Still, “we were able to support students in every possible way,” said Bonham.
A substantial portion of the campus in 2001 had ties to the New York City area, as it still does today. Emily Tompsett ’13 lost her father on 9/11, and says that on Sunday she will put out flags and go to mass, as she usually does. “I’ll try to go on with my day as usual, and remember my dad like I always do,” she said. “He wouldn’t have wanted me to do anything different.”
Controversy in the classroom
While the emotional reverberations of 9/11 were overwhelming for many members of the Hamilton community, academic consequences also ensued in 2005, when Ward Churchill, author and political activist, was invited to speak on campus. Although the subject of his lecture was unrelated to 9/11, the thought of his presence on the Hill ignited controversy when some faculty members called attention to his commentary, “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” which he wrote shortly after 9/11. In it, Churchill – an expert on American Indian rights – wrote that the thousands killed at the World Trade Center (whom he deemed “little Eichmanns”) had had a role in American sanctions on Iraq, and that their resulting “penalty” was “effective.”
Though this view was not entirely uncommon after 9/11, it quickly became taboo; many believed that Churchill’s language was both grotesque and insensitive. The administration, in support of free speech, initially stood by its decision to host the lecture. But death threats aimed at the College soon forced President Joan Hinde Stewart to cancel his appearance.
Assistant Professor of Government Peter Cannavo said that the controversy “roiled the campus.” He discussed the issue in his political theory class when it happened. “Because of what I saw as his extremely provocative and offensive comments on the 9/11 victims, I was personally against bringing Ward Churchill to campus, something on which I differed with a number of colleagues with whom I usually agree,” he said. “My students argued passionately and effectively on free speech grounds that Churchill should come and present his views. Despite my own position on the issue, I was moved by their commitment to free speech and civil liberties, especially at a time when the prevailing political climate might have pressured them to compromise these values.”
Faculty members also had to reconsider how they handled discussions of extra-curricular issues in the classroom. On 9/11, most professors either cancelled class or offered to lend an ear to those who were scared or distressed; the tragedy wasn’t something faculty could ignore.
While the College remains divided on the extent to which professors should stray from the pre-planned coursework, “any discussion of politics or terrorism as a concept was secondary” on 9/11, noted Thompson. The basic human needs of that day superseded everything else.
Expanding horizons
The importance of 9/11 was also to awaken students’ understanding of the Middle Eastern conflict. Professor of History Shoshana Keller said that before the new millennium, Hamilton offered a meager selection of courses related to that area. In the late 1990s, there was instruction in modern Hebrew under the Critical Languages program, but no regular Arabic. A professor of philosophy, the late Russell Blackwood, taught courses in Islamic thought. Keller began teaching a basic survey of modern Middle Eastern history in 1997, but it took her four years to generate excitement about the course.
“I think enrollments were small in part because students were hesitant to study an area totally new to them, and in part because they saw no particular reason to care,” Keller said. “Then in the spring of 2002 my enrollment suddenly doubled in size, and has doubled again since.” She thinks the dramatic increase is in part due to 9/11.
Josh Yates, University of Pennsylvania ’14, transferred from Hamilton this fall because the College doesn’t have a Middle Eastern Studies program. He had decided that he wanted to pursue that path, so decided to switch schools.
“What frustrates me is that the foundation for the program is there: interest, courses, students, practicality,” he said. “If anything, I’d argue Arabic is as practical as Mandarin Chinese, a language often touted for its practicality. [Hamilton] has been nationally recognized for its economics, history and government departments among others, and a Middle Eastern Studies department would form a symbiotic relationship with these areas of study.”
Though most members of the Hamilton community were safe on the Hill when the attacks occurred, the tragic events of Sept. 11 showed that we are not as isolated as we may seem. The administration, faculty and students have come together over the course of the last decade to unite in the name of safety and support, academic integrity and growth as well as our shared humanity.