Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Campuses Near World Trade Center Plan to Resume Classes; Elsewhere, Flag-Waving and Retaliation Are Debated By DANA MULHAUSER After a week of uncertainty caused by last Tuesday's terrorist attacks, the three colleges within blocks of the World Trade Center have scheduled the resumption of classes. Meanwhile, at colleges elsewhere, students are starting to disagree on expressions of patriotism and calls for armed retaliation to the attacks. At Saint John's University, classes were moved on Monday from the Manhattan campus to the Queens campus, and will remain there for the rest of the semester. Monday-morning attendance "seemed lighter than normal," but not drastically so, said Jody Fisher, a university spokesman. Saint John's officials also took their first trip to the Manhattan campus, which is one block from 7 World Trade Center, which collapsed after the twin towers fell. Of the Saint John's structure, Mr. Fisher said, "The building is in incredibly good shape." Other than the police tape and the empty corridors, the only visible effect from the explosions is a thick layer of dust. Pace University hopes to reopen its downtown campuses on Wednesday, and the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York plans to reopen on October 1. Many colleges, even those like Wesleyan University and the University of California at Berkeley that have long histories of anti-military activism, are seeing strong calls by students to wave the American flag (literally) and to back military retaliation against the terrorists. But some of these campuses are also seeing debate over these issues. At Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Conn., Sarah Norr, a junior, coordinated a vigil for peace on Monday. "The best way to honor the dead is to make sure that no other innocent lives are lost," she said. Ms. Norr has received e-mail messages calling her anti-American, but that hasn't deterred her and some of her classmates from organizing a "National Day of Action" on Thursday. Wesleyan students will protest the use of military force against civilians, and they will be joined by students from 35 other institutions, including Duke, Harvard, and Ohio State Universities, Ms. Norr said. Matthew Fox, the Wesleyan student-body president, said that the issue of military force has divided the campus. "Personally, I would like Wesleyan to show support for what's going on in the nation," he said. "We have elected officials who know what's going on a lot better than we do. We're not the FBI or the CIA." At Harvard University, a dormitory e-mail list erupted in debate over the American flags draping the campus. After Rahul Rohatgi, a junior, urged students to adorn their windows and doors with flags, another student attacked the flag-flying as part of a national hysteria "being built up by the government and the media for a single purpose: to prepare the public to accept and condone war." As the e-mail debate continued, the dormitory, Quincy House, filled with flags, including a three-story one hung on the front of the house. "Flying the American flag is the one thing that all Americans across the country can do to show their support and solidarity against those cowards who attack innocent humans to promote their ideas," one student wrote. Some of the flag-waving at Berkeley has been accompanied by anti-Muslim sentiment and what one student, Catherine J. Ahn, describes as a "let's just bomb them all mentality." In response, Muslims at Berkeley have begun providing safety escorts for one another and holding public prayer services. Ms. Ahn hung an American flag in her dorm room and another in her car, but said that her reasons for doing so have nothing to do with military action. "It's not so much that I support the American government or President Bush, but I support the American people and the sacrifices they have made," she said. Like Ms. Norr at Wesleyan, many of the students organizing the peace vigils had planned to spend the next several weeks protesting the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The IMF and World Bank announced Monday the cancellation of the meetings, which were scheduled for September 29 and 30 in Washington and were expected to draw hundreds of student protesters. George Washington University, which had planned to close its campus for five days surrounding the meetings, is still planning to cancel classes during that period. The university has not yet decided whether to close dormitories, as was originally planned. "That decision most likely will be based on police information on whether protesters are still planning to come, even if there's no meeting," said Nicki Ferramosca, a university spokeswoman. Two computer-science graduate students at Berkeley are responsible for the most complete database of information about those missing in Tuesday's crash. Miriam Walker and Ka-Ping Yee have collected more than 46,000 records of New York and Washington-area residents on the Web site, http://safe.millennium.berkeley.edu/. Each name is flagged as "missing" or "found," based on information provided by users. Ms. Walker conceived the idea within hours of the attack, and it took Mr. Yee less than two hours to write the code. By 5 p.m. Tuesday, the site had begun collecting names. Neither Ms. Walker nor Mr. Yee knew anyone lost or injured in the crashes. They simply wanted to help. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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