Volume CXXXIII, Number 2 September 14, 2001 f

Terror bursts Bowdoin bubble
JAMES FISHER
Senior Editor

The worst terrorist attack in America's history prompted a whirlwind of administrative activity on the Bowdoin campus this week, as the College's Disaster Response Team was activated and College staff poured over enrollment forms to identify students with family in the New York, Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh areas.

Bowdoin students filled Morrell Gymnasium on Tuesday for an emergency meeting with administrators concerning the tragic events in New York, Washington and Pittsburgh. (Colin Le Croy, Bowdoin Orient)

Susan Daignault, director of Environmental Health and Safety, first learned the news via television in her office. "I overheard [a co-worker] on a phone conversation saying, 'oh, that's really scary'… after he got off the phone, I said 'what's so scary?' He said, 'do you get CNN on your TV?' That's how we found out."

Daignault is a member of the College's Disaster Response Team, a group of administrators who are charged with "provid[ing] guidance in dealing with disasters that may occur in the Brunswick, Maine, region, whether isolated to the campus or affective the entire region," according to the College's official disaster response plan.

That team was alerted at 10:30 a.m. when Brunswick fire chief Gary Howard notified Treasurer Kent Chabotar, the response team's leader, that flights would be diverted from Boston's Logan Airport to the Brunswick Naval Air Station. Howard asked the team to begin preparing Farley Field House to receive some of the passengers on those flights.

Bowdoin's disaster response plan does call for Farley to serve "as a primary shelter if necessary in an emergency." Chabotar said that the plan was created "three or four years ago, after the ice storm in which I was in charge, but made it up as I went along."

The plan is intended for "emergencies that affect the entire campus", Chabotar said. "This was a disaster that nobody anticipated [in the plan]; we expected something on campus."

The team met at 1:00 p.m. and began to draw up plans for Farley to serve as a shelter, including arranging for "a thousand blankets, a hundred mattresses, a backup generator, tables and chairs, food service, signage, telephones, port-a-potties, translators for people coming off the planes," Chabotar said. "All that stuff, we went over it." At 2:00, however, Howard called again to say that the Naval Air Station would not be receiving any of those flights.

2:00 p.m. was also the hour in which the American flag on the quad was lowered to half-staff.

Meanwhile, administrators in the Residential Life office were retrieving every student's enrollment form, which lists parents and guardian's places of work, and pulling out the forms that listed jobs in New York City, Washington D.C. or Pittsburgh."We immediately got a list of people who lived in New York," said Bob Graves, director of Residential Life. "We started looking down the list of students... to see who might be affected. Then we started seeing if we could make contact with these students… asking the proctors and RAs to track these people down."

Others went door-to-door among the campus residences, checking up on students' emotional states, and asking about family members elsewhere in the country. These administrators, including David Mountcastle and Kim Pacelli from Residential Life, Dean Mya Mangawang from Student Affairs, and others, also spread the word about a hastily convened all-campus meeting that would take place in Morrell Gymnasium at 4:00 p.m.

President Mills, who was a lawyer in New York City for twenty-five years and moved to Maine only months ago, arranged the forum after discussions with other senior administrators. "This was an especially hard event for me," Mills said, "because there were so many people I was worried about."

Mills spoke briefly about the tragedy before a full house, and Dean of First-Year Students Margaret Hazlett asked the assembly for a moment of silence.

For the next 90 minutes, students, faculty, staff, and Brunswick residents rose and spoke their thoughts. Some brought practical advice, including information on Red Cross blood drives this week and next; some shared emotional stories of calls to and from family members in New York and Washington. After the meeting, Mills said that he was "incredibly impressed by the willingness of students to stand up in front of thousands of people and speak from the heart."

Immediately following the attacks, Counseling Services had arranged for counselors to be in the Main Lounge of Smith Union and in the Chapel, available to talk to distressed students. "Interestingly, we have not been, at the Counseling center, flooded with people coming in this week," said Bob Vilas, director of Counseling Services. "People are dazed; they're trying to make sense of it… but students have been good about connecting with other students, with their peers."

Dean of Student Affairs Craig Bradley credited the Residential Life staff the in residence halls with much of the impromptu social work of the week. "The proctors and RAs were spectacular," Bradley said. "Throughout the late morning and early afternoon, they called people and said, 'are you OK, is your family OK?'"

Bradley stressed that the College's efforts to help the Bowdoin community deal with the aftermath of the attacks will be long-term labors. "It's not over," Bradley said. The College is also "considering a panel discussion next week about national security issues," Bradley said, "although it may be too soon to view all this in academic terms."