DIPA students safe following attacks
DIPA faculty and staff spent the better part of the morning in contact with SU’s office in London receiving updates of the locations and conditions of each student enrolled in the program, said Jim Buschman, senior associate director of DIPA.
‘We all came in early,’ Buschman said. ‘I was here at about seven and the others were here before eight. We immediately established contact with London.’
The London office was able to contact the students and then relay the information back to Syracuse via attachments in e-mail messages.
Phone companies in London deactivated cell phone service in the area to free up calls for emergency use, making it difficult to reach people, Buschman said. The precaution was made because during the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001, emergency calls could not get through after due to the high volume of personal calls being made.
Buschman said since almost all of the students were in London for internships, many were already at work by 9 a.m. and could be reached by landlines by the London SU staff.
‘Before the morning was out we had a complete list,’ Buschman said.
The Syracuse DIPA office was able to contact parents and let them know their son or daughter was safe, but by that time, many of the students had already contacted their families, Buschman said.
A Campus Hot News e-mail was sent to all SU students around noon Thursday to let the university community know that no student was harmed.
David Watson, an SU student who studied abroad in London during the Fall 2004 semester, said that he and other former DIPA students received an e-mail from the SU London office announcing that all students and faculty were safe.
Of the 64 students enrolled in DIPA’s London program this summer, 25 are from universities other than SU such as George Washington University, Rochester Institute of Technology and University of the Ozarks. DIPA made sure to contact those students’ home colleges in addition to their families, Buschman said.
The bombings in London took place between 8:51 and 9:47 a.m. local time. Three underground trains and a bus were the targets. A group called Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe claimed responsibility for the bombings on a Web site.
Caitlin Brodnick, a senior acting major who spent the Fall 2004 semester in London, said when she heard of the attacks she immediately thought of her family in London. After speaking with her great aunt, she found out that her cousin’s fianc missed the bombing on the Piccadilly line by only 10 minutes because she woke up late for work.
‘She was freaking out and everything,’ Brodnick said.
Brodnick also said another bombing location, the Edgware Road station, was a stop she would get off at to go home each day when she was studying in London.
‘We lived right there. My best friends–that’s where they lived,’ she said. ‘To hear that place was one that would be struck is just terrifying.’
The neighborhood near the Edgware Road station has a high Muslim population, and DIPA suggested that students not live there because of the ‘un-American’ views the people there had, Brodnick said.
‘SU told us it was very dangerous to live in that area because of a recent threat,’ Brodnick said.
Buschman said that SU is aware that the neighborhood around the Edgware Road station has a high Muslim population, but would not comment on the situation until it is determined who is responsible for Thursday’s attacks.
Despite the attacks, Buschman said he is confident enrollment in DIPA will not go down. In fact, he said enrollment in the program rose after the bombing of trains in Madrid, the site of another SU campus.
‘Obviously it’s sobering when something like this happens, but what (DIPA) has done for students generally is to teach more about the world,’ Buschman said. ‘More and more students say they want to experience places, get out and know more about people different from Americans.’
Feature Editor Dana Moran contributed to this report
Published on July 19, 2005 at 12:00 pm
