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The Rice Thresher
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by Olivia Allison Thresher editorial staff
Another Rice student from Poland spent part of Tuesday hearing his Polish relatives' opinions of the tragedy. About 85 Rice students are studying abroad this semester, Executive Director of International Programs and Scholarships Mark Scheid said at an emergency faculty meeting Tuesday. And many students from other countries are studying at Rice. Both groups of students required attention and reassurances after Tuesday's terrorist attacks. Rice administrators sent an e-mail to students studying abroad telling where to go for assistance and informing them about Rice's heightened security precautions. Another e-mail from the Study Abroad office urged students abroad not to wear clothing that would identify them as American or to go to places Americans frequent. Finding out about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was hard for many students studying abroad because they were so far from home. Lovett College junior Philip McDaniel's first day of an Italian cinema class had just started and his professor was about to show a movie to the class, when the TV behind the professor showed a plane crashing into a large building. The professor spent the rest of the class translating the news from Italian to English. McDaniel, who is studying in Italy this semester, said he received a lot of support from non-Americans in Italy. "I walk down the street and I hear everyone talking about it, regardless of what language," McDaniel said. "We were eating dinner last night at this little restaurant, and the owner gave us free dessert. ... British tourists next to us offered their condolences." McDaniel said he was shocked to learn of the attacks. "I don't really know how to feel," he said. "I wish I could be with my family and friends right now. "Everything still feels like a nightmare or something out of a movie. This is just so unbelievable." Will Rice College junior Steven Caufield said he heard the news of the attacks after calling a British friend after a class. Caufield, who is studying abroad in France, said hearing news of the attacks while he was in another country made him sick. "That moment on the street was pretty rough," Caufield wrote in an e-mail. "I looked around at the street life continuing as usual and realized I was in a totally foreign place, apparently the only one suffering this great American tragedy. I actually vomited on the sidewalk, then went to the Metro to get to someplace with a television to figure out what was going on." Caufield said he thinks this event will have a devastating impact. "I think this is a real kick in the ass to our generation, particularly, because I think we all believe pretty deeply in the invincibility of our country, and [Tuesday] we saw that crumble," Caufield said. "Even when the dust settles and New York returns and the monuments are built, our concepts of our country and the world we live in were horribly altered yesterday, and I don't think any amount of time will change that." Lovett College sophomore Eve Bower said she heard about the attacks within 10 minutes of the first plane's crash into the WTC. Bower, who is studying in Beijing this semester, said she watched live Chinese coverage of the WTC's collapse. Bower said many American students reacted with a negative attitude toward non-Americans. "In my program, we all generally speak Chinese all the time, and you could hear [students] in the halls saying, 'If you're speaking anything other than English right now, you fucking suck,' and 'These people here are clueless,'" Bower wrote in an e-mail. Bower said she has received a lot of support from the Chinese people she saw after the attack. "People would stop me and ask me if I was American," she said. "Then they would say, 'Please call your parents and tell them you're okay,' and, 'We're so sorry.'" Hanszen College junior Erin Mann said she and a friend were shopping at Wal-Mart in Freiburg, Germany, when she walked past a display of TVs that were tuned to CNN. "We must have stood there for over half an hour just holding our stomachs," she said. Mann said she shared U.S. citizens' reactions of horror, and she sympathized with people who lost relatives or friends. "We're supposed to be the most powerful nation in the world, practically impenetrable, and something like this happens," she said. Foreign students studying at Rice had a different experience in dealing with Tuesday's events. The Office of International Students and Scholars arranged a meeting with foreign students studying at Rice on Tuesday afternoon. In the meeting, which lasted three hours, Adria Baker, director of the Office of International Students and Scholars, gauged the students' reactions and answered their questions. Wojtek Dorabialski, a graduate student from Poland studying in Rice's economics department, called the attack disturbing. However, he said after talking to family members in Poland, he thinks European countries are being supportive of the United States as it copes with the tragedies. "Europe is perceiving this as not only an attack on America but on all countries who respect human life and human freedoms," Dorabialski said. Dorabialski said he thinks the tragedies will permanently change relationships between countries. "I think this will strengthen ties with people who are American allies and do the opposite to those countries that will not support America," he said. "There's going to be a greater division of the world." Ming Hua, a graduate student from China studying in Rice's materials science department, said he was not prepared to hear the news of the attacks. "I have some classmates in New York ... and I worry about them very much."
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