Piecing their lives back together

NEW YORK - On Sept. 11, students and faculty at the Borough of Manhattan Community College were a block from hell. While phone calls and news bulletins tore into our morning, a plane ripped through theirs.\nStudents were in class that day giving speeches and taking tests when they heard a crunching noise, which they would soon learn was the first plane colliding into Tower 1. \nOnce people found out what happened, the building was completely evacuated. Hours later, 7 World Trade Center collapsed onto BMCC's Fiterman Hall.\nIn the next few weeks, students would be dealing with more than just "background noise."\nWhen they looked up, they saw F16's screaming through the skies.\nWhen they looked forward, they saw clouds of white ash.\nWhen they looked down, they saw debris and business papers scattered across the ground.\nWhen they looked around their school, they saw 25,000 people crammed into a building designed for 8,500.\nEven though they had lost a building and came close to losing their sanity, the students and faculty wanted to come back. They were determined to come back.\nAftermath \n"By about 4:30 or 5 p.m. we knew we lost it," said G. Scott Anderson, vice president of administration and planning. \nThe school's newly renovated Fiterman Hall, located at 30 W. Broadway, was severely damaged when the towers collapsed. \nRenovations on the 70-classroom building were scheduled to be completed in November, but students and professors were already using it because they ran out of space in the main building.\n"All things considered, we're very lucky," Anderson said. "If the tower hadn't come straight down, it was tall enough to come down and hit our main building."\nAll classes were moved back to the main building at 199 Chambers St. in Lower Manhattan. The building is nothing like the sky scrapers surrounding it - it's as long from end to end as the Empire State Building is tall.\nThere was time for everyone to exit the building, but six BMCC students died as a result of the attacks. Fiterman was evacuated as soon as school officials learned the extent of the damage.\nThey were remembered in an all-day ceremony at the college later in the semester. Administrators said the memorial service was a celebration of life and a remembrance of those whose lives were lost.\nAuthorities set up camp\nBMCC's main building became the command center for the World Trade Center rescue and recovery efforts. Hosts of emergency personnel came in, making do with whatever space and supplies were available. \nPublic health set up in the theater, Port Authority in the gym, army on the second floor and fire department on the third. \nThere were boxes of drugs and medical equipment, but the highly trained doctors had very few patients to work on. The veterinarians were the ones who saw the most action because search dogs kept injuring their paws on the debris.\n"It was actually very depressing," said David Gallagher, director of the media center. "(The doctors) were waiting for survivors."\nAdministration pulls it together\nAnderson fought back tears as he recounted how students made their way down to the disaster area on Sept. 14 to ask when classes were going to start again.\n"The third day when it was still horrific down here - really horrific - our students were showing up at the back gate. Somehow they got through Army check points," he said, voice rising with disbelief. "These (military) guys are carrying M16's and everything.\n"It was really hard core. It was great, just great. Somehow these students got through and came to the gate and said, 'When do classes begin?' We told them we were going to open up as soon as we could, but opening up was dependent on us finding a way of making up those 40 classrooms we lost. We came damn close. We got 36 built, and that was enough for us to be able to make it happen."\nThe process of getting students back into classes was equally challenging. Most of Lower Manhattan was restricted. There was no electricity near Ground Zero. Phone lines were down. Transportation to the area was cut off, and government and health agencies were taking up half the building.\nRegardless of the numerous and daunting obstacles, BMCC President Antonio Perez was bent on having the school open three weeks after the tragedy.\n"Our president, who's very unbelievable, decided we're going to come back on a date he set," Associate Dean of Student Affairs Marva Craig said. "We were not going to wait for the city - (for) anyone. He set a date."\nFaculty members pulled together to accommodate this goal, working exhausting hours and sometimes even sleeping in their offices, like Anderson and Director of Operations Ed Sullivan.\nPerez came to work every day after Sept. 11; his strong voice and determination serving as a guiding force in the recovery efforts.\n"The only way we were able to reopen on Oct. 1 was that we got electricity back and that was very critical. We were able to build the equivalent of 36 classrooms in six days," Anderson said. "We had all the participants - the builders, the electricians, the carpenters, the architects, the funding agencies and the college. Ed and I were the college." \nMaking contact\nAs some of the faculty worked on-campus to get the school ready, the rest had an off-campus emergency headquarters set up.\nMarva Craig was one of the faculty members doing her part to get the word out to students about how things were progressing at BMCC. \nIn order to produce the lists of students and print letters, the technical support staff had to recover vital information from the server, which was knocked out with the school's electricity. \nThe administrators' titles no longer mattered, Craig said. Instead of dictating letters, they were labeling and sending 17,000 of them. They informed students of the reopening date and gave new directions on how to get to school their first day back.\nRealizing that some students might be too distraught to come back to school, the BMCC gave students the option of withdrawing without penalty and getting reimbursed for fees paid - but very few students took them up on the offer.\nThe administration said students were overjoyed when they got phone calls from professors and found out that classes would continue. \nSome calls were not as happy as others, however. \nCraig said she broke down during one phone call when she spoke with a parent who lost a child. \n"I felt so bad," Craig said. "I called this woman, and I ended up being the one who was crying - I had to put her on hold."\nBack to school\nWhen students and faculty finally returned to school, it was a vastly different learning environment. \nEven though banners and letters of global support had been posted on the walls, the noise and surrounding scenery were taking an overbearing toll.\nWhat was once a clean view of the Hudson River and New Jersey skyline became marred and cluttered by clean-up crews using it as a loading station. Barges churned in and out of the harbor 24 hours a day until the end of May, transporting debris to the Freshkills Landfill on Staten Island.\nIn addition to boat engines, students had to deal with the sounds of helicopters, planes, cranes, generators and screeching F16's. \n"We were nervous about the noises until we realized what they were," student David Callardo said. "But once in a while we would get up and go the window to look and make sure."\nThe air outside was heavy and filled with the ash that covered people's clothing on the way into the school. \nBlow torches were used around the clock, emitting a smell students described as "burning flesh."\n"It didn't even feel like class," Callardo said. "It was a war zone."\nMaking Sacrifices\nStudents were no longer able to relax outside the main building or congregate inside the BMCC's main lobby.\nAs they walked through the main building, Anderson and Sullivan pointed out the drastic changes that were made in an effort to replace the 40 lost classrooms. \n"The classrooms were built in student space," Anderson said. "We took all of their cafeteria. The entire student lounge is gone. We took away their weight room, their exercise room."\nA building originally designed to accommodate 8,500 people now houses 25,000. During the summer months there were not as many students on campus, but heavy use of the elevators and escalators caused them to malfunction.\n"Elevators and escalators are breaking down because people have to go up and down," Anderson said. "This whole thing has created problems. We're bursting at the seams."\nThe Student Art Court Campaign was created in response to the situation. Its purpose was to get students some of their space back and lower the costs of maintaining the heavily-used campus building.\nCounseling for counselors\nTo get a firm grip on the new "war zone" and crowded learning environment, some faculty members forced themselves to assess the situation and figure out how best to handle it.\nDeborah Parker, director of the BMCC's women's center, said she walked around campus, noting the look, smell and feel of the environment so she could understand how students first perceived the damage. \n"It helped me to help others," Parker said. "I went through my own personal crisis, but how could I help unless I was strong for the students? It forced me to take inventory of all of it so I could understand what the students were feeling." \nMarva Craig said the measures the faculty had to take in getting the school up and running served as their therapy session.\nTalking as much with her hands as she did with words, she described how they assisted each other through the tragedy in their close-knit community environment.\n"We were all in the same place working with people you've never talked to and shared space we've never shared before - it was helpful and therapeutic."\nEven though she's made emotional progress, Craig still can't bring herself to develop pictures she took of Sept. 11. She laughed and said it was a running joke in her office, then leaned down to tug open a drawer revealing several rolls of film laying in an assortment of administrative trinkets.\n"I have all the pictures, but I haven't developed them," Craig said. "I haven't developed any because I used to develop them in the World Trade Center."\nDocumenting the tragedy\nSeveral students at BMCC found an alternative, productive way of addressing Sept. 11 - for themselves and others.\nMany people who hadn't had a chance to talk about their feelings got their chance when the digital film club sent out a call-out for Sept.11 interviews.\n"A lot of people hadn't spoken to anyone, and they wanted to say what they had to say to feel better," student Fatima Boone said. \nWith the school's video equipment and a budget allocated to them by the student government, Miguel Bernardo, Christian Moran, Callardo and Boone taped and produced the 15-minute documentary "Out of the Darkness." \n"We felt like (the school) wasn't acknowledged by anyone," Moran said. "We felt we had to investigate it and document a timeline of how things were happening."\nThe group sat in the dimly-lit communications lab, hunching around the soft glow of the computer monitor as if they had never seen their video before. \n"It feels the same," Boone said. "It brings back the memories as intense as they were to begin with."\nThe documentary shows still shots of the World Trade Centers and 30-second interview clips with students, faculty and staff members. \nPeople worldwide have requested copies of their video. It's been sent to many schools, Yale, Holland, Maya Angelou and the President.\nRebuilding the future\nWhile many faculty members thought enrollment would suffer at least a slight drop after the disaster, the University ended up having their highest enrollment ever for the last spring and upcoming fall semesters. \nThe administration predicts there will be over 18,000 students enrolled after registration, and they plan on accommodating the inflation by renting out space at St. John's University.\nHoward Entin, BMCC's director of financial aid, said there's too much going on in downtown Manhattan for it to ever slow down for very long.\n"With all the impact of 9/11, this is still a popular place and the world's financial setting - this is a powerful area," Entin said.\nPresident Perez said the BMCC's goal for the future is not merely to repair the damage that was done, but to improve it. \n"Our intentions are to rebuild Fiterman hall and make it even better than it ever was before and to continue serving our students to the very best of our ability so that they will be able to make a difference in New York City and in the world"