Junior Sireeda Miller had just taken a shower and was getting ready for work when she turned on her radio and learned of yesterday's terrorist attack.
"I started shaking. I couldn't believe it," she said. "And this was before the first tower had even collapsed."
For Miller, whose family lives in lower Manhattan, the news hit too close to home. "You can see the World Trade Center outside my building," she said.
Miller spent the morning and early afternoon in her room trying to get through to her family, a problem many on campus faced with phone lines tied up throughout the Northeast. When she finally got through at 1 p.m., Miller says she was relieved to find out that her immediate family had not been hurt.
But when she sat in the campus center hours later, she still had not spoken to any of her other family members or friends. "I talked to my step-dad and he was telling me, 'Sireeda, you can't even imagine,'" she said.
Miller's stepfather told her that he was so close he could see the people inside the plane from his window. Later, Miller's father said saw people jumping from the towers. "He said to me, 'Sireeda, I don't think I'll ever be able to sleep again,'" she said.
Miller's biggest fear, she said yesterday, is the news she has yet to hear. "It's almost impossible that I don't know anyone who was hurt and that's what scares me the most," she said. "In my heart of hearts, I just want to go home right now, but I can't."
Although Miller expressed appreciation for President Larry Bacow's university-wide e-mail, she said that Tufts should have done more. "Classes should be cancelled because this is a national tragedy that won't be over in a day or two or a year or two," Miller said. "This will be something we will tell our grandchildren about and they'll cry about it."
The campus center acted as a hub for reaction yesterday. Hundreds of students visited Hotung and the upper-level lounge to watch news broadcasts throughout the day and evening. Some stood in silent disbelief, covering their mouths with their hands, while others discussed their shock in hurried dialogues.
President Bacow took time yesterday to talk to students congregated in the campus center. As he left Hotung, he patted one student on the back and gave the thumbs-up signal to another.
He had just sent an e-mail to the Tufts community explaining that he hadn't closed the University so students could use class time to discuss the tragedy. He didn't want faculty to leave campus, Bacow explained, because he wanted them around to support students. Bacow also discouraged students from leaving.
"Now is the time for people to come together," he said. "We all have to reach out to each other."
Bacow also urged students not to blame any group for the attack. "We have no idea who did this," he said. "People shouldn't jump to conclusions - remember the lessons of Oklahoma City."
Sara Yamani, president of the Arab Students Organization, said Arab students worried they would suffer discrimination as some rushed to accuse Arab terrorists of carrying out the attack. "They blamed the Arabs for doing such an atrocious act in Oklahoma City and we were proven innocent," Yamani said. "We are all here to be peaceful with each other; to come and have an education."
Fletcher School Reacts
About 30 students and faculty members sat on the floor of the Cabot Center lobby, watching a static-filled television screen at noon yesterday.
The phone rang continuously in Fletcher Public Relations spokeswoman Terry Ann Knopf's office as Business Week, ABC Studios, and various media outlets called looking for Fletcher experts. According to Knopf, three Fletcher representatives had been active in explaining the incidents to the media.
"The main contribution is the involvement of our experts in working with journalists to sort out the details of this huge, huge story," Knopf said. "The events are still unfolding and at this point in time it's too early to tell anything."
At a meeting yesterday, Fletcher School Dean Stephen Bosworth echoed Bacow's sentiments in urging students not to jump to conclusions about who the perpetrators were. He asked Fletcher students to support one another and to be aware and alert of their surroundings.
"I suggested that we have a memorial service when we learn who died because we certainly will have people from Fletcher who have died," said Margaret Sloane, a Fletcher student, at the meeting. "I think what [Bosworth] said was really appropriate and I hope that there will be more opportunities to get together as a community."
Sloane, who lives in New York, has friends who work in the Pentagon. "It's hard to comprehend," she said.
Fletcher student Kelly Smith watched a newscast late yesterday afternoon in the Cabot lobby and speculated upon the ramifications of the attack. "This is a smack in the face to our defense industry, to our community, to our political system in itself," he said.
"It actually goes to show that America is not immune," Smith said. "So when America gets that impression - because it owns a great stake in the world pie - this will give testament that we should reflect on our decisions before we implement them."
Smith said the country should not be preoccupied with building a large-scale missile defense. "We really need to focus on our international safety issue, and not be lead by misguided leaders who want to protect us from missiles but ignore low-tech attacks with highly intelligent concepts," he said.
"Foreign policy doesn't begin at the edge of the sea," Smith said. "Foreign policy is domestic because obviously this had some internal cooperation, as well as being international."
But Smith's focus yesterday was not fixed on US foreign policy. With family and friends in New York and Washington, DC, he said his thoughts were dominated by personal fears. "I haven't been able to do anything school-related," he said.
Smith's mother works for American Airlines as a crisis manager and will be departing today for either Manhattan or Washington.
"One of the things I'm really worried about is the hidden xenophobic character of the American government," Smith said, adding that Americans might blame Arab-Americans for the attack. "It may profess itself in the form of police aggression, false accusations, and, at times, blatant racism," he said.
