Perspective: Five years later, a new Penn?

It is 10 a.m. on a Friday, and the scene in Penn's Office of International Programs has all the trappings of business as usual. Students and staff walk briskly to and fro, telephones ring shrilly, and the hum of jovial voices pervades the air. Amid this sea of activity, a small red sign perched on a desk attracts a few glances here and there. It features a few blurry pictures of a devastated Ground Zero, and, in bold, American flag-filled letters implore viewers to "never forget."

The modest sign serves as a reminder that, while Penn has returned to a certain state of normalcy in the five years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the many legacies of that catastrophic day continue to exert a profound influence on University life.

"Sept. 11 was for universities a wake-up call - just as it was to every American a wake-up call - about security," Penn President Amy Gutmann said. "We have an emergency-preparedness routine that has improved since Sept. 11. We have a campus that discusses and debates issues of openness and security in a way that we hadn't done fully before."

Safety and Security

Ted Bateman, Penn's chief of fire and emergency services, remembers sitting at a University City District meeting on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 when one attendee hurriedly hung up his cell phone and informed the group that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers.

Bateman rushed back to Penn, and after learning that the second tower had been hit he immediately went into emergency response mode.

"The first question I had in my mind was, 'What does two planes hitting the Twin Towers represent to the University of Pennsylvania in terms of a threat," Bateman said. Determining that a similar attack on the University wasn't likely, he said that his second thought "was to get our emergency-response infrastructure in place."

While the content of Penn's emergency-preparedness program - which was revamped in the summer prior to 9/11 - has not changed much as a result of the attacks, Bateman said 9/11 confirmed the urgent need for a crisis-management plan and accented the dimension of terrorism in the University's emergency planning.

Division of Public Safety officials now meet monthly with an anti-terrorism task force, and President Gutmann presently serves on an FBI committee looking into the relationship between terrorist threats and higher education.

Penn Public Safety has also worked with other University City groups to develop a technology that allows major institutions in the area to receive the same broadcast message at the push of a button in the event of an emergency such as a terrorist attack.

"If you look at what happened in New York City during 9/11," Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said, "the biggest handicap was radio communications. That's why a lot of rescuers died."

In addition, Public Safety has increased the frequency with which it conducts drills, and it has introduced new drills into the equation. Before last year's commencement ceremonies, safety officials used cartographic modeling technology to engage in a computer simulation of an evacuation of Franklin Field.

Student Life

When the Penn Arab Student Association (PASS) was planning its annual Arab Heritage Month last year, group members ran into a roadblock. They wanted to display a map of the Arab world on Locust Walk that featured the flag of each Arab country superimposed on the geographical area to which it belonged, but they did not know what to put over Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Due to the large number of Jewish students at Penn, PASS members felt putting up a Palestinian flag would only offend people. They settled for a kaffiyeh - a common Arab headdress - believing that this symbol would be more neutral.

Soon after the banner was first displayed in public, PASS members discovered that someone had drawn an Israeli flag on top of the kaffiyeh.

For PASS President and College junior Fares Samra, this incident is one example of the conflicts that occasionally flare up between students on campus as a result of living in a politically polarized post-9/11 world.

"I have blatantly heard students and ex-roommates say 'I [expletive] hate Arabs' right in front of me, when they know how much I love my culture," Samra said. "Even thousands of miles from what's really going on, there is still a lot of tension between groups [on campus]. We have to try to educate one another so that we can understand one another."

And Muslim Student Association Communications Chairwoman and College and Wharton sophomore Samir Malik agreed, adding that the MSA has worked to increase collaboration with other cultural and religious groups on campus.

Leah Smith, a spokeswoman in the office of the Vice Provost for University Life, said the student activism and sense of community that exists on campus today is a legacy, in part, of 9/11.

"You have to remember that the aptly-named Class of 2001 graduated from Penn in 2005, so none of the current undergraduate classes were here five years ago," Smith said. "But the Class of 2001 left lasting impressions. After the attacks, the community witnessed a coming together that was inspired by tragedy but was made whole by a sense of connectedness. Over the past few years we have seen students becoming more engaged in civic opportunities, community service, having a greater interest in democracy."

Academics

Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department Chairman Roger Allen rode to America - and to Penn - on a wave of renewed interest in area studies and international languages, stemming from the United States' desire to bolster education in the wake of the Soviet Union's launching of the artificial satellite Sputnik.

Allen believes a similar wave is crashing down on Penn today.

"The 2001 attacks found the U.S. with its metaphorical pants down, because funding for Middle East studies had been sort of slack," Allen said. "But on 9/11 - bam - the Middle East came up and hit us."

Before 9/11, Allen said, first-year Arabic classes at Penn usually had between 20 to 25 students in them, and there was only one section. During the 2002-03 academic year-the first school year after the attacks --- first-year enrollment in Arabic skyrocketed to over 100 students and expanded into many sections. While enrollment has now leveled off at about 80 students, Allen recently felt the need to appoint an Arabic-language coordinator for the first time and is still trying to solve a problem that is plaguing similar departments nationwide: finding enough Arabic teachers when demand is high and when travel restrictions to the United States are strict.

The rise in interest in Arabic has been paralleled by a surge in the need for courses focusing on Islamic civilization, Allen added.

Allen believes this renewed interest in Middle Eastern affairs is fueled partly by the increasing relevance of the Middle East in American foreign policy and partly by the U.S. government and the private sector's acute need for people who are well-versed in the region's languages, religions, cultures and history - and their willingness to pay handsomely for that expertise.

He added that groups of students interested in the language have grown more diverse. While Arabic courses were once principally taken by Muslim and Jewish students, "now there is a much more varied clientele both in the daytime classes and at night."

But there are other developments in Penn academics. Last year, Professor of Medicine Harvey Rubin offered a class entitled "Homeland Security in Philadelphia" in Penn's Fels Institute of Government, in which students had the opportunity to be part of a committee co-chaired by Rubin that examined Philadelphia's emergency preparedness. Students frequently made their way downtown to sit on various subcommittees and to contribute their research to the committee's final report, which was released this past June.

"I had a strong interest in homeland security for a while, and when I saw a course that wasn't just theory but was also real-world application, I really jumped at it," College senior Dan Milich, a student in the class, said. "I'm a New Yorker, so [9/11] really crystallized my worldview and convinced me that government and policy is what I want to do as a career."

Though the students played only a minor role in the committee's final product, Milich added that "the majority of the citizenry hasn't had to bear the brunt of this 'war on terrorism,' so it feels good to contribute in a specific way."

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