Chartered bus returns 28 students to New York City area

Photo by Neil Brake

Student Matthew Nichols loads his luggage aboard a bus to New York. The bus was chartered by Vanderbilt University so students from the New York area could go home for the weekend. Nichols was going to visit his sister-in-law.

Twenty-eight students traveled to the New York area on a University-chartered commercial bus to reunite with family members in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands of people at the World Trade Center.

"It was very apparent that these kids really needed to be with their families," said Ellen Brier, director of student affairs at Peabody College. Brier is a native New Yorker who formerly worked on the 67th floor of Tower Two of the World Trade Center. "Their need to physically connect with their loved ones was apparent."

None of the students who took the bus to New York City's Port Authority station reported having lost immediate family members in the recent attack.

"Even though they weren't direct family members lost, they were losing members of their communities," said Steve Caldwell, dean of housing and residential education. "The first plan was to utilize the 'ride board' in Sarratt. When we discussed it with David Williams, he suggested we charter a bus."

The University's decision to fund the 16-hour bus trip came within two days of the attack.

"We were on Alumni Lawn as the students gathered for a moment of silence," he said. "We discussed phone calls we've received from parents, and it became apparent we needed to do something."

David Williams, vice chancellor and general counsel of the University, and secretary to the Board of Trust, suggested chartering a bus. The planning stage initiated around noon was completed by sundown.

"I am very proud of this University being able to identify a need, propose a solution, determine its feasibility, secure approval and go out to the students through a global e-mail in five hours," said Caldwell.

Greg Swanson, administrative officer in the Office of the General Counsel, negotiated with the bus line and fielded e-mails from interested students. F. Clark Williams, systems implementation leader of residential and judicial affairs and Brockton Williams, associate dean of residential and judicial affairs, provided organizational support for the trip. James Hogge, associate dean for faculty and programs at Peabody College, located a doctoral student to ride on the bus.

Tricia Lipani, a psychology doctoral student at Peabody, volunteered to travel to New York aboard the bus to provide "informal counseling services" for students while en route.

"It was so clear as to why [Vanderbilt] put this trip together," said Lipani. "They just wanted to help people."

After returning from the trip, Lipani, a New York City native who exited the World Trade Center 30 minutes prior to the bombing in 1993, described the atmosphere in Manhattan as sobering.

"The whole mood in New York City is somber; it's just incredibly sad," she said.

"There were five blocks of walls covered with pictures of missing people, and people crying as they looked at it," said Eleni Binioris, a senior studying secondary education and history at Peabody. Binioris' family lives in Brooklyn. "It was horrible."

Despite the widely reported solemn mood of the city's inhabitants, the 24-hour visit with family appeared to have significant therapeutic value for the students.

"What we saw was enough to break anybody's heart," said Binioris, who is a Posse Scholar. "But being there, seeing it and our families, calmed our souls. It made it easier to come back to school."

The bus, which left the Vanderbilt campus Friday, Sept. 14, at 12:30 p.m., returned the students to campus at 7 a.m. the following Monday.