Why Business as Usual?

As we watched two airliners topple the World Trade Center on Tuesday, the terrorists in control left a simmering hole where New York’s heart once pulsed. A void now exists where a jewel once lay.

Americans and concerned citizens worldwide have spent the last few days trying to fill that void with love, prayer and unity. We will eventually heal the sensitive wounds that dot the eastern coast of our nation, but it will take time.

President Bush, you are correct: Americans now face a test that we have no choice but to pass. But on Wednesday at Harvard, that test began on the first day of school, literally.

It was wrong to keep Harvard and almost every other American college and university open on Sept. 12, 2001. Rather than being a day of shopping period just like any other, Wednesday should have been a day of observance. It should have been a time of reflection when students could remember the innocent souls who lost their lives. It should have been a day when we could pay our respects to the victims. It should have been a day for the lucky ones among us to thank God that our families and our friends were spared and that the damage was not any worse than it was.

Harvard is a leader among American institutions of higher education in so many other ways. Why could President Lawrence H. Summers and the administration not wipe the omnipresent stoic expression off of Harvard’s face and show some desperately needed sensitivity? Why could they not demonstrate that we are human too, that we appreciate the lives we have, that we do care about what happened and that it did affect us deeply?

At a vigil on Tuesday, Cornell University President Hunter R. Rawlings III said, “In spite of these tragedies today, we will continue to keep the university open and we will pursue our work as an academic community. We will not give in to terrorist actions or threats.”

Halting a university’s operation in the aftermath of a terrorist attack would not, however, indicate a sign of weakness. There will be plenty of time for strength and resilience. Wednesday should have been a tribute, a moment of silence.

Tuesday saw little silence on the Harvard campus. One law school professor began the day’s lecture by revealing to his uninformed students that America was under attack. He then proceeded to explain how both the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been hit in acts of terrorism. A woman in the fourth row began to cry loudly, and other devastated and concerned students left the room with cell phones in hand as they frantically tried to contact their loved ones.

Once order had been restored, the professor began teaching his course as if nothing had happened, leaving his students with an appalling choice: disrespecting their professor and missing course material if they left class, or grieving and contacting loved ones. He made a choice of his own: he taught down to the final second of the scheduled 95 minutes.

Furthermore, the professor continued to enforce his policy of refusing to allow students to pass on questions on Tuesday, despite the fact that his students’ minds were no doubt distant from the statute code.

I believe we must commend a leader at another institution of higher education: Yale President Richard C. Levin. Though he did not close the university, he took steps beyond providing counseling services and sending out a mass e-mail. Like Summers, Levin also e-mailed the university to express his sympathy and grief. He contacted the community just an hour after the attack, however, and not in the mid-afternoon. Levin extended Yale’s shopping period by a week so as to compensate for the time students may need to reflect, mourn and pray. He kept university dining halls open late into the night, providing a place where students could congregate to express their thoughts. Levin even permitted off-campus housing students to attend these dining hall discussion groups.

At Harvard, I feel lucky that Summers spoke during Tuesday’s vigil at Memorial Church.

Harvard always seems to jump at the opportunity to substantiate and bolster its reputation as a top academic institution. This was the University’s opportunity to demonstrate its dynamism—to show that there is a heart beating behind the stolid white capitals of its facades. Alas, I guess the University and New York City have something in common.

—Justin D. Gest