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As a public institution committed to the civic welfare of our city, in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack, Baruch College responded in many different ways. Here are only a few of them.
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EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE
In the immediate hours and days following the tragedy, Baruch worked closely with both the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and the National Guard.
Athletic facilities in the 17 Lexington Avenue building were used as a comfort station for showers and rest by National Guardsmen acting as relief workers in the downtown area. Meanwhile, the Armory, on Lexington Avenue across the street from the Vertical Campus, served for a number of days as the site where OEM did the harrowing work of meeting with family members and others seeking information about missing loved ones. Baruch provided tables and chairs for use in the registration and information-gathering process and opened up the new Vertical Campus building as a comfortable place for people to wait. Faculty and staff with mental health training were needed for counseling those families, and they answered the call.
Baruch College also offered weekend and evening classroom space to the Borough of Manhattan Community College, whose facilities could not be used for teaching due to their proximity to the financial district.
The Golden Key National Honor Society, the Undergraduate Student Government, and a number of other student organizations collected funds for the American Red Cross relief effort at various locations around Baruch, including the second floor of the Vertical Campus. Donors were given red-white-and-blue lapel ribbons.
STUDENT ART, COMMENTARY, AND DISCUSSIONS: ONLINE AND ON WALLS
The Student Web Assistance Program (SWAP) provided an outstanding collection of resources for students in the wake of the profound changes that have come over our city and into each of our lives. In addition to the resources on counseling, study, and other issues, the site featured a discussion board with a group of chat rooms on various issues for students only. Here students tackled the problems they were having: grief, fear, trouble concentrating and returning to the normalcy of classes and work.
Meanwhile, the campus also saw some other and more spontaneous kinds of student expression. By Wednesday morning, Sept. 12, along the curved lobby wall at the 25th Street side of Baruch's new Vertical Campus building, 11" x 14" sheets of newsprint were hung, corner to corner and side to side, and they rapidly filled with student comments, sketches, prayers, and expressions of anger, grief, and well wishes.
Baruch students were invited to post their comments and drawings as the days went on, and they did so, using markers of every color and in many languages besides English: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Polish, Russian, and Greek. Pictures of stars, of tears, of the Trade Towers themselves—all of it an expression of the enormous, uncontainable emotions that have held us as a city and as a nation since 8:46 a.m. on 11 September.
COUNSELING
The Baruch Counseling Center at the Newman Library remained open as a resource for students, faculty, and staff experiencing emotional difficulties in response to the horrendous events. Student Development and Counseling also provided emergency walk-in counseling in the Career Development Center in the Vertical Campus to accommodate persons needing additional support during those difficult days.
—Vince Passaro
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