WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2002
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 5A
Few return to campus halls Hope remains for Americans
By Matt Stumpff
Kansan staff writer
Students who don't follow their peers off campus after their freshman year are getting harder to find.
The closing of Ellsworth Hall limited the number of students who could live on campus after their freshman year. However, many returning residents applied early enough to have a place in student housing. They have unique reasons why they want to return.
Kari Morgan, Topeka junior, said she had lived in a residence hall every year. Morgan lived in an apartment during the summer. She said she enjoyed living as a resident assistant in McCollum Hall more than living off-campus.
"I don't like to share my room, but I don't like to live alone," Morgan said.
Living as an RA gave her the opportunity to have her own place but mingle with others at the same time, Morgan said.
Morgan said the only thing she liked more about living in an apartment than a residence hall was having a kitchen to cook in.
She said she planned on moving to Ellsworth Hall when it reopened, whether she was an RA or just a resident.
Baiju Gandhi,Lenexa junior, said he was living in Templin for his third year because of convenience more than love of the residence halls.
Gandhi said he was taking 19 hours this semester, so he needed to save as much time as possible. The residence halls were close to campus and had quick cafeteria meals, he said.
He said he probably would live in only a residence hall that was renovated like Templin was in 1997.
"It's basically the same as living in a one-bedroom apartment," Gandhi said. "I call up my friends and go hang out with them."
Patrick Brady, Overland Park senior, moved into student housing this fall. Brady said he had lived in a fraternity and an apartment before he moved to McColum Hall as an RA. He moved into the halls because he wanted to meet new people.
"It's kind of weird being four years older than everyone else," Brady said. "But I always felt like doing it."
Julie Schwind, Olathe senior said she lived in GSP-Corbin Hall for her first year at the University of Kansas. Schwind said she would have felt restricted if she lived in the residence halls after her freshman year. She now lives in an apartment.
"Having lived in the dorms, I saw what college was like there, and I wanted to get out and experience it in a different way," she said.
More students will be able to spend the later years of their college lives in residence halls when Ellsworth reopens in Fall 2003. The hall will house 550 students when it reopens.
Contact Stumpff at mstumpff@kansan.com. This story was edited by Adam Pracht.
Sept.11 causes indirect trauma
The Associated Press
CHICAGO—The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have haunted many Americans who were not directly affected, causing significant symptoms of traumatic stress two months and even six months later, research suggests.
Two months later, 17 percent of Americans living outside New York City reported several symptoms of related stress; six months later, nearly 6 percent did, a Web-based survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found.
More than 900 people took part in the survey.
Symptoms included feeling jittery, dreaming about the attacks unexpectedly thinking about them and trying to avoid reminders.
Only about 1 percent — nine
people — had firsthand exposure, including being in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon during the attacks, talking by telephone with building occupants during the attacks, or being within blocks of the attack sites.
The two-month stress levels participants reported were slightly higher than those reported in previous Sept. 11 studies but are not surprising given the tragedy's magnitude, said lead researcher Roxane Cohen Silver, a University of California-Irvine psychologist.
Silver said the survey may be more accurate than previous studies because the participants were surveyed anonymously via the Internet and may have answered sensitive questions more candidly.
Health care professionals
"should be aware that potentially disturbing levels of trauma-related symptoms can be present even in individuals who are not directly exposed to a trauma, particularly when the trauma is a massive national tragedy such as the Sept. 11 attacks," the researchers said.
People who used so-called active coping strategies such as giving blood or attending memorial services had lower stress levels.
The results may not be representative of people who do not know how to use the Internet, but the research is otherwise sound and provides an important snapshot of the country's psyche, said Jerilyn Ross, a Washington-based psychologist and president of the advocacy group Anxiety Disorders Association of America.
The Associated Press
PRESCOTT, Ariz. — It is morning on an ordinary day in an ordinary place the locals call "everybody's Hometown."
In the downtown square, an elderly couple walk arm-in-arm, quiet and serene. A woman intently pushes a stroller along the same route. Another walks her dog. A man sits on a bench, reading his newspaper, expressionless.
A mother holds her son by his ankles, swinging him as he sweals and she giggles — swaying back and forth on the courthouse lawn under an imperfect skv that threatens rain.
Where is the sorrow and outrage and fear? Aren't we still healing? Aren't we still mourning?
In Everybody's Hometown and in all the places where Sept 11 is being marked quietly or loudly, the answers aren't so simple a year after the day that changed everything.
The way we feel now about Sept. 11,2001, isn't as tangible as the tears that fall at memorial services, or the faded flags draped from homes for 365 days.
Nor is it as palpable as our impatience in airport security lines, or our uneasiness when security alerts go up, or our anger when we see videos teaching terrorists to kill and learn that Iraq might be plotting an attack.
It is deeper and more subtle, concealed under this veil of normalcy that is life a year later. It could be a memory or feeling that sneaks up, like that of the New Yorker who looks at a clear, blue sky and thinks, "What a gorgeous day," and then: "It was like this when the towers came down."
It's seeing beauty and ugliness through the same lens, the focus shifting from one to the other to both.
In this middle-class town a few hours from Phoenix — far from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, home to neither a military base nor any other real reminders of the attacks — the feelings are no less complex.
For many Americans, the day and all that it means have slipped into the subconscious become another thread in the fabric of life. The economy, their family's well-being, terrorism
For many Americans, the dav
it's all interconnected now.
and all that it means have slipped into the subconscious, become another thread in the fabric of life. The economy, their family's wellbeing, terrorism — it's all interconnected now.
"People live it every day," said 39-year-old Mike Robinson, an employee at the local Enterprise rental car agency. "Every time you see that the stock market's crashing or you go to the gas station and you see that gas prices are up ... they may not think about it every day, but they're living it."
"That's life as it is now," agreed co-worker Stephen Scott, 34. "We have to deal with it."
But do we? Some struggle with wanting to remember and very much needing to forget.
One Prescott woman said she ignored her Sunday paper last week: "I don't want to be depressed at breakfast."
Another suggested Americans turn off the news if they don't want a reminder. She does so herself. "It just seems like there's no end to this," she said.
One recurring sentiment a year later is anger and frustration, some directed now at our own government for not doing more. Just exactly what more, few can put their finger on.
Why is Osama bin Laden still out there? Why, if he's alive, can't we get him?
"I'm upset that this could've happened, that we allowed it to happen and that we haven't, in a year's time, made it highly unlikely it will happen again," said Scott, who fought with the Navy in the Gulf War.
It seems the whole of America is just waiting for the other shoe to drop, believing it's only a question of when, how and where the next strike will occur.
But hope also remains. That defiant, you-can't-stop-living-or-they've-won attitude hasn't disappeared. It is, after all, the life lesson we learn from inception: You get knocked down, you get back up.
All that changes is how we choose to stage our comeback, to renew our faith.
A flight attendant refuses to quit, despite pleas from his sister. A bartender continues to fly even though she is terrified, but feels less so each time she lands safely.
Some turn away from the newspaper and TV. Some turn toward the children — like Robinson, who looks to his 21/2-year-old son when his faith falters and his anger flares.
"When you go home and you hug your child, it gets you back to the pain away," he said. "Even with the memories of what happened, with the pain, it's a normal life."
"This is our normal life."
How do we feel a year later, how do we really feel? We smile and argue and shop and work. We go to dinner with husbands, to movies with girlfriends. We kiss our children, and count our blessings.
A year later, it is a normal life. Different, but the same.
By day's end in this place they call "Everybody's Hometown," more dogs are being led around the square. Three women window-shop at Raskin's jewelers. A man heads home from work while a couple strolls to supper.
Outside the courthouse, another woman plays with her children on grass that now feels dewy from a shower. As the sun dips behind a clump of clouds, a little girl with blond hair and an American flag on her plain white shirt chases her sister across the lawn, then dashes back into her mother's arms.
And they are laughing, this mother and child, laughing out loud.
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