At 12:21 PM 9/16/01 -0400, you wrote:
I teach at the Staten Island campus of St. John's University where what is left
of the World Trade Center (WTC) in lower Manhattan is within clear view of
several areas near our campus. Sadly, I as well as many of our students and
faculty know of someone or have even had a relative, friend, or acquaintance
who has been directly affected by Tuesday's terrible tragedy. With respect to
my own family, I am thankful that no relatives or close friends were affected
but I knew a couple of folks that are now missing.
Classes were cancelled early on Tuesday soon after the enormity of the
situation became clear. The university remained closed on Wednesday. Our
lower Manhattan campus, a building located in the general area of the WTC, and
which was just acquired by St. John's this summer (the former Manhattan College
of Insurance) has sustained some damage and it is temporarily closed until
further notice. Our Internet and e-mail services are down and there are still
some problems with phone calls in the area. Lucky for me I live in New Jersey.
This semester I do not teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays [ :-) ] and Friday was
the first time that I met my classes since the tragedy occurred. I understand
that attendance was dismal on Thursday when school opened and it was still
pretty poor on Friday. That day the roads within NY City were extremely
congested and some key bridges and tunnels are still closed. To top it off, it
rained on Friday. I ended up cancelling my 8:00 am class because only one
student had shown up and was free to take the next section of the same class in
the following hour. For the next 3 classes I decided to start class with some
general comments about the awful nature of the tragedy and my hope that no one
had been directly affected by this terrible event. I set aside the first few
minutes of class to discuss the matter but, surprisingly to me, many students
did not want to talk about it. So, I went ahead and taught my classes. I
point out that many students in these classes, particularly the 2 General
Psych. classes, are new to me and to our school and I guess they were probably
a little reluctant to talk about these matters with strangers. This was only
the second week of classes. In my cognitive class, however, students, most of
whom I either knew from other classes or from the Psych. Club or Psi Chi were
much more vocal and we ended up spending bout a third of the class discussing
Tuesday's disaster. I have to say that I found the session to be an excellent
opportunity to discuss various psychological processes relevant to the tragedy.
For example, the issue of Nostradamuss' prophecies came up and thanks to you
folks I had plenty of ammunition for that one (for those of you who know my
interests in parapsychology, I never read much about this fellow and thus
always remained detachedly skeptical about his stuff). More importantly and
with respect to the current thread, I think that I actually managed to convince
some students of the importance and relevance of education in general and of
psychological science in particular in dealing with phenomena associated with
events of this type (e.g., hindsight bias, the nature of prejudice, different
religious perspectives, insanity). It was an excellent teaching session and I
hope to have similar opportunities on Monday when the rest of the students show
up for the other classes. As Gary pointed out, we should feel very lucky to
take full advantage of such teaching moments. In my experience, they are
becoming rarer with each incoming class of students.
Miguel
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Miguel Roig, Ph.D. Voice: (718) 390-4513
Assoc. Prof. of Psychology Fax: (718) 442-3612
Dept. of Psychology [EMAIL PROTECTED]
St. John's University [EMAIL PROTECTED]
300 Howard Avenue http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~roigm
Staten Island, NY 10301
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