Students Seek Solace in Classes on Sept. 11

Finally, UCLA freshman Kristin Grossheider feels as if she’s in the right place. Every week now, in an intimate lamp-lighted conference room, she attends a one-credit seminar with 17 other undergraduates, including a biology major from New York City, an anthropology major from south Orange County and an undeclared major from Menlo Park.

For the first time, Grossheider said, she is focusing on a topic that had never been discussed in her classes or among friends: Sept. 11.

“I came here and figured, ‘Oooh, college. I’ll really get some perspective on [the attacks],’ but I just feel like I haven’t at all. People are just disconnected, and [in the dorms], we watch ‘Friends’ instead of the news,” said Grossheider, an 18-year-old biochemistry major from Danville, Calif. “[The media] keeps saying we’re at war, but it just doesn’t feel like it at all.”

This winter, at UCLA--and at several other colleges and universities around the country--students are gravitating to a wide and inspired range of Sept. 11-themed courses, still eager for engagement on topics related to the terrorist attacks. Administrators said they want the courses to cut across disciplines, in areas including poetry and police culture.

Under the banner of “Understanding Sept. 11, 2001,” for instance, Humboldt State lists 24 courses on topics including Afghanistan and Islam, while, through the social work department, students can enroll in “Loving Relationships.”

UCLA is offering 37 such seminars, most of which are either filled or over the enrollment limit of 15, university officials said. Senior professors and leaders, including UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale, are teaching seminars without extra pay, some of them heading back in the classroom for the first time in years.

At Binghamton University, a State University of New York campus, about 550 students are trying to get into a course called “Terrorism and War.” Half of the students wrote on enrollment questionnaires that they either lost a friend or relative in the World Trade Center devastation or knew someone who worked in the cleanup effort. The lecture hall only holds 430, which puts political science professor Robert Ostergard in the awkward position of having to turn away more than 100 students.

“I knew there would be some interest, but I expected it to wane,” Ostergard said. “I thought a lot of students had been hit with information overload.”

More than a dozen faculty members are helping Ostergard teach the four-credit course. He also has asked members of the psychology department to weigh in, mindful of raw emotions. But he thinks that enough time has passed for students to be able to concentrate on topics such as civil liberties and the American psyche.

“The further you get away [from Sept. 11], the better chance you have of letting emotions die down a bit,” Ostergard said. “Now there’s an atmosphere in the lecture hall that’s one of inquisitiveness. They’re interested in trying to understand rather than simply just reacting.”

At West Virginia University, by the first day of the spring semester, more than 85% of the seats were filled in a slate of 18 courses on terrorism and similar subjects, including one called “All but War is Simulation: Media Representation and War in Literature, Film and Games.” The Morgantown-based university is also offering five English classes in which the readings and assignments are based on the events of Sept. 11, said Provost Gerald Lang.

Lang said he won’t mind if some courses are offered only this semester. “I don’t have any problem with riding whatever is current or teaching courses that help students understand contemporary issues,” he said. “I expect the curriculum to keep changing to reflect contemporary issues of the time.”

Last quarter, UCLA managed to create 49 seminars under the heading “Perspectives on Sept. 11.” Officials began planning the seminars on the day of the attacks, and, within two weeks, had 49 offerings in time for the fall term, which began Sept. 25. (The approval process for new courses usually takes several months).

UCLA doesn’t plan to offer the slate of seminars next quarter, although Sept. 11-related issues will continue to be addressed in other courses, said Brian Copenhaver, provost of the College of Letters and Science.

But the university is likely to offer more courses in a similar format, he said, based on reaction from students and professors who praised the intimacy of the seminars. Copenhaver taught one of the fall classes, focusing on Machiavelli’s book “The Prince.”

“It was one of the most exciting teaching experiences I can remember,” said Copenhaver, who began teaching in 1964. “The level of engagement of the students was really extraordinary. The best thing that can happen in any class is when students teach other.”

Grossheider couldn’t sign up for any of the fall seminars, which were either full or didn’t fit into her schedule. She began to worry that the defining news story of her generation would slip away before she could work out in her mind what happened and why. “My mom always talks about the Vietnam War,” Grossheider said. “I was kind of worried how to talk to my [future] kids about [Sept. 11] and if I would even know how.”

This quarter, Grossheider signed up for three of the seminars, hoping to land one. She got into a 1st Amendment class taught by Joseph Mandel, the university’s lead lawyer and vice chancellor for legal affairs. On the first day of class, Mandel, who had been out of the classroom for eight years, asked students to explain why he or she enrolled in the class.

“I feel really isolated from everything that’s going on,” Grossheider said. “I wish I knew so much more.”

“I promise,” Mandel told her, “that by the end of the quarter, you will.”