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SCSU students visit Ground Zero
 Media Credit: Courtesy of Jeff Welch Brad Wingate, left, Kate Mehr and Jeff Welch visit part of the memorial wall leading up to the observation platform at Ground Zero in New York.
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As part of a class project, three SCSU aviation majors recently shared an experience they will not soon, if ever, forget.
Two weeks ago, senior Brad Wingate and juniors Kate Mehr and Jeff Welch traveled to New York City to visit Ground Zero, the site of the former World Trade Center. The trio went as part of a project for their "Communication in the Workplace," a communications studies class.
Their assignment was to observe a company and the dynamics of company employees' interaction and communication in the workplace. The students chose to observe the affordable fare airline AirTran, headquartered in Atlanta, Ga. The only feasible way for the three students to observe company employees was to take a flight, so they decided to travel from Minneapolis to New York via Atlanta, and while in New York they visited Ground Zero. They photographed and videotaped their experience.
Wingate, Welch and Mehr took an early flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta April 9. They had hoped to meet with AirTran representatives during their three-hour layover in Atlanta, but recently upgraded security restrictions in place at all U.S. airlines allowed the students very little access to the company. Welch said AirTran was supportive of the trio's project, but "they had their hands tied for the most part."
The students decided to work with what they had. They focused on watching pilots and flight attendants interact, Welch said, which included videotaping portions of their flights. Wingate said they ended up with plenty of material for the project.
They also tried to tape the new security measures in place at airport security checkpoints. Welch purposely wore steel-toed boots to set off the metal detector, so he, Wingate and Mehr could observe the extra steps he had to go through to clear the checkpoint. Welch said airport security personnel had him sit down and take off the boots, which they wanded and sent through the X-ray scanner.
"First he wanded (the boots)," Welch said, "then he actually wands your feet, to make sure there's nothing on your foot itself."
Wingate tried to videotape Welch being wanded, but quickly found out that it was illegal to videotape or photograph a security checkpoint.
"We had a military police personnel stop us and say, 'I either need to make sure you're going to erase all the footage that you just took, or I have to confiscate your camera and tape,'" Wingate said.
Welch said they did not make the airport security officers nervous, however, because he explained to them it was part of a project for a college class. The officers asked him if they were doing a good job with security, Welch said, but he told them he was there to observe, not judge. He did add that they seemed to be doing a fine job.
A drizzly afternoon greeted the students when they arrived in New York about 4 p.m. They immediately headed for Ground Zero. Welch said they had street maps and subway maps, but none of them had been to New York before and they were not sure of where to go. They hopped on a bus and from there, found out how to get to the subway that would take them to lower Manhattan.
The trio arrived at Ground Zero about 5 p.m., after purchasing tickets to go up on the observation platform that overlooks the site of the former World Trade Center. Mehr said there were signs in the street that said honking a car horn was a $350 fine. The area was strikingly quiet.
"You get off the subway," she said, "and you walk down and there's lots of people on the street and it's loud. Then you get within six blocks and the same amount of people are still on the street but nobody talks. It's just an eerie quiet feeling."
There were walls leading up to the observation platform, and everything was barricaded so visitors do not get too close to the site, Mehr said. The walls are covered with memorials.
"It's T-shirts, people that have sent posters, cards, flowers, anything that you can imagine that would be on a memorial," Mehr said.
The observation deck is far enough back from the main cleanup area that visitors do not see down into it, Mehr said, but instead get an overview of the whole site. Wingate said he did not recognize anything as part of a former building except a small pile of twisted metal in one corner of the site. Mehr said any observation decks on the buildings overlooking Ground Zero have been closed, and that the windows on the sides of buildings facing the site had been covered.
People were whispering to each other on the platform, Mehr said, but the atmosphere instantly became solemn with the rumble of jet engines overhead.
"The minute that plane came into the view," she said, "everyone shut up."
Welch said while they were on the platform, they noticed a group of workers and emergency personnel lining up along a walkway that lead down into the cleanup area. An ambulance, lights flashing, waited at the top. Welch guessed the workers had found the remains of another victim of the tragedy.
"I didn't want to stay and videotape that," he said, "I thought that was just too weird."
"But it was good timing, in that respect, to witness that," Wingate said.
"It's like a movie scene," Mehr said. "You know you're seeing it, but it just didn't seem real."
They were pleased with the way their project turned out.
"The purpose was for communication," Wingate said, "and I think we did a pretty good job on observing."
"I'm just really happy that we got to do this project," Mehr said. "We obviously took the extra step and obviously paid the money to do it, but it's about time that you get something out of a group project."
Eric O'Link can be reached at: [email protected]
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