Tragedy causes cancellations
By Kurt Esposito
Assistant
Campus Editor
Darcey Kuhn felt fake Tuesday.
While at the Industrial Roundtable, she had to
smile and put on a persona of happiness when talking to company representatives
about possible jobs even though she was not happy.
Her thoughts were with the people of New York,
after the events that transpired there in the early morning hours.
"I feel like I'm being fictitious," she said.
Despite the tragedy in New York, the Industrial
Roundtable went on as scheduled Tuesday afternoon. Chip Edwards, president
of the Purdue Engineering Student Council, said, "Nobody's in a good
mood by any means."
He said he did not notice a drop off in students
attending the event, but there was a somber mood throughout the day.
The roundtable is still scheduled to go on today.
Many other planned University events, however,
have been canceled in reaction to the supposed terrorist attacks in
New York City and Washington D.C. Events for Discover Purdue Week —
which was being held to launch the year-long Discover Purdue theme and
announce many significant gifts to the University — that were scheduled
for the rest of the week have been postponed.
One event was held on Tuesday to announce a gift
of equipment from the Marines.
Murray Blackwelder, senior vice president for advancement,
said everyone was still in shock at the 9:30 a.m. press conference that
was held just after many found out about the news and before others
knew.
Purdue President Martin Jischke opened the conference
by discussing the events for five minutes; a moment of silence followed.
Blackwelder said because of the national chaos
and everyone at Purdue's concern for the people affected by the tragedies,
it is not known when the announcements will be rescheduled.
"I wouldn't want to speculate on when we are going
to get back to normal," he said. "Everyone's reacting quite differently.
It's hard to concentrate on our work."
The Golden Taps ceremony, which is held to commemorate
Purdue students that have died, was scheduled for Tuesday night but
was postponed as well. "We felt because of the overwhelming nature of
(Tuesday's) tragedy it would be best for us to postpone (Tuesday night's)
event," said Jay Gephart, assistant professor of University Bands.
He said a new date has not been set yet because
the families of the deceased students need to be notified of the date
first.
The following is a list of other events have been
canceled or postponed as of Tuesday night:
• Party of the Season for Purdue Convocations
guests, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Thursday in the University Inn Ballroom,
has been canceled.
• Boiler Gold Rush Student/Staff Appreciation
Banquet, scheduled for 6 p.m. today, has been postponed.
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