Every year, students flock to the United Kingdom on study abroad programs and even more Brits cross the pond to attend Brown. The July 7 attacks on the London public transportation system, a series of bombings that took place in central London during the morning rush hour, affected Brown students in both the United States and the U.K.
No students were injured in the attacks. But at least one student avoided the disaster by what on that day would turn out to be the good fortune of being behind schedule.
"My office is in Holburn, which is equidistant from King's Cross, where one of the bombings was, and Tavistock square, where the bus blew up," said Mary-Catherine Lader '08, a senior staff writer for The Herald and a Londoner working for Reuters over the summer. "It's a couple of blocks away from both."
"I usually take the train and get off at that station, King's Cross, at about nine o'clock. I was running late and got on a bus instead - I was listening to headphones and very oblivious to what was going on around me," Lader said.
The bus got stuck in traffic, so she got out and started walking. "All of a sudden people started walking in the opposite direction. A woman said to me, 'Don't go in that direction, a bus just blew up,' " Lader remembered.
"There was no way for me to get to work, so I had to walk home," Lader said. "People looked frustrated, but it was mostly calm. ... It was a chaotic but kind of quiet atmosphere ... crowds looking confused and stuff."
"I didn't realize what had happened until I did get home and turned on the TV."
"The bombings were in really, really central locations. People would go there to switch trains," she said. "Thousands of people who touch these nodes of transportation everyday were affected by it. Didn't mean it was upsetting or traumatic, we just had no clue what was going on."
Students who were not in London at the time were also affected by the news.
Lis Meyers '06 was in "total shock" upon hearing of the explosions. Meyers spent the spring abroad at University College London, where many Brown students study. The university is right near King's Cross station and has confirmed the disappearance of a member of their staff and the "serious injury" of a professor, according to UCL's website.
"I just felt so bad for the city, because I love the city so much," Meyers said. Yet, she added, "in some ways, one of my immediate reactions was that I'm glad it wasn't bigger."
"They don't think the same way that we do in America about the threat of terrorism," she added. "We see it as a constant threat. They haven't had a 9/11 to kind of wake them up."
Zahara Kassam '05, who briefly lived near King's Cross station and is heading to London again this fall, wrote in an e-mail that the most "eerie" aspect of the bombings for her was the familiarity of the sites. "When I was too lazy or cold or wet to walk to class, I would grab the 30 or the Picadilly line from King's Cross to Russell Square," she wrote.
"When I walked to campus, I walked right up Tavistock street, past Tavistock square ... we would sometimes have lunch in the park there," she wrote. "If this attack had happened last year..."
Lanie Davis '05 also studied at UCL for her semester abroad. "I recognized a lot of the footage on CNN.com," she said. The attacks were "right in my backyard."
"My time in London - I hold it very dear. It was an incredible adventure for me," she said. "It was actually surprisingly hard to watch the footage."
"It was scary," said Zara Findlay-Shirras '05, whose family lives in London. "Especially when you see the footage on TV - you know that corner, you know that McDonald's where they're putting that person on a stretcher."
"It's more real," she said. "You can recognize where that was, where those people were going."
Despite the shock of the bombings, many students pointed out that the general British reaction to the attacks was to take it in stride.
"There's no evidence that anyone's frightened," Lader said. "Anyone who's been in this city this past week - yes it's sobering, but it's not so frightening that you'd change the way you'd go about your life."
Seth Magaziner '06, who is also interning in London, echoed the sentiment. "People are pretty determined to not let this alter their lives," he said. "I've been watching the American news and the emphasis is on how scared everyone is. The reality is that people are being very sensible about it, not letting it affect them."
"I've been reading the British press - this is such an understated event for them," added post- executive editor Adrian Muniz '07, who is planning to study abroad in London this fall. "This is something that's not really affecting many people."
"I'm from New York. I've been through worse. In terms of what could have happened, this is a very minor incident," Muniz said.
Findlay-Shirras attributes Londoner's understated reaction to "the British spirit of going on with everything."
London is "a city that has already been marked by terrorist attacks," she added, noting that the city was rocked by attacks from the Irish Republican Army in the 1980s and 90s. "This is a country where they've been through that before."
"An hour later people are trying to get back on buses. I love that," Findlay-Shirras said. "No one's living in fear, there's none of that kind of atmosphere."
"If and when Brown students come to the U.K. in September, I'm sure they will notice nothing different," said Liz Simpson, director of the Cornell-Brown-Penn U.K. Center, which is responsible for students while they are in the United Kingdom.
"The U.K. generally and London in particular has experienced this type of event many times in the past with previous groups of terrorists - we had a history of bombing and scare campaigns," she said. "People in Britain are fairly used to handling this."
Students planning to study abroad in London in the upcoming year should be "fully briefed" in meetings about both Brown's and their British university's emergency procedures. "Safety and security is an issue that is always discussed," she said.
Furthermore, "at our meetings, we go through it again, and they'll have it in writing both from us and their hosting universities," she said. "No one should feel there is no one looking out for them."
Students also expressed faith in London's safety.
"Terrorism is something that happens everywhere, and you can't let it determine where you're gonna live," Davis said. "I always felt very safe in London - safer than walking home at home at night in Providence."
"London is so much safer than most cities in the U.S," Meyers agreed. "The police there don't even carry guns. I never felt unsafe on public transportation."
Muniz is not changing any of his travel plans. "From what I can see, once I get to London, things are going to be relatively back to normal," he said.
Davis added, "Study abroad is an incredible adventure and an incredible opportunity and anyone has the chance and the means to take advantage of that kind of opportunity - I would highly recommend it. It's a life-changing event."
