Stuyvesant and 9/11
Stuyvesant is a half-mile (approx. 800 m) or a five-minute walk from the former site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed on September 11, 2001. The school was evacuated during the attack. Although the smoke cloud coming from the World Trade Center engulfed the building at one point, there was no structural damage to the building, and there were no reports of physical injuries. Less than an hour after the collapse of the second WTC tower, concern over a bomb threat at the school prompted an evacuation of the surrounding area, as reported live by NBC news reporter Pat Dawson on the Today show. When classes resumed on September 21, 2001, students were moved to Brooklyn Technical High School while the Stuyvesant building served as a base of operations for rescue and recovery workers. This caused serious congestion at Brooklyn Tech, and required the students to attend in two shifts, with the Stuyvesant students attending the evening shift. Normal classes resumed three weeks later on October 9.
Because Stuyvesant was close to Ground Zero, there were concerns of asbestos exposure. The US EPA indicated at that time that Stuyvesant was safe from asbestos, and conducted a thorough cleaning of the Stuyvesant building, but the Stuyvesant High School Parents' Association has contested the accuracy of the assessment. Some problems, including former teacher Mark Bodenheimer's respiratory problems, have been reported—he accepted a transfer to The Bronx High School of Science after having difficulty continuing his work at Stuyvesant. Other isolated cases include Stuyvesant's 2002 Class President Amit Friedlander, who received local press coverage in September 2006 after he was diagnosed with cancer. While there have been other cases linked to the same dust cloud that emanated from ground zero, a spot precariously close to Stuyvesant, there is no definitive evidence that such cases have directly affected the Stuyvesant community. Stuyvesant students did spend a full year in the building before the theater and air systems were cleaned, however, and a group of Stuyvesant alumni is currently lobbying for health insurance as a result.
Alumni who were killed in the World Trade Center attack include Daniel D. Bergstein (1980), Alan Wayne Friedlander (1967), Marina R. Gertsberg (1993), Aaron J. Horwitz (1994), David S. Lee (1982), Arnold A. Lim (1990), Gregory D. Richards (1988), Maurita Tam (1997) and Michael Warchola (1968). Richard Ben-Veniste (1960) was on the 9/11 Commission. On October 2, 2001, the school paper, The Spectator, under Editor in Chief Jeff Orlowski and Faculty Advisor Holly Ojalvo, created a special 24-page full-color 9/11 insert containing student photos, reflections and stories. On November 20, 2001, the magazine was distributed for free in 830,000 copies of The New York Times to the entire New York Greater Metropolitan Area. In the months after 9/11, Annie Thoms (1993), an English teacher at Stuyvesant and the theater adviser at the time, suggested that the students take accounts of staff and students' reactions during and after 9/11 and turn them into a series of monologues. Thoms then published these monologues as With Their Eyes: September 11—The View from a High School at Ground Zero.
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