Mirror - Vol. 28, No. 18 - February 20, 2003

              The
February20, 2003-Vol. 28, Fairfield
Security responds to terror threats
Keith Whamond/The Mirror
Checking things out: Security verifies an ID Thursday night at the security checkpoint, while others wait to enter campus.
BY ZACK FINLEY
Everything was normal for Sean Klock,
'04, a beach resident, last Thursday when
he arrived on campus early in the day to at-tend
class, until he tried leaving campus in
the afternoon.
"It was ridiculous," said Klock. "It must
have taken me over 20 minutes to get from
the Campus Center to North Benson road."
Fairfield University joined the ranks of
"soft targets" across the nation as students,
faculty and administrators were informed
that the university would implement strict
security measures, effective last Thursday
at 2:00 p.m., in response to the heightened
level of security across the nation concern-ing
a terrorist attack.
Klock's delay was just the downside to
how Fairfield University decided to react.
The security department chose to close
all of the gates used for entering and exit-ing
campus to monitor traffic flow onto cam-pus
except for the main gate on North
Benson Road and the Southwell gate on
Lower Round Hill Road, which has limited
operating hours.
"All this should just be considered a
precautionary measure," said Frank Ficko,
associate director of Security. "It is just a
measure to monitor traffic and to keep
people safe."
Ficko noted that no threat was specifi-cally
put upon the university.
On Feb. 11, the FBI announced that
colleges and universities could be "soft tar-gets"
for terrorist attacks.
According to an article posted on The
Chronicle of Higher Education's Web site
on Tuesday, colleges are possible targets of
attacks because they are poorly defended,
host large events and contain materials for
nuclear weapons,
SEE "SECURITY"1 ON P. 3
State swipes
$300k in F.U.
financial aid
BY ETHAN FRY
When Sara McAuley, '04, decided to
come to Fairfield University three years ago,
Financial Aid played a major part in her
decision.
Now, state budget cuts threaten nearly
$300,000 in financial aid to students like
Sara, Connecticut residents who attend Fair-field
University, and with the economy still
struggling, more cuts may be in store.
"Basically the whole situation with the
possible cuts really sucks," said McAuley,
a Manchester, CT native. "Unfortunately,
the grant accounts for over a third of my
tuition. One of the reasons I cam&here was
because I got such a grant ... If I did not
receive the grant the chances that I would
have come here are slim."
Aid for students from Connecticut of-ten
come from the Connecticut Independent
College Student's grant program. Due to
state budget deficits that amount to $2 bil-lion
over the next two years, funding for the
CICS was\cut last August by 15 percent
According to Susan Kadir, director of
Financial Aid at Fairfield, the budget cuts
this year reduced funding to Fairfield stu-dents
by $297,568.
"Last year at Fairfield, the CICS Grant
funded 304 students with an average award
of $5,836," said Kadir. "In 2002-03, our
portion of the CICS Grant is funding 276
students with an average award of $5,302."
Kadir also noted that Fairfield students
on average receive more aid than other pri-vate
universities in Connecticut. "Last year,
this grant program assisted 4,792 Connecti-cut
students with an average grant of
$3,960," she said.
SEE "FAIRFIELD" ON P. 4
Students slide home after blizzard of 2003
BY LAURA WALSH
As students played in the
snow and rejoiced because of the
cancellation of classes on Tuesday,
those who were driving home from
the long holiday weekend were
concerned with the road condi-tions.
"I drove back on Tuesday,
rather than Wednesday, because I
didn't want to risk it [on the
roads]," said Mike Barry, '05.
Barry, who had midterms
scheduled for Tuesday, woke up at
7 a.m. on Tuesday to check
Fairfield's Web site to see if the
school had cancelled classes.
Lindsay Pease, '06, however,
called her roommate, who stayed
on campus for the weekend, to see
if classes were cancelled.
"On Monday night, I called
her to see what Fairfield was plan-ning
to do," said Pease, who lives
in the Manchester area of New
Hampshire. "In New Hampshire,
we had 30 inches of snow on Mon-day.
There was no chance I was
going to drive back then."
According to Dr. Orin
Grossman, academic vice presi-dent,
one of the factors in the de-cision
to close Fairfield University
on Tuesday was that they didn't
want students to rush back to
school on Monday.
"A lot of students had gone
home for the holiday weekend and
we wanted to accommodate them,"
said Grossman. "Classes on Tues-day
would have made it difficult
for them to get to Fairfield if they
had gone home."
On Monday night, Grossman
and others decided to declare a
12:30 delayed opening on Tues-day.
By 5 a.m. on Tuesday, how-ever,
they decided it was best to
cancel all day and evening classes.
'The main reason we closed
school was because we didn't think
the crews would have ample time
to clear off the roads and parking
lots," said Grossman. "We didn't
want to take any chances."
Kate Rickard, '03, decided to
take a chance when she drove to
Cleveland this weekend to visit a
Chris Donato/The Mirror
Trapped: The blizzard came close to burying cars that remained on
campus Monday afternoon.
friend. After driving there on
Thursday night, Rickard cut her
trip short on Sunday in order to
avoid the snowstorm.
"I drove 11 hours on Sunday
to get home and I was slipping all
over the Merritt Parkway by the
end of the night," Rickard said.
"I'm just glad I was able to get
home before it got really bad."