GC students cut short Paris visit
Grove City College professor Mike Bright and four students were enjoying a consummately French dinner at a Paris restaurant Friday night when their host — a GCC alumnus who lives in the city — did something very un-Parisian.
He answered his phone — or more precisely, viewed a text message — during the meal.
The information was “fragmentary,” but shocking to Bright and his dining partners: synchronized attackers were killing people at hubs of night life in Paris.
The one thing Bright, the chairman of the college's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his students were reasonably sure of at that point was they weren't in the middle of the bloodshed.
“It was obviously a shock,” Bright said. “We were able to kind of localize it and say, OK, we're not in panic mode yet.”
The group was dining in southwestern Paris on Friday. Bright said they later learned that they were about two miles from the nearest attack, but the group had already been operating under a “take no chances” mantra.
“We took it seriously, immediately paid the bill and I took my students and we took a metro back to our hotel,” Bright said.
Bright and his students had been prepared for a weekend-long excursion into the city's tourist attractions and night life. Instead they spent the rest of Friday night in their hotel in southwest Paris, watching news reports and contacting school officials from both Grove City College and Oniris University, the French university where the students are completing their senior projects.
“We weren't going out after that,” Bright said. “I'm very happy that my life was uneventful at that point.”
The attacks on Friday night killed 129 people and wounded 350, according to Associated Press reports.
Bright said his group had spent the day on Friday walking the city's streets and visiting destinations like The Louvre. The students planned on venturing out that night to experience Paris' night life, but those plans were immediately scrapped — as was their entire weekend trip.
On Saturday morning the group took the first high-speed train out of the city and back to Nantes, a city in western France where the students are living during the semester-long study abroad program.
Bright, who has been visiting Paris for the past decade as part of his job supervising students in the program, called the scene on Saturday morning one of grief and grim determination.
“People were obviously shaken and somber,” he said. “One of the things I was impressed with: they were opening their shops, they were walking the streets. They were determined to keep on with normal life.”
Bright said he was particularly moved by television news reports that showed French citizens lined up outside hospitals, waiting to donate blood to the hundreds of people wounded in the attacks.
Attending church in Nantes on Sunday, Bright said he saw people weeping, praying, and eventually carrying on with a Thanksgiving celebration.
“There's a very definite mood that this will not destroy (their) lives,” Bright said. “What the terrorists want is for us to all go into our rooms, lock the door and cower in fear. They said, 'No.'”Bright said his students impressed him with their ability to keep their fear under control and make responsible decisions in a stressful situation.“My students responded well. The college gave me the support I needed,” Bright said. “Honestly I would go back to Paris tomorrow and feel completely safe.”He said the attacks hadn't changed his plans to remain in the country until Friday, and had not impacted the students' studies at Oniris.Grove City College officials did not respond to a request for information on the students.How the attacks, for which the Islamic State has claimed credit, might impact France in the long run remains unclear, said Lia Paradis, an associate professor of history at Slippery Rock University.Paradis, who studies nationalism and identity in Modern Europe, said the country faces immediate challenges based on its demographics, which can make antiterrorism operations an overwhelming task.Poor and working class communities, which tend to be disproportionately people of color as well as immigrants or citizens with ties to a country's former colonies — in France's case, Syria and Lebanon — can be more susceptible to recruitment by terrorist organizations, she said.In the immediate aftermath of an attack like Friday's, authorities often find themselves faced with the task of tracking down the people responsible — a gargantuan task in a country such as France, Paradis said.French police raided 168 locations across the country and arrested nearly two dozen people as authorities worked to identify members of a so-called “sleeper cell” said to be behind the attacks, the AP reported. The country also carried out heavy airstrikes on targets in Syria, on the Islamic State's de-facto capital and a training camp where Iraqi officials say the Paris attacks were planned.French officials have named several suspected attackers, most with links to France or Belgium.Of France's 66 million citizens, about 5 million are Muslim, Paradis said.“It's not a small community to be trying to find the few violent members of,” Paradis said. “It's hard to find the needle in the haystack.”She said the attacks come at a crucial time for Europe's immigration crisis, and likely will provide fodder for conservative politicians“There is substantial tension between politicians who understand that immigration is a benefit, and those ... who will use these events to argue that France needs to maintain some kind of pure 'frenchness',” Paradis said. “These events bode very badly for the migrant crisis.”SRU French professor Robert Fagley said he doesn't believe “islamophobia” will take hold in France, whose national motto is “liberty, equality, fraternity.”He supervises SRU's study abroad program in France. The program had only spring and summer semesters, he said, so no students were in the city now.But, Fagley said, he's been pleased by his students “great empathy” with the French people.“I think it's important to discuss these things with students, and I feel that I gain a lot from hearing their perspectives as well,” Fagley said.SRU officials said they were not aware of any French students enrolled at the school. Members of the SRU French Club held a candlelight vigil Monday night on the school's Quad.
