This year's Remembrance Scholars held a five-person panel in which scholars, professors and local reporters reflected on reporting of Pan Am Flight 103 Thursday night for a packed Watson Theater.
Photographers and reporters flashed cameras and stuck voice recorders in the faces of sobbing students at Hendricks Chapel. It was just hours after news broke 25 years ago that Pan Am flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 – including 35 students returning from SU's study abroad program. Members of the media were just beginning to descend on the campus.
Several events will be held on campus this week to remember the 35 SU students killed in the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 attack.
This week, the Syracuse University community will participate in Remembrance Week. Many students have probably noticed the renovations on the Remembrance Wall in front of Hall of Languages have been completed.
But, what exactly is Remembrance Week?
On Dec. 21, 1988, 35 SU students returning home from study abroad programs were killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The plane held 270 passengers. The university started Remembrance Week to honor those students that died.
Meet Jess Liddon, a Lockerbie scholar who rows and shoots, but not necessarily at the same time.
She hails from Scotland, rows for Syracuse, and somehow the freshman manages to fire off air pistols in her free time. Her name is Jess Liddon, and we sat down with her for this interview about a her experiences with two rather different competitive sports.
The NewsHouse: Not only are you on the rowing team, you also shoot pistols, what's that all about?
For those involved in this year’s Remembrance Week honoring the 35 Syracuse University students killed on Pan Am Flight 103, the death of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi means a few different things.
For the scholars, his death highlights a need for more discussion about how to prosecute convicted terrorists and the governments who support them. For some families of Pan Am 103 victims, scholars said, Gadhafi’s death has helped to bring a sense of closure and justice served.
At Syracuse, the Remembrance program focuses on what Pan Am Flight 103 means to SU most of the time, and sometimes forgets to take into account how the town of Lockerbie was affected by the tragedy, and how its memory affects the town today.
A Remembrance Scholar gets to know the Pan Am Flight 103 victim she represents.
When I became a Remembrance Scholar, I anticipated spending a lot of time in university archives learning about an exceptional, far away person who died too soon. I imagined talking about the Pan Am 103 tragedy with current scholars, and readied myself for many a weepy phone call home to my mom.
All of that came true. But what I didn’t realize before this process began was the connection I would make with the families of the victims of Pan Am 103, the message they would have for us, and how close I would feel to the tragedy, despite the distance.