Syracuse University

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.

More than half a century ago, Ed and Elaine London met on a blind date for his fraternity formal. The two returned to campus for a class reunion Friday — on their 60th wedding anniversary.

“It didn’t go anywhere for quite a while,” Ed said of their relationship after his Zeta Beta Tau formal.

“We were both busy,” Elaine chimed in. But after winter vacation, they went on another date. “And one thing led to another,” she laughed.

Daisy Khan, an advocate for the controversial Islamic center at Park51 in downtown Manhattan, promoted the interfaith project to more than 300 people at Syracuse University on Wednesday afternoon.

Khan gave her thirty minute lecture, entitled “Why We Should Build Cordoba House at Park51,” to an almost-full Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, an event hosted by the Carnegie Religion and Media Program and the Religion and Society Program.

When freshman Justin Hoffman showed up to his calculus class Monday morning, the Carnegie classroom location he scribbled down was completely empty. In fact, it wasn’t a classroom at all –- just some kind of office.

Unfortunately for many of the 3,450 freshmen starting their Syracuse University careers Monday, Hoffman's not alone.

Obviously confused first-years gripped their printed MySlice schedules and campus maps, wandering the paths and searching for building names such as Hinds and Heroy halls.