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Agatha Darocha, a College sophomore, walked downstairs in her sorority house to find all her sisters intently following cable's top news networks -- not necessarily the typical morning activity of the average Penn student.

But yesterday morning also marked the worst terrorist attack in history, shattering any expectations of normalcy and calm at Penn and across the nation.

Students woke up unaware of the tragedies that had transpired in two of the nation's largest cities, but the attacks soon shook the Penn campus.

Students quickly responded with horror, skepticism and shock when they discovered from television, radio, Internet and by word of mouth that New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington had been attacked by terrorists.

At first, Darocha and her friends had no clue how to react.

"No one could say anything," she said. "Everyone was stunned."

"It's surreal," she added. "You just have this sick feeling in your stomach thinking that something like this could happen. It shouldn't happen to us, but it has."

Across campus in the Quadrangle, two roommates, College freshmen Michael Bean and Clayton Matheson, expected some big news this morning having gone to bed last night after hearing Michael Jordan might return to the NBA.

But instead of waking up to a dream come true, they woke up to a nightmare. When Matheson's mother called to ask if they had heard the news, they thought she was referring to the basketball great.

"We didn't have any idea," said Bean. "It totally took us by surprise."

Many Penn students remained clueless even longer than Matheson and Bean, and were first informed of the events by peers and professors in their early-morning classes.

Carla Frank, a College sophomore, was on the water with crew practice when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower. She had not heard a word about the morning's events until she went to her first class, "Environmental Science," and the professor summarized the news and held a moment of silence for the victims.

All Frank could think of was her mother, who was flying from Newark to San Francisco -- a flight she heard had been hijacked. Although she found out later that her mother was not on the flight, Frank remembers those first minutes of pure fear.

"It was really scary," she said, her eyes tearing. "I thought my mom might have crashed into the World Trade Center."

Throughout the day, the campus was rattling with talk of the tragedy. CNN and MSNBC replaced lectures and textbooks. Students had cell phones attached to their palms to call relatives and assure them of their safety and, at the same time, to be reassured that their loved ones were safe.

"I couldn't believe it was happening," Nursing freshman Alicia Montalvo said. "It looked like it was made from a movie. It did not look real at all."

Like many of her fellow classmates, Montalvo was glued to her television screen as soon as she heard. A phone call from her mother broke the tragedy-induced trance.

"She wanted to pick me up because she thought I was too close to the Liberty Bell," Montalvo said.

Students gathered in small groups on College Green and at tables at Sansom Common to trade experiences, speculations and fears. They tried to confirm rumors and to sort out the facts as they sat and exchanged breaking news updates.

Caroline Dolan, a College sophomore, first heard the news from a friend on Locust Walk as she headed to class. The friend said she had heard rumors of terrorist actions, and Dolan thought someone was "playing some kind of joke or messing around."

"Then, the more I talked to people and after I got in touch with my family in [Washington] I found out that it was absolutely not a joke," she said.

Many compared this day to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, saying just as this generation's parents remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, today's students will recall where they were on Penn's campus when they first learned of the morning terror.

That will be the case for Cathy Witczak. As she got her hair cut at a local beauty salon, the Engineering freshman was listening to the radio when the first accounts of the damage were reported.

"It was really weird because you couldn't see the scene," she said. "So it was hard to imagine that it was actually happening."

But even people who saw the chaos on the TV screen shared in Witczak's disbelief.

"This morning when I woke up, I was still a little hazy," Engineering freshman Charlene Chen said. "I saw little bits of it on the news, but it didn't really hit what happened."

Hours after the attacks, Chen was still in a state of shock.

"It's so hard to believe," she said. "It's such a nice day at Penn and so beautiful and sunny and somewhere in New York, the World Trade Center is gone and Manhattan is up in smoke."

Overall, students were impressed with the University's rapid mobilization of resources given the suddenness of the catastrophe. They commended the administration for its efforts to comfort students with emergency centers, such as the one at Houston Hall.

"I don't know what else the University could do," College junior Aasta Mehta said. "There really isn't a response to this. What are you supposed to do?"

Under normal circumstances, students would have been ecstatic to have classes canceled. But today, students, many of whom were left speechless and overcome with emotion, were simply grateful to the University for giving them time to collect themselves and to call friends and family.

"I don't think anyone could have gone through a normal day today," Witczak said.

Justin Joseph was in statistics class when his lecture was interrupted to tell students of the "bombings" at the World Trade Center.

"I ran to watch the television and they called it the `Pearl Harbor of 2001,'" the College junior said. "The next thing that came to mind was that the [United States] might be entering a war tomorrow."

While University President Judith Rodin received praise from students for her response, the nation's president received more criticism from Penn students.

"It doesn't seem like there's been all that much response from President Bush," Fine Arts graduate student Laura Jackson said before the president's speech last night. "It seems fairly shocking to me that he hasn't made more public statements. I'm a little disappointed with that."

Few shared, or if they did share, would vocalize, the sentiments of Linguistics Graduate student Daniel Johnson, who said that though he was shocked, he was also intrigued by the terrorist actions.

"People don't understand that there are reasons behind an action like this," he said. "In the guise of democracy and American values and bringing freedom to the world, we're actually controlling, attempting to subjugate and economically exploit the rest of the world."

After the initial shock, the majority of students worried about the lasting effects of the violence. College sophomore Brooke Wallace felt her Legal Studies professor, Nicholas Constan, best summarized the long-term ramifications.

"This morning he said `Our lives will never be the same,'" Wallace recalled. "Everything's going to be changed from now on. You're not going to be able to get on a bus or go on SEPTA or get on a airplane and it be the same -- everything's going to be different from now on. It's going to be like Big Brother is watching you."

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