Eric Dash: Surprising find-No barbarians at the gate

The images of last Tuesday remain indelibly etched in our national memory. The surreal pictures of the World Trade Center's towers vanishing from the Manhattan skyline, and the thick black clouds of smoke and debris that loomed behind. The portraits of ordinary men and women who arrived for a normal day's work, but were never to return home. The photos of heroic firemen and police officers, of search teams combing through the mountains of rubble under which too many of their fallen comrades lay.

But for me, the haunting images of Sept. 11, 2001 will forever be lumped together with more hopeful ones -- small though not insignificant:

A crowd of Wharton students, comforting each other as they huddled together in the basement of Steinberg-Dietrich Hall to witness the events unfold on the TV monitors. Their eyes remained fixed on CNN -- not CNBC -- as a few wondered aloud: "Could it have been one of us?"

An information session at the Annenberg Center, where an MBA student's simple, heartfelt question seemed to project a ray of hope into the somber auditorium: "What can we do to help?" he asked.

A Wharton professor who choked up as he uttered the most important words he'll say all semester. "Call your parents and tell them `Thank you', `I'm sorry,' and `I love you," he said. "You may never get another chance."

A Wharton School dean who fought back emotion as he delivered a speech, offering words of sympathy and support to the entire business school community. There didn't seem to be a dry eye at Lehman Quad when Patrick Harker walked over to console a group of students, after lighting a candle to begin Wharton's own memorial vigil.

This was not the same Wharton School that I had come to know. As much as anyplace on campus, last week's attacks have dramatically changed life at Penn's business school.

After all, the terrorists struck the epicenter of the financial world, where Wharton's ties run vast and deep. More than 7,300 Wharton graduates currently live or work in Manhattan, including at least 586 alumni who worked in or near the World Trade Center. Business school faculty have personal and professional friends at nearly every major investment bank. And sadly, most Wharton students know of at least one person -- a classmate, colleague, friend or family member -- whose life was forever altered in the aftermath of the attacks.

Maybe it was a shared sense of sadness. Maybe it was the realization that the attack was not just upon a pair of buildings, but upon Wharton's values, and the American way of life. But in the wake of last Tuesday's events, I felt a camaraderie with my business school classmates that I had never previously experienced. Did it take a tragedy to foster a sense of community at Wharton?

At the undergraduate level, the idea of community at Wharton has always been an ephemeral concept -- one more grounded in administrative rhetoric than institutional reality. Cooperation and soft skills such as team building and group work -- the very things that foster community -- often run counter to the hyper-competitive attitude of its quant-jock students.

While all along Wharton officials have known the school needed this "sense of community," they just weren't sure how to create it.

Former Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity used to speak of "building a stronger community" among undergrads and MBAs. But after surveys, focus groups and curriculum changes, it became apparent that school culture was not so easy to re-engineer.

Current Wharton Dean Patrick Harker has also made the concept part of his lexicon. In meetings with students and alumni, he expounds his vision of creating "a community of learning" and a "close-knit alumni network." Yet, like his predecessor, he has found it to be among his toughest initiatives to implement.

Perhaps Harker's task will be somewhat easier now. Just as the events of last Tuesday have united a nation, they have galvanized a school.

For the past week, the stereotypes that typically describe Wharton have been turned on their heads. Wharton wasn't a place where future Wall Street warriors went to battle. Students cared for -- not competed with -- each other. The irrational logic of last Tuesday forced faculty from the comfort of their rational worlds. Wharton was a place where taking an interest was just as important as knowing the interest rate.

And for the past week, the school's environment has been anything but cold and heartless. Frivolous job-talk was replaced with genuine concern; figuring out how to volunteer was more important than figuring out what was on the exam.

Will Wharton remain this way? Perhaps, but there's certainly room for doubt. As the nation returns to normalcy, so too will life at the business school. Hopefully, though, the seeds for a lasting Wharton community have been sewn. That, Harker said last week, "may be the single most important memorial we build to honor those we've lost."Eric Dash is a senior Management and American History major from Pittsburgh, Pa.

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