Penn AD Steve Bilsky discusses last week's attack

Yesterday, The Daily Pennsylvanian sat down with Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky to discuss his reactions to last week's tragedy, both personally and professionally. Here's a condensed version of what Bilsky said:

The Daily Pennsylvanian: It's safe to say the events that happened on Sept. 11 affected everyone in some way or another. How have they affected you?

Steve Bilsky: On a personal side, it's kind of interesting. Some days when I drive into work in the morning, I'll slip in a CD and listen to music on the way there. Other days I'll listen to the news or a talk show or whatever. That particular day I had a CD ready to go with me but I left it at home and I got in the car and said, `Gee, I really felt like listening to music this morning. I guess I'll just have to listen to talk shows on the way in to work.' And I heard the breaking [news] that the World Trade Center was hit by a plane.

That's kind of ironic, not that that's important, but it's ironic from the standpoint of otherwise I probably would have walked into work and not known what happened until I got in here and saw everybody all distraught. So I kind of heard it as it was happening. From a personal standpoint, it's such a horror. It's a terrible, terrible thing. I can't capture what you've heard about for the last week in terms of what people have said. I think we all feel the same thing. We had different ways of expressing it. But I think we all feel what a horrible, horrible tragedy it is. Our hearts are out for all the people that directly suffered through this. We all suffered in some degree, somewhat.

From a professional standpoint, a lot of things go through your mind. You have a staff of several hundred people, so it runs the gamut of trying to provide emotional support as the leader to the really practical things, which is, do people work that day? Do you send everybody home? And because there's never been a situation like this that we've ever gone through, there's no kind of protocol. There's no textbook, there's no rulebook, there's no policy manual that you can go to and see, in these situations this is what you can do. In almost any other kind of event that requires the kinds of actions, of sending people home -- for example, and again I'm not comparing the two things, but like if there's an emergency snowstorm, there's protocol. You kind of like use your best judgement, but there's a protocol, and the protocol is obviously to get people home so they're not stranded.

Here it's multiplied by a thousand times, because you have this horrible tragedy that took place. So there's a personal reaction, then there's a professional reaction, in terms of you have to be responsible for the people that work here, and their livelihood, and their safety and their security and so forth.

So that's how I spent most of the day on Tuesday. And then of course you start networking throughout campus. It became kind of like the way the rest of the week worked, which gets to some of the things we talked about specifically. We talked about actual athletic events. From that moment on, the future was like minutes. The thought of what you're going to do next week or whether you're going to reschedule a game, anything beyond the immediate has no meaning. It was really the here and now.

DP: How did you go about deciding what to do that day, what to do the next day?

SB: Like I said, each thing was done at the moment. The next day was not thought about until the next day, and we communicated that to people. And people felt the same way. I think the first day was just a horror, emotional. There wasn't anything I think on Tuesday other than the safety and security of our staff that couldn't wait until the next day, when we had a chance to figure out what happened, whether this was the beginning, or is this a one-time event. Nobody knew.

By Wednesday, then, we had to deal much more with practical issues. (We shut down our facilities on Tuesday, which again is something we don't do lightly. When you're talking about shutting down facilities, you're talking about not only the athletic facilities -- the contests, practices -- but the recreational facilities on campus as well. So a lot of people who might have gone swimming that afternoon or worked out in Katz Fitness or something like that...)

Wednesday, then, we started dealing with, `What are we going to do?' The most immediate things, obviously, were we had contests scheduled and teams that were scheduled to fly out to contests. And that's when you get together with your staff and make the best decisions you can based on the information you have, erring on the side of trying to be conservative and thoughtful rather than taking any kind of risk that had anything to do with any kind of guidelines. When in doubt, be conservative, be cautious.

DP: You cancelled the volleyball and field hockey games that were scheduled last Wednesday, but all practices were on that day. How did you distinguish between games and practices?

SB: On Wednesday we made distinctions between practices and games. Games we cancelled, practices we left to teams to decide whether that was something that they would want to do. But games were cancelled, and again, a lot of our focus by Wednesday started worrying about our teams that had commitments to travel and teams that were coming here who were making the same kinds of decisions on their campuses.

So on Wednesday we spent a lot of time talking and communicating with our peers, our colleagues, getting a sense of what's going on on campus. Again, everything was moving so quickly. Memorial services were being identified hours in advance, not days in advance. So it was very important for us to keep all of our lines of communication within the Ivy League, teams that we're playing, both on an athletic standpoint and on a personal standpoint.

DP: Was there a concerted effort on your part to say a game is different than a practice in the sense that one should go on, one shouldn't go on?

SB: Everything was looked upon, one from a practical and logistical standpoint, and one was kind of from an appropriate standpoint.

From a practical standpoint, if we're scheduled to leave on Thursday to go to a soccer tournament that starts Saturday, we have to make a decision by Thursday. If we're scheduled to play a contest and leave Friday, wait until Friday.

The games were really driven by not only appropriateness, but also practical considerations. We communicated with our coaches and we had tremendous consensus among our coaches that we understood how difficult this all was. The gamut of reactions were of kids who wanted to play versus kids who didn't know if they wanted to play or not.

But we definitely had a consensus that we would do whatever the administration feels is the proper thing to do. Nobody bucked that, nobody challenged that. They were really looking for guidance as much as they were help.

And when it came when you can allow the student-athletes themselves or the coaches themselves to make decisions, such as practices, I thought you let them.

DP: Did all the teams have practices on Wednesday?

SB: I don't know if they all did. Most had, at the very least, kind of meetings. They gathered. I think teams that are in full season and possibly could have been playing that weekend had what they would probably consider to be disjointed practices. I think obviously teams out of season spent more time gathering together and bonding.

DP: Could you talk a little about last Thursday? Lots of things happened that day. How did you ultimately come to the decision to cancel the weekend games?

SB: There was a variety of factors. One is, you have to know the teams you're playing: are they playing? So if we were scheduled to play up at Harvard in field hockey, which we were, and if Harvard cancelled, then for that particular sport, the decision is made.

We were in constant consultation amongst the Ivy League and the teams we were playing. That was hourly -- certainly with e-mail, less than hourly. We were in constant consultation with our own staff and coaches about options.

So if we're playing Temple in volleyball, I know it seems silly that the game's been rescheduled three times, but I guess my attitude is, so? So what? I'm not saying this from a moralistic standpoint compared to all the things that went on -- obviously from that standpoint we all agree it's significance -- but from the standpoint of finding a date, not that it's easy, but they're 10 miles away.

But we were in constant contact with teams, our own staff, also the university, and also the sense of what was going on in the country. It was very important to us to find out what the mood of the non-athletic participants were -- certainly on Thursday, when we were getting to the point of making decisions.

I was not at all compelled at being the first school or the last school. That was meaningless to me. If people were calling wanting to know whether we had a game and saying, `Well, Princeton's already decided.' Our decision was based more on dealing with all the other things had to be answered and knowing the situation was very fluid and hoping that things wouldn't get worse. We didn't know that there was not going to be another attack on Thursday.

The conclusion was, schools were mixed. In the Ivy League, five schools (Penn, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Columbia) were indicating a desire to play contests, unless they had to fly or something like that -- like Brown canceled its game at San Diego immediately.

We, like everybody else, made the provision that this could be changed on moment's notice. When people were calling and asking questions, our directive to our staff was to say, `As of this time, but check the web, feel free to call, this could be changed for any number of reasons.'

The main reason we decided to play [initially] was, our teams wanted to play -- by and large, not that they weren't conflicted on it, but they wanted to play. The students -- and this is specifically related to football -- the students on campus overwhelmingly had indicated a desire to see the game played on Saturday.

That wasn't just our own office. We had through the provost's office, the vice provost's office, we had all the people that deal with student populations regularly checking student views.

The sense was, for all the reasons that you've heard and read about -- as a release, as a way to get back to some sense of normalcy -- the overwhelming student desire was to play on Saturday.

President Bush had indicated from the very beginning that while we could be grieving for a long period of time, it was important to show the terrorists that they could knock us down, but we'll get back up again, and really urged us to try to regain some sense of normalcy.

Those were all meaningful things, and then on Thursday, we got notice that Friday was going to be a day of national mourning, and that also created some sense of an initial closure, appropriateness to kind of grieve and mourn that day and begin to start getting back into some sense of order.

So that was the decision. As I've told people, there was no right or wrong, inappropriate or bad decisions. I didn't find Yale's decision not to play correct or incorrect and I didn't find our decision or anybody else's decision to play or not to play incorrect. And our discussions with each other support that. Everybody had their own reasons for doing things, and clearly on a national basis, there was no consensus.

When the NFL postponed, an immediate domino started, in terms of actions, and it moved very, very quickly and I think by late in the day Thursday

(Oh, by the way, we had by late in the day Thursday, we had about 20 calls to sports information asking whether the football game is on on Saturday, and I told our staff, for no other reason than just, we're interested, get a sense when you tell them that it was on, what their reaction was. Eleven thought it was a good idea. Nine didn't. So everywhere we checked, there was no consensus building. It was right down the middle, which is good and fine. It just shows you that there was no obvious decision.)

But when the NFL started and then other college games started canceling, and since we were reconvening over the course of the game anyway, there seemed to be a very clear-cut, in our own campus, questioning of, `Is this the right thing to do?' It went from, `We need to do it, and it's the right thing to do and we're looking forward and we want to do it' to, `Is this the right thing to do?'

The combination of the numbers of schools who have now canceled -- although we don't play Big 10 schools and Pac 10 schools in sports, we're not oblivious to what they do. The NFL canceled, Major League Baseball canceled through the weekend. And now people were just beginning to sit back and say, `Did we do the right thing?'

As I said before, all decisions were based on being cautious, and at that point, we weren't sure anymore whether that was the right thing to do anymore whether that was the right thing to do.

We met, talked to some more people, talked to university administration. We decided late in the day, `Let's postpone it.'

That's how it all happened. I know I'm probably missing some details along the line, but that captures just how this thing swayed back and forth in terms of our own thoughts and so forth during the course of time.

I told the coaches and so forth, and the reactions were mixed as everything else was. Some people wanted to play because they wanted to get out and play and relieve some of the stress, yet everyone understood that it was certainly an appropriate thing to do.

DP: What's the intention right now? To make up some or most of those games?

SB: To make up some or most of those games will really now be done strictly on a practicality standpoint. We're still a part of the Ivy League philosophy, which is pretty much that every effort will be made to make up games that are Ivy games, that have an impact on the standings, on who wins the league and gets an automatic bid.

From an Ivy League standpoint, that will get the most attention. If, while we don't generally travel distances during the week to play an Ivy contest, if the only way to make up the field hockey game against Harvard required us to do something like that, I think we would get support from the Ivy League office to try to get allowances to do something like that.

That's not to say that we would decide in the end to do it, but those would take precedence.

If we had a game canceled against Boston University and the only time we could make it up would be a weekday and miss classes, we would not do it. But we might do it if it comes to Harvard, because it's an Ivy League game.

So that's where we are right now. We're kind of like looking at the standpoint of that. And also, the NCAA has indicated that they're looking at pushing back some of the fall championships. We start late in the Ivy League, so we don't always have a lot of flexibility at the end of our season for the NCAA tournament in soccer and field hockey, once they begin.

So it'd be easy to schedule on a weekend after the season's over, but by then, sometimes the tournaments have started.

So we're waiting to hear from the NCAA. This will all play out in the next week or so.

DP: Are they talking about doing that for I-AA football?

SB: They're looking at it, we've heard that, and of course that could have a factor on whether we then make up the Lehigh game.

We don't want this thing to drag on for weeks and weeks, but based on the fact that it's not essentially a unilateral decision on our part, because of these other constraints, we have to wait and see what happens.

I think everybody has the same anxiety and logistical interests, so assuming everything stays somewhat in control on a national basis, in probably a week to 10 days, this should be worked out.

DP: Tonight [Wednesday] marks the first time Penn sports will be getting back into action. What do you think the emotions will be?

SB: We've provided through all the agencies we have within our department and especially those within the university, to provide all sorts of support services for coaches and student-athletes, and many of them have used those. Again, we have over 1,000 athletes, 33 varsity sports, so if you ask me how teams are doing, I can say, `Some are doing okay, some are not doing okay and everything in between' -- and the same thing with coaches, the same thing for individuals. We're trying to provide support services.

It was very very gratifying to see our coaches immediately on the phone all over the place from the Dunning Center, calling their friends and alumni in New York to find out, checking out their former athletes and friends.

Dunning Center became like a mission control area.

How our teams perform is going to be very interesting to see.

It was interesting to see on a Major League Baseball situation, the Phillies come out and beat Maddux and Glavine. I don't think they've beaten either one [Editor's note: They have], certainly not back-to-back [They haven't]. Because I think they came out focused. I'm not saying Atlanta wasn't, but the Phillies really looked like they were focused.

I think the same thing will happen to our teams. Some will come out, and whatever edge they had ready to play to start the regular season, I think some of them will lose that to some degree, and I think other schools will lose that. And I will understand that if it happens. But it's very hard to predict how a team's going to play early on anyway.

You don't even think you have a handle on what's going on in the situation. It will be impossible.

We'll see what happens.

DP: You talked about the coaches calling ex-athletes. Was everyone okay?

SB: It's kind of interesting. You would think at this point with over 6,000 missing that we'd know the answer to that question. And yet, what I'm hearing, this again not just from our own networks but also from talking to people on campus and the alumni relations area and others is that there are numbers of people who are no doubt missing whose names haven't surfaced yet because the families don't want to surface their names because somehow they think that will bring a negative closure to that.

So that while they're missing, we don't know the names of some people missing. So we'll never be able to conclude how close this touched Penn and the Athletic Department until they have the total count on who these people are.

Everybody on every team has some knowledge of some people, but at this point, there really hasn't been a whole lot of people in the immediate families or ex-athletes in great numbers that have surfaced.

But I'm almost wary of saying that, because it might turn out that there's an athlete whose mother didn't anticipate it, and nobody knows that yet, and she might read that and find that an insensitive thing if we make a blanket statement and say we haven't been touched.

What we have found out is that there are a lot of people whose names are not listed among the missing yet because families have not come forth and said something yet, at least publicly.

DP: Do you think at some point sports and athletics in general will return to a normal state?

SB: I think people want that to happen. I don't know how normal will be defined anymore, because I don't know whether this country will ever be normal again, if normal is defined as what as it was like before Sept. 11.

Just think of the major stories prior to Sept. 11. Gary Condit monopolized the news. If there was one story, that was the story that monopolize that. How do you compare that, not that it wasn't a tragic situation for that one family, but how do you compare that in terms of its enormity to what's going on? The amount of coverage was similar in a lot of ways.

So I don't know what normal is, but I was in school here during the Vietnam war, and it was a very contentious period. Students were not necessarily getting along with faculty and students were not necessarily getting along with the administration. At some colleges it was violent, at some places it was just unpleasant. I'd put Penn in the category of unpleasant.

And I remember that the athletic teams, especially the team I was on because we were such a good basketball team, really became a place on this campus where all these warring groups came together for one purpose. So my experience on athletics of Penn, 1970 and 1971, during the height of the war, athletics was a very unified activity for this campus.

Can today's situation, athletics, become kind of a soothing activity for campus? That's what I hope would happen.

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