When news and weather anchors forecasted that a record-breaking Hurricane Sandy would hit the northeastern coast on Sunday, no one predicted the week-long vacation for Stern girls that ensued. The hurricane cut power to everyone below 39th Street on the East Side at around 9 pm Monday evening and wasn’t restored until Saturday night. At first, Stern girls took advantage of the lack of power—not having to study, being able to catch up with friends—but once they received word on Wednesday that the dorms would close that night, it was no longer fun and games.
Stern girls were everywhere—some in Midtown, some in Long Island, some in New Jersey, and others in the Heights. No matter where they were, everyone has a narrative of last week. Physical Sciences major Miri Koolyk, SCW ’13, weathered the brunt of the storm in her shared apartment in Washington Heights, “fortunate to have power and electricity while the storm was going on.” Yet while many students like Miri bypassed the worst of Sandy by staying safely shielded out of its destructive path, many others— like Dvora Rogawski, SCW ’15—remained on the Beren campus in Midtown Manhattan during the three storm-surging and wind-gusting days in what one student called “a “mini, camp-like vacation.” The fun ended though when power and water shut down in Brookdale, Schottenstein, and the 35th and 36th Street Dorms, forcing students to evacuate on Wednesday, October 31. Students who were home in other areas of the tri-state area fared even worse—some homes still have no electricity.
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As early as last Friday afternoon, YU Campus Security sent a mass email announcing that it was “closely monitoring the potential impact of Hurricane Sandy on the greater New York City area,” cautioning students, faculty, and staff” to “take precautions seriously.” The Emergency Response Team promised to provide updates to the university regularly, and suggested that there might be necessary changes to class and work schedules due to storm conditions. Security also warned students that “serious wind conditions in NYC present the possibility of injury from debris or falling branches…we recommend you exercise caution when going outside.” Coincidentally enough, the Beren-Unite Shabbaton took place the weekend before the hurricane hit, meaning that many SCW women, for better or for worse, had already been in their dormitories when Sandy hit.
As Sunday progressed, and Sandy’s approach seemed imminent, gusty winds heaved over trees outside. Public transportation stopped at 7 pm and people were then stuck in the City. In certain parts of the tri-state area, officers ordered evacuations in preparation for the likely flooding that would batter homes in coastal communities. Rumor had it that Stern would be closed on Monday, but no one was certain until YU Security made it emphatically clear in an email that “All Manhattan campus classes for Monday, October 29, are cancelled. All exams and labs will be rescheduled, with further details released later.” The email encouraged students who were currently away to remain off campus and avoid travel during the storm, citing the fact that NYC subways would halt service at 7 pm that evening. Subsequent s-studs followed, informing the student body of event cancellations and/or postponements. Peer tutoring and Miss Representation would just have to wait.
Speech therapy major Tova Bastomski, SCW ’15, and Dvora Rogawski, SCW’15, double-majoring in Jewish Education and Physics, jumped for joy as soon as they heard the news that Monday was cancelled. Both native Californians, they had never before experienced a school suspension due to a hurricane, so the prospect of missing school because of a hurricane was rather novel and exciting.
Meanwhile, nervous preparations for the storm were well underway. Besides for food, some students also bought flashlights lest a power outage occurred due to the heavy rain, strong wind, and thunder and lightning expected. Yet most students feared prematurely. In most parts of Manhattan, a light drizzle sprinkled the sidewalks that night, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief as they thought that this, again, would be another Irene. Most girls ate dinner in their rooms, studied, and slept.
After another s-stud midday Sunday announced that Kushner Dining Hall would close at 6 pm that night, hordes of students crowded into the caf at five pm on the dot in a mad rush to stock up on food. Girls scrounged around for the last yogurt as they emptied the shelves of the cafeteria. “I’ve never seen so many people in the caf,” Marketing major Shayna Young, Syms ‘14 marveled. “You don’t understand how crowded it was. People bought tons of food,” she emphasized. Management major Samantha Yekutiel, Syms ’14, echoed her words. “You’ve never seen such lines,” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “People were in a frenzy.”
But the worst of Sandy was yet to come, and no one realized just how powerful the prayer for wind and rain we began uttering a few weeks before in our daily tefillah -Mashiv HaRuach U’morid Hageshem-could actually be.
MONDAY
To utilize their unexpected vacation to the fullest, many students spent Monday studying for—they assumed—their midterms the next day. Liran Weizman, SCW ’14 majoring in Public Relations, was a prime example of such studiousness. “I spent, like, the entire day studying,” she emphasizes, and laughs. “How would I know we wouldn’t have school the whole week?”
Around noon, Rachel Kraut, Director of University Housing & Residence Life at YU’s Beren Campus, sent an s-stud directed mainly to on-campus students. Kraut she answered many FAQs she had received from girls as she had slept on-campus the night before. “I’ll be the one handing out the chocolate!” she wrote cheerfully. “WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER!” In addition to chocolate, SCW students were kept quite hydrated with the myriad of water bottles handed out by Ms. Kraut and the RA’s. Undeclared major Chana Tzirel Zaks, SCW ’13, praised Rachel Kraut’s dedication to residents. “I was so amazed at how Rachel Kraut dealt with the situation,” she commended.
Indeed, Stern girls in every dorm were kept quite entertained that day, thanks to Student Life. Brookdale, Schottenstein, and 36th Street residents had ice cream sundaes and games in the afternoon. Brookdale had karaoke night, 35th street had movie viewing with popcorn, and 36th street residents enjoyed spa activities. “The first night was a party; everyone was hanging out together,” remembers Tova Kay.
At around 4 pm, the student body learned that classes would be cancelled the next day, as well, via an email from Assistant Dean Ethel Orlian and an explicit message at www.emergency.yu.edu. Due to Tuesday’s cancellation, Assistant Dean Orlian also attached a revised midterm schedule for the week, news met with much joy and excitement from some unprepared girls. “I was really happy that Tuesday was canceled,” Biology major Esty Blatt, SCW’14 commented, with a huge smile on her face. “I had a Physiology midterm, a chemistry test, and a speech due–and I wasn’t ready for any of them.”
All seemed quiet—except for the wind. And then, around 8:40 pm that night, the lights went out unexpectedly. Electricity blew, and “everyone was freaking out,” Blatt recalls. The RA’s quickly gathered everyone downstairs in the lounge, and the girls were given a short speech about how to handle the water and electricity outage. “They told us we can’t leave the building, we shouldn’t use showers, and that that there would be backup emergency lights in the hallways and staircases on for the next 2 hours,” Samantha Yekutiel remembers. RA’s put thick green glow sticks immediately in the stairwell.
A few diligent girls—undeterred by the darkness in their rooms–studied for their postponed midterms in the hallways with the backup light. Others went to sleep early. Many joined their floor RA’s for movie nights in their rooms. Someone on the seventh floor entertained her floormates by playing the flute.
After the two-hour period of backup light supplied, the lights started dimming and weakening, until blackness gradually took over. Doors opened to pitch dark hallways. “It was actually really scary whenever you left your room,” commented Esty Blatt, who used her roommate’s flashlight to blindly navigate the staircases. “It felt like caving,” she smiles.
Monday night, residents felt the worst of Sandy’s power as the now-classified post-tropical storm hurled howling winds and torrential rains in northeastern regions. Flooding claimed buildings and homes in NYC, and even NYU-Langone Medical Center lost power and began evacuating its patients.
TUESDAY
Though the power in the dormitories had not yet returned, girls woke up Tuesday morning to an impressive breakfast. “There were pastries, danishes, cereals, cream cheese, jelly, bagels, knishes, milk, yogurts — you name it,” Brookdale resident Rogawski described. “The good yogurts,” she added as an afterthought.
That morning, Dean Ethel Orlian sent another email to faculty and students of SCW, titled SECOND revised midterm schedule. In it, she wrote of the need to cancel school–and midterms–for Wednesday. “Since the students have no light and no access to their computers, they cannot study for tomorrow’s midterm exams,” the apologetic note read. “We understand that this may create difficulty and confusion for faculty and students alike. However, we need to do our best to adjust to the realities of these difficult days.”
An hour later, John Fcasni, the Director of Central & Administrative Systems at YU, emailed the university with a 4th [YU-announce] Hurricane Sandy System / Server Announcement: “We weathered the brunt of the storm here on Campus,” he wrote, and promised to keep students posted with updates.
Lunch that day was shuttled in from Wilf Cafeteria uptown, and included mac-and-cheese, baked ziti, yogurt, cottage cheese, fruit, quinoa, tabouli salad, and drinks. As long lines of Stern girls waited in the Stanton Hall lobby—lunch was set up in rooms 101 and 102, so students were required to enter in shifts—President Joel, who travelled downtown to visit, delivered an encouraging speech. As student Esty Blatt noted, “It was really nice and encouraging of him to come down here. He even helped the kitchen staff bring in the food trays,” she observed.
Girls ate lunch outside, or brought it back to their still-powerless dormitories. “A bunch of us were walking back, carrying hot plates of steaming noodles,” Dvora Rogawski describes, “and passersby kept stopping us to ask, ‘Where did you get all this hot food from?’”
Meanwhile, efforts were well underway to restore electrical power and services to the Beren campus. Michael Scagnoli followed up with another email around 6 pm, noting that “the New York region continues to be significantly impacted by Hurricane Sandy, with extensive loss of electrical power…and severe disruptions to public transportation. Therefore, Yeshiva University has cancelled all classes at SCW and Cardozo School of Law for Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, as well as classes for the Sy Syms School of Business on the Israel Henry Beren campus.” Yet, while Manhattan campuses were cancelled, the email duly notified YC students that YC and classes at the Sy Syms School of Business on the Wilf campus will meet as scheduled, but students who wouldn’t be able to safely travel there in time for class “will not be penalized.” And lastly, Scagnoli updated YC, SCW, and Syms students that “all undergraduate midterms and exams scheduled through Friday, Nov. 2, 2012 are postponed and will be rescheduled for next week.” Cheers erupted from hallways and rooms immediately. A few groaned. “I wish we could just go back to normalcy,” one student was overheard saying.
After a Carlos and Gabby’s dinner, some students, still without water service, decided that they needed showers—no matter what. (In terms of restrooms, students had been visiting restaurants, so far.) Armed with towels and shower supplies, students took free busses to friends in the Heights, while one group walked to their gracious Touro friends’ dorms on 65th street.
On the way, they noted, Manhattan streets were eerie. “When you looked to the right, it was all dark, but when you turned left, it was all normal and lit up,” commented Rogawski as she exited Brookdale. “Our block was the cutoff. One block over had power and lights. It was funny to see.”
On their way to Touro, Chana Tzirel Zaks and Esty Blatt met a Con Edison worker in a van, so they stopped him to ask for updates. Apparently, the electrical outage was not due to Con Ed’s purposeful safety measures to protect the circuits; unexpected flooding and explosion the night before had resulted in a shutoff of power for 67,000 customers in Lower Manhattan.
Later that night, electricians and workers finally succeeded in procuring backup generators for the Beren campus lobbies. Girls used the opportunity to charge their phones, and there was finally light – on the first floors.
Yet it seemed like the excitement of the hurricane was taking its toll on students. “A lot of girls looked depressed,” Esty Blatt observed on Tuesday night. “They were like, ‘we need to get out of here already! But a few people were still like, “Cool, we’re camping!”
WEDNESDAY
After breakfast on Wednesday morning, the third day of the Stern vacation, busses uptown were available for girls to visit family or friends in the Heights to shower, freshen up, and/or use Internet.
After a falafel lunch that afternoon, Rachel Kraut encouraged students to relocate to a family or friend’s home for the remainder of the week, since Beren campus still did not have power and it wasn’t expected to be restored for another few days, Classes on the Beren Campus would be cancelled through Friday, and dorms would close at 7 pm, but Ms. Kraut assured everyone that they would find alternate housing was for any students in need.
A mass migration from Beren campus ensued as suitcase-toting girls flocked to homes in the Mt. Sinai community in Washington Heights, dorms in the Wilf Campus, and residences in its surrounding community.
Other students, armed with the newfound information that they had Thursday and Friday off, returned home for the remainder of the mini-vacation. Girls bussed to Silver Spring, MD, or Montreal, Canada. One girl even flew to Israel.
Institutions and individuals were gracious in offering hospitality to the “evacuees.” The dorm mother of Touro College courteously hosted more than a handful of students, and Washington Heights “was flooded with Stern girls,” said Rogawski, who crashed with her sister Rivkah, SCW ’11, in her apartment on Bennett for the rest of the week.
In the aftermath of the hurricane on Thursday and Friday, YU students willingly volunteered their time and energy to assist in Hurricane relief efforts in areas around NYC. Busses of students travelled to the Lower East Side to distribute food and supplies –as well as emotional support- to the disaster-stricken residents. Groups of YU volunteers helped package food and distribute it to the needy with disaster relief teams like Red Hook and Masbia in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway. As President Joel wrote in a statement on Friday, “In perhaps the greatest testimony of who we are here at Yeshiva, so many of our students have become involved in showing the same caring to those still in distress as was shown to them.” As of now (9:30 pm November 3, 2012), emails announcing volunteer opportunities are still arriving in my inbox.
Post-Hurricane Sandy, many students reflected on the experience positively. Rogawski commended the staff of YU for “going above and beyond. They handled everything well, and really took care of us. They were so responsible and professional the entire time.” She admits, though, that “it was stressful at times, because we didn’t know what would happen the next day. We played every day by ear.”
Chana Tzirel Zaks echoed Rogawski’s praise about YU leaders. “They handled the situation beautifully. They never kept us in the dark,” she said (pun intended!).
Esty Blatt remarked that “the week went by in a blur. It was like one long day. No one ever knew the time.”
And Public Relations major Liran Weizman, SCW ’14, spoke emotionally about the past week.
“I thought it was very beautiful being in Stern for the Hurricane,” she began sentimentally. “I wouldn’t have done it anywhere else.” A Schottenstein resident, she decided to join her friends in Brookdale and described the feeling of achdus (togetherness) she felt there. “Everyone was looking after each other in the ordeal.”
Describing the multitudes of Jews who offered to host her and other Stern girls, Liran became emotional. “I had tears in my eyes when I got the email about all the people who were willing to host us. People said, I’m here for you; I don’t know you, but come sleep on my couch. But it wasn’t just the Heights community; I got texts from random Jewish friends asking me if I need anything. The storm brought all different Jews together. And I think that’s the most beautiful thing we could take out of this hurricane,” she concluded.
UPDATE @ 12 am 11/4/12: All residence halls on the Beren campus will re-open at 4pm on Sunday afternoon. Classes will resume on Monday morning.