It is hard to describe, even now only a few short days past, the scene on the ship Saturday evening. Of course, there was shock and sadness. Soon after the general announcement, Barry learned that many of the group of fifty or so students who had been on the catamaran involved in the accident were on the 7th deck gathered in the faculty lounge. He quickly went there.
Don Gogniat, the geography professor from Penn State who teaches our global studies class, was really exerting leadership. He was in the middle of the group of twenty or more sobbing and wailing students talking to them gently. He encouraged them to talk about Casey and to share their memories of her. It was probably too early and too quick for that, but they were able from time to time to escape their grief if only for brief moments and to laugh.
The trip had been organized by a student from the University of San Diego who is in both of Barry's classes. Many of the most grief-stricken students were from USD and Mark Peters, who is a business professor there and on the ship (and a full-time member of the Campus Ministry staff at USD) was also in the room providing support. Renee Kashawlic of the student affairs staff was also on the scene providing great, great support for the students. (We are so pleased that she has just gotten a job at Virginia Tech starting in the spring. She is from Detroit and is one of the people on the ship we are always delighted to see!)
In every port, students and faculty organize their own trips rather than taking advantage of the ones provided and sold by Semester at Sea. This is both good and bad. It's good because they often find better prices and, sometimes, different experiences than are available through the SAS trips. The bad, of course, is that the tour operators the students find are not always the best AND there is no supervision of SAS faculty or staff on those trips.
In this case the students had found a great tour operator for their snorkeling expedition. (Indeed, our friends Leng and Rupert had looked into a whale watching trip for Jayne and I with this same company.) Unfortunately, they could have used some adult supervision. Apparently, when the accident happened mid-afternoon there was one group of students who were actually on a beach, some passed out, while another group was still in the water swimming. Casey Schulman was part of that group. For reasons we don't understand, the catamaran had gone to shore to pick up food supplies for the group and it struck Casey as it was backing away from shore.
We had planned to go on a SAS sponsored dolphin and whale-watching safari on Sunday morning. Rupert and Leng were going to show more of the island's beauty in the afternoon. We were going to cancel both trips, but the student affairs staff and counselors thought it would be good for us to be on the safari as a number of students were signed up for it and they thought it would be good for us to be with them for support. We did stay on the ship in the afternoon. Barry spent most of the afternoon finalizing arrangements for the last ecumenical Christian worship service of the voyage and writing up the remarks he would make at the Memorial Service that night.
Our worship service is normally held in a small classroom, which is sufficient for the 15-20 people that normally come. At some point, we were asked to move it to the Union, the largest room on the ship. In part because lots of students had gotten up to go to Sunday morning worship services in town, there was an expectation that we would need a bigger room.
We had a faculty meeting at 5:30 to discuss the decisions that had been made with respect to how to handle exams. That went on a bit longer than Barry had anticipated and about five minutes before worship was to start, someone came and got Barry to tell him that the Union was full of students waiting for the service. We had decided to have an ordinary Advent service, so we read the lectionary readings for the day and sang O Come, O Come Emmanuel and Come Thou Long Expected Jesus. Of course, we had an extended time of prayer before closing out with Hymn of Promise, a beautiful contemporary hymn that we first got to know because it was sung at Jayne's father's funeral. One of Barry's student's, a music theater major at Elon College, also sang Amazing Grace without accompaniment. It was beautiful and the shipboard community seem to appreciate the opportunity to find comfort in the worship.
After a short break for dinner, we reconvened with the entire shipboard community for the official Memorial Service that had been organized by the executive leadership on the ship. There was special music by students (the famous Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" and "Amazing Grace" again), and statements by several of Casey's closest friends on the ship, each of whom were marvelous in bearing witness to her qualities and honoring her memory. The Executive Dean, Academic Dean, two professors, and finally Barry spoke. We posted Barry's remarks earlier. He said that Casey's death was a reminder that precious things are fragile and must be cared for. He encouraged the students not to abandon their adventurousness but to balance it with great care. He warned that suffering was the price we pay for caring deeply and assured them that God is with us in our suffering and promises us a way through and beyond it.
It was extremely well received. Significant numbers of faculty, and staff told him how much the words meant to them.
Barry decided that his Liberation Theology exam on Monday was optional. Students were able to take the grade they had already based on the four papers they had written. So many of the students in his Liberation Theology class were part of the trip on which the accident occurred. One had organized the trip and was feeling terrible guilt along with his grief. At least three others in the class were involved in getting Casey out of the water after she was struck by the propeller and providing emergency care on the catamaran. There was simply no way they could have prepared for the exam or performed to their potential on Monday afternoon. It was surely the right thing to do and the students appreciated it. Interestingly, several of the students who most needed the relief from the exam told Barry they were concerned that it was unfair to the other students for them to be exempt from the exam. Barry told them not to worry, that they needed at this point to think only of themselves and he would try to figure out what was fair. That admirable concern about fairness was also part of what motivated him to make the whole class exempt.
Neither of us really knew Casey Schulman at all. From what we heard from her friends and several members of the faculty, that was truly our loss. She was apparently and extremely diligent and capable student. One faculty member told us that she was clearly more mature than the typical student onboard. And another, who had a number of her friends in his class, said that he was impressed that her friends were his very best students and he thought that reflected her own qualities. From what we heard from her friends at the memorial she was a person with an infectious smile, who was always energetic and engaged in what she was doing finding a reason to be enthusiastic and joyful even in the midst of challenging situations.
Yesterday in going through pictures from earlier in the voyage, Barry found the picture at the top of the page. He took it at Morning Star School in Accra, Ghana. At the time, he didn't know who the SAS student was. It seems to capture much of what we have heard about her.
We surely hope her parents can find some solace in the warm regard with which she is remembered by all.
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