When the World Trade Center towers crumbled after a terrorist attack Sept. 11, the shock waves reached people around the globe, including some Northwestern students very far from home.

Of the 355 NU students who were either already studying abroad or had planned to leave Winter Quarter, 14 have deferred and one student who already was abroad returned to campus.

Additionally, students scheduled for international flights experienced lengthy delays when the entire United States temporarily became a no-fly zone. As for those already abroad, they clustered around televisions to watch Spanish news broadcasts, the BBC and Danish CNN.

“I feel like I may be experiencing the tragedy in a completely different way by not being in America,” Catherine Glase, a Speech senior studying in Denmark, wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.

Some of those differences included receiving condolences from non-Americans, feeling isolated from events unfolding at home and also feeling the cramp of tightened security.

Monisha Mitra, a Weinberg junior, was living in London when she heard about the attack. One of her roommates was watching television when the BBC broke into programming.

“(She) screamed at me to get in the living room,” Mitra wrote in an e-mail. “She said that something had happened in New York but she didn’t know what.”

Mitra and her roommates watched the news for hours. Getting information was not a problem, but Mitra wrote that she resented getting information from an unfamiliar broadcaster with less emotional attachment to the situation.

“I wanted to hear the news from Tom Brokaw or someone I recognized who understood the terror of the news,” she said.

NU’s Director of Study Abroad Bill Anthony arrived at work 45 minutes late because he, too, had been watching the news. He tore himself away because he realized he had work to do.

The afternoon of Sept. 11, NU’s study abroad office e-mailed all Fall Quarter and full-year study abroad students, their advisers and the directors of their study abroad programs. Anthony said the office wanted to provide information so students did not feel cut off. The e-mail also included some safety tips.

Anthony said he fielded about 20 to 25 phone calls that week from students and parents concerned about students’ safety.

It is difficult to say whether study abroad is more dangerous now than it was before the attack, Anthony said. He told students to make a decision they feel comfortable with.

“Barring some horrendous situation, Paris will still be there,” he said. “Seville will still be there. … (If) after gathering all the information you still feel nervous, it’s best to stay put.”

That is what Weinberg junior Becky Shaw chose to do: “I didn’t want to go abroad during a war.”

Shaw was supposed to leave for Seville, Spain, on Sept. 13. But after the attacks, she said she would be constantly nervous living in another country. Also, if there were another attack, she feared that she might have trouble re-entering the country.

Although her family allowed her to make up her own mind about whether to keep her plans to go to Spain, they were happy with her choice, Shaw said.

NU will refund her and the other students their $500 study abroad fee, Anthony said.

But most students who are already abroad decided to stay there, writing that they felt safer there than in the United States.

Weinberg senior Elizabeth Gabel is studying in Greece. She wrote in an e-mail that she now tries harder to maintain a low profile. Not only does her program, College Year in Athens, advise it, but Gabel said she is uncomfortable drawing attention to herself as a victim of the attacks.

Glase wrote that when news of the attacks first broke, Danish students in her dorm kept the television tuned to an English news station for the benefit of her and her American roommate.

“What students are finding out is there is a tremendous groundswell of support for Americans, though not necessarily for American policy,” Anthony said.

The tragedy has unified Americans overseas, the same as it has within the country. Mitra wrote that although she knows she has to play down her “American-ness” right now, she “can’t help but want to run around with the flag painted on (her) forehead.”

“There is a huge nationalistic sentiment among the Americans here, and people have formed a bond that wasn’t here a week ago,” she wrote.

Anthony said he hopes attacks will not discourage future students from studying abroad.

“It’s incidents like this that make the need for an in-depth study abroad experience all the more critical,” he said.