Viking-turned-Bostonian remembers terror in Boston
By Kylie Dayton
When two explosions shocked the Boston Marathon last month, the nation looked on in horror as authorities worked to identify and catch the perpetrators. Like everyone else, Santa Rosans desperately tried to contact loved ones in the area. One of these Californians in the Boston area was Montgomery grad Alex Sisk, who is in her sophomore year at Harvard University. Sisk will never forget that week, with the shock of the Boston Marathon, the region-wide lockdown and police dragnet, and the deadly, chaotic final chase close to Harvard’s campus.
“I was in lab near Harvard Square when the first news concerning the Boston Marathon bombings rolled in,” Sisk recalled. She remembered the atmosphere on campus after the news came out being one of shock. “Earlier that day we’d all been complaining about being the only school in the region that didn’t have Marathon Monday off. We had no concept of how serious the threat was.
”The students relied on text messages from friends who were present at the marathon for news because major networks did not immediately release any significant information. Finally, following emergency alerts and bomb threats to the Harvard campus, the administration cancelled all classes and told the students to return to their dorms as quickly as possible.
Mixed grief and relief overtook Harvard as they initially thought no Harvard affiliates were among the victims. The students still held vigils and mourned, particularly after they learned that one of the victims was related to two dining hall workers.
After the MIT shooting, students began to speculate that all the violence was connected, even before any solid connection was confirmed by officials. A robbery, a carjacking, and gunshots were all “unusual activity for the area,” so people started to connect the dots. The atmosphere of terror became very present on the Harvard campus as more violent acts occurred around it. Sisk recalled feeling like she was in a warzone.
The students relied on each other throughout the ordeal, for both support and for news. “The administration was so uncommunicative during the period right after the MIT shooting that most of used social media to relay news to each other, as we knew what was happening long before the press published news stories,” Sisk said. Even with all the obvious turmoil, the only news from the Harvard administration was that there was “no impact on Harvard.” The students even created a Google Document offering extra beds to people stranded on campus, too far from their dorms to have a safe walk back. Sisk saw how “in the face of the terror, a real sense of community sprang up not only on campus, but in Boston as a whole.
”The city went into complete lockdown, emptying the streets and locking the doors, as the Boston Police and federal agents searched for the suspects. After the fact, people outside the city criticized how the Boston PD imposed a “police state.” “Nobody here—at least nobody I know—was concerned about this in the least,” Sisk said. “We took pride in the lockdown and in our police force, in the fact that we would voluntarily shut down our major city to catch the terrorists who brought it harm.”
When the culprits were finally caught, Boston, as Sisk described, “was beautiful.”
“On campus, students were hanging out of windows singing the national anthem,” she remembers. “Suddenly, everything came to life.” The “exhilarating” atmosphere and national pride was welcomed by the relieved public, but Sisk says “it’s not over.”
“In the short run, we’re happy to be free. In the long run, the city will mourn for quite a while and the living bomber must stand trial.”