To honor the 35 students who died on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, a documentary screening and an open mic night are two new activities planned for this year’s Remembrance Week.

From Oct. 19–25, the Syracuse University community will be honoring the students who died in the bombing as part of the annual Remembrance Week. Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988, killing all 259 passengers, including 35 SU students who were returning home from studying abroad.

Every year, 35 SU seniors are chosen as Remembrance Scholars to represent the students who were killed in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. Two students from Lockerbie are also chosen to study for one year at SU.

This year, Remembrance Scholars have planned new activities to promote the week. Those include an event where students can make sandwiches for local agencies, a documentary screening and an open mic night in Slocum Auditorium. The Remembrance and Lockerbie Scholars have also chalked the Quad’s sidewalk in order to inform SU students and faculty of this year’s Remembrance Week events.

“To me there is no greater honor than being entrusted to carry forward the memory and legacy of the Syracuse students who died on Pan Am 103,” said Remembrance Scholar Brittany Beyer, a history and international relations dual major, in an email.

All throughout Remembrance Week a display of chairs, each representing a student who died in the tragedy, will be set up on the Quad in front of Hendricks Chapel. The Remembrance and Lockerbie Scholars will inscribe each chair with words of kindness, encouragement and support.

On Monday, a dove balloon release, Walk for Peace and the traditional candlelight vigil will take place on the Quad in front of Hendricks Chapel. Students and faculty will meet at 6:15 p.m. as a choir of a cappella groups sing “In Remembrance” from Requiem and dove-shaped, bio-safe balloons, one for each of the 35 students, are released.

Immediately after the balloon release, the SU community is invited to join in a Walk for Peace to the Wall of Remembrance where a candlelight vigil will commence around 7 p.m. The vigil is “a staple event of Remembrance Week,” Remembrance Scholar Tonya Bauer, committee chair of the candlelight vigil event and a broadcast and digital journalism and history major, said in an email.

“It’s an invitation for the entire Syracuse community to come together in reflection and take a moment to honor these wonderfully talented individuals who died through a senseless act of violence,” she said.

On Tuesday, the Remembrance Scholars are hosting an event to make sandwiches for charity in the Whitman Atrium at 3:30 p.m. The goal is to make 375 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the Oxford Inn and Bishop Foery Foundation as a way to send meaningful messages to those in need, according to the Remembrance Week website.

An Open Mic Night will be held on Oct. 22 from 6–8 p.m. in Slocum Auditorium as a way to remember the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 and to promote peace through poetry, dance and music.

Thursday’s event will be a panel discussion about the effects of terrorism on small towns, like Lockerbie, Scotland and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, with a documentary screening of “We Were Quiet Once” afterwards. This event will be located in Slocum Auditorium with the panel starting at 7 p.m. and the documentary screening starting at 8 p.m.

The culminating event of Remembrance Week is the Rose Laying Ceremony on Friday, Oct. 24 at 2:03 p.m., which is the precise time that the Pan Am 103 tragedy occurred in December 1988. Each Remembrance Scholar will speak and then lay a rose on the Wall of Remembrance located in front of the Hall of Languages in honor of an SU student that died in the bombing.

The Remembrance Convocation located in Hendricks Chapel at 3 p.m. will conclude Remembrance Week by honoring this year’s Remembrance and Lockerbie Scholars.

“Although it will be a somber experience, we also hope it will be a celebration of the victims, our university and the belief for a better world,” said Remembrance Scholar Elliott Russell, a bioengineering and biotechnology major in an email.

Correction: In the Oct. 16 article, “Remembrance Scholars schedule events for week” the number of passengers killed in the bombing was misstated. There were 259 people aboard the plane killed and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on October 16, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Sara: smswann@syr.edu | @saramswann