In the summer of 2012, political science, economics and Russian senior Andy Stone arrived at the Russian city of Volgograd by train, walking through the Soviet-era station situated in the city’s center. He relied on Volgograd’s public transportation system to travel everywhere in the city, taking the tram to class at Volgograd State Technical University every day and riding trolley buses numerous times.
The five weeks he spent living with a host family in Volgograd were part of the College of Arts and Letters’ Russian study program hosted each summer, a summer that Stone said was “the most defining moment of my undergraduate experience.”
On Dec. 29, 2013, in the same railway station Stone had walked through, the wire service Reuters reported a suicide bomber detonated a vest laden with explosives, killing at least 18 people.
The next day, another suicide bombing ripped apart a Volgograd trolley bus just like the one Stone had ridden, bringing the death toll to 34, Reuters reported.
“It’s shocking, just because you never expect something like that to happen. … Everyone who goes on that study abroad goes in and out of that train station,” Stone said. He emphasized that the organizers “take really good care of us on study abroad. I never felt unsafe there at all.”
With more than 275 study abroad programs in more than 60 countries,MSU has an extensive international reach.
Consequently, the university sometimes must contend with and respond to abnormal situations posed to MSU students and faculty studying in foreign countries.
Jason Merrill, an associate professor of Russian and a co-organizer of the program, said in an email he didn’t know what effect, if any, the attacks would have on the Russian program because of the break between semesters.
He said he couldn’t comment on the situation because “decisions like this are made higher up.”
These decisions are issued by a group of 12 MSU officials from multiple departments, called the Study Abroad Risk and Security Assessment Committee.
They review world events on a monthly basis, but also convene for emergency situations.
A permanent committee member, the office of International Studies and Programs’ international health and safety analyst Ben Chamberlain, is responsible for monitoring global affairs and providing safety-related orientations to study abroad program leaders and students.
“It’s my job to figure out ‘Do we have people in those areas? Do we have people planning to go in these areas?’ and then providing them with the information to make better decisions about travel,” Chamberlain said.
The committee has had to respond as recently as this past summer to unrest in Turkey, Chamberlain said, where large protests engulfed portions of Istanbul and Ankara.
MSU has several study abroad programs in the country, and after consulting with a number of sources on the ground, Chamberlain said some programs adjusted their itineraries to ensure the safety of students.
This stands in contrast to Egypt, where in 2011, widespread, often violent protests caused the suspension of MSU’s study abroad programs in the country.
Chamberlain said his first priority after an event like the Volgograd bombings is to ensure the safety of individuals already in the country, but said in regards to planning that “it’s early in the season to make any predictions about how it would impact summer programming.”
“We don’t anticipate it’s going to affect their program at all,” he said.
The U.S. State Department is a major resource for Chamberlain’s information and regularly provides security warnings to those abroad.
In the department’s webpage on travel to Russia, the attacks in Volgograd are referenced, followed by an advisement stating “there is no indication that U.S. institutions or citizens have been targets, but there is a general risk of U.S. citizens becoming victims of indiscriminate terrorist attacks.”
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Stone said if the bombings had occurred before his trip to Volgograd, he isn’t sure he would have gone on the study abroad program.
But Chamberlain said the university works extensively to ensure the safety of its students.
“We are going to make rational decisions that are very safe decisions,” Chamberlain said. “Can we predict the future? No. That’s why we have our emergency response procedures (and) orientations and trainings.”
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