Cosmopolitan Club's Weekly Meeting Discusses Attacks

There was supposed to be music.

But, because of Tuesday's terrorist attacks, the mood at the Cosmopolitan Club on Thursday night was quieter than originally planned. It was a night meant to celebrate Italian culture, but the hosts of the Cosmopolitan Club's weekly coffeehouse meeting decided just to take it easy.
The Cosmopolitan Club celebrates a different culture at 7:30 p.m. each Thursday, and anyone is welcome to attend. While the television played news updates in the background, people ate Italian food and coffee and talked.

Giacomo Bertoldi, a visiting scholar and native of northern Italy, said Italy supports America. "We would like to have a more happy party, but you know with what happened, it is important to stay together to share emotions," Bertoldi said. "I have so much emotions in me, that for me, it is so important for me to share them."

Bertoldi had intended to fly to Boston to visit relatives last Friday, but said it was now impossible because it was "too scary" to fly.

"I'm a little sad because I would like to visit relatives because they're living in America, but it is nothing compared to what has happened," Bertoldi said.

Ernest Adam, a Champaign resident, had some opinions about the American response to the situation.

"I have very mixed responses about American responses," Adam said, "and I think retaliation is a terrible word, especially if you don't know who it is you're retaliating against. We could be retaliating against American people who are dissatisfied with the government."

Jean-Baptiste Heyberger, a graduate student from France, spent his first night at the University at the Cosmopolitan Club and has returned for the Thursday night coffeehouses. His friend, Geoffrey Milard, an engineering student from France, said that Heyberger introduced him to the Cosmopolitan Club and he now returns every Thursday. Both said that relatives and friends at home were concerned about them after hearing about the attacks.

"There was lots of e-mail from all my friends," Milard said. "I had to phone them a lot to say everything was OK."

Heyberger said that France is also sympathetic to America at this time.

"I think we are on the same side as America," he said. "France is involved in the same conflict, on the same side."

Milard and Heyberger said that they experienced bombings in France that were very frightening but not on the same level.

"The scale was not the same," Heyberger said. "(Tuesday's attack) was terrible—like a bad American movie from Hollywood."

Although the media coverage of the event has been extensive, both Heyberger and Milard felt it has been justified.

"For such an event, nothing can be too much," Heyberger said. "On the French Web, they are speaking about America—life stopped for today, even in Europe."

Heyberger said he had talked to friends in Israel, and that for them the attacks are "like the start of the third world war."

Matthieu Maitre, a graduate student from France, said there's been extensive coverage of the attacks in Europe. He said that when his parents called to see how he was, they knew more than he did about the tragedy from watching French television.

The Italian press was also covering the attacks thoroughly. Italian newspaper articles proclaiming that country's support of America lined one wall of the Cosmopolitan Club on Thursday. Candles and a donation box for the American Red Cross were set up in the foyer.