The three Lehigh individuals – two students and one faculty member – known to be in Paris are safe and accounted for after yesterday’s terror attacks on the city, according to an email from Lori Friedman, director of media relations.
Friedman said both students are studying abroad. Another student planned to travel to France today, but travel is now on hold.
Friedman could not identify the names of the students. The faculty member, biology professor Krystle McLaughlin, said she was across the river from where the attacks took place. She was having dinner in Paris’s Latin quarter watching the France-Germany soccer match when the incidents occurred. After the match had finished, she began to see news outlets’ coverage of the attacks, and returned to her hotel.
“Right when the attack happened, everyone was pretty confused where it was,” she said. “We didn’t realize what was happening. The news was on but I don’t speak French very well – there were people with guns and we didn’t know that it had just happened.”
McLaughlin, who was in the French capital for a conference, was also supposed to meet with a Lehigh student during her time in the city. In response to the attacks, Lehigh did not clear the student for travel, she said.
The university reached out to McLaughlin in the early morning after the attacks and offered to assist in the cancellation of her trip, if she so wished, and also kept her in correspondence with a university representative. Individual professors and McLaughlin’s teaching assistants also reached out inquiring about her wellbeing, she said.
McLaughlin is set to return the U.S. at the end of the week.
In an email from University Communcations on Nov. 14, Lehigh said it will extend counseling services to members of the campus community who have connections to individuals in Paris, as well as people coping with the event.
“There are likely alumni, families and friends of Lehigh who reside in or are visiting Paris,” the email read. “We have no information that any were harmed in these attacks.”
Additional reporting by associate news editor Emily Okrepkie, ’18.
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