NEWS FEATURE: Seton Hall President Moves Into Dorm With Healing in Mind

c. 2000 Religion News Service SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. _ Monsignor Robert Sheeran calls it coming full circle. More than 35 years after moving into Boland Hall as a freshman, the Seton Hall University president is back in the dorm, living two doors away from his old room. This time, it is to prove to students […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. _ Monsignor Robert Sheeran calls it coming full circle. More than 35 years after moving into Boland Hall as a freshman, the Seton Hall University president is back in the dorm, living two doors away from his old room.

This time, it is to prove to students and the world that the dorm and Seton Hall are safe. One month after a fire in the freshman dorm killed three students and injured 58, the South Orange university has moved into a healing mode, the president said this week.


“There’s a sense that it’s a great tragedy and we’re understanding the dimensions of the tragedy,” Sheeran said. “You might say it’s the most difficult page in Seton Hall’s history.”

In his first in-depth interview since the Jan. 19 fire, Sheeran sat in his office directly across the University Green from Boland Hall. He spoke about the fallout from the fire, including the ongoing police investigation into its cause and the growing criticism of fire safety on the South Orange campus.

In cautious tones, the president said the Catholic university would learn from the fire. The campus is patiently waiting for the outcome of the investigation into who caused the blaze, but Sheeran said he is not ready to deal with the possibility that a student set the fire.

He also would not comment on whether the university took sufficient safety measures in its dormitories before the fire. Instead, Sheeran stressed the campus will use the experience to regroup and rebuild.

“You never forget the tragedy, but in some remarkable way human beings, especially human beings with faith, are able to pull goodness and closer relationships out of tragedy,” he said. “I think that’s part of the human story and I think that will be part of the Seton Hall story.”

University insiders said Sheeran, 55, reverted to the role of parish priest during the crisis and has found that his position as president has become more personal. The morning of the fire, he joined Newark Archbishop Theodore McCarrick on the third floor of Boland North and prayed over the bodies of the three dead students.

In the following days, he shied away from attending the sometimes raucous news conferences or from making public speeches and spent his time privately ministering to students, their parents and especially the families of the dead. He continues to visit students in the hospital and hosted several of the families of the dead students in his box during recent Seton Hall basketball games.


Sheeran also has clearly enjoyed living in a priest’s apartment on the second floor of Boland South. Students decorated his door when he moved in and have been slipping notes under his door and stopping by to talk. The only drawback has been losing sleep because of the noise in the dorm, he said.

“I’ve been woken up from time to time,” he said, laughing. “That’s the price you pay.”

Law enforcement sources say investigators are sure the fire was deliberately set, but they have been unable to gather enough evidence to charge anyone with the crime.

The probe is focused on three students, including one who denies setting the fire but admits he trashed the third-floor lounge in the minutes before the blaze started, according to sources close to the investigation.

Until word comes from investigators, Sheeran said he is not ready to deal with the possibility that another student may have caused the fatal fire.

“It’s reports. It’s reports. I try to live my life on facts,” he said.

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The fire has been the most difficult event in Sheerans four-year presidency. The Troy, N.Y., native has spent most of his adult life on the campus, first as an undergraduate majoring in classical languages in the mid-1960s. He was ordained a priest in Rome in 1970 and spent three years as an associate pastor in Cranford, N.J.


In 1980, he returned to Seton Hall as a rector in the college seminary and rose through the university administration until he was named president in December 1995.

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Despite Sheeran’s efforts to reassure the student body the campus is safe, eight students have withdrawn from the university because of the fire.

Seton Hall officials have admitted they did not install sprinklers in Boland Hall before the fire, despite recent extensive renovations to the freshman dormitory. The 9,200-student university also failed to hold planned fire drills on campus because school officials thought frequent evacuations caused by false and prank alarms were enough training for residents.

Seton Hall began installing sprinklers in all of its dorms earlier this month.

PH END HEYBOER

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