UPDATED: Sept. 21 at 1:44 p.m.

Commemorating the Syracuse University students lost in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, this year’s Remembrance Week will feature a variety of ceremonies and events.

The week, which will run from Oct. 23-29, remembers the 35 SU students who were killed in the Dec. 21, 1988 terrorist bombing, along with the plane’s 224 other passengers and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland.

The annual event serves to remind the SU community of the preciousness of life and the importance of moving on in the face of tragedy.

The Remembrance Week events will begin Sunday with a candlelight vigil honoring the victims of the bombing in Schine Student Center at 7 p.m.

One of this year’s new events will be a panel, on Monday, of scholars discussing the contexts that cause terrorism to arise. The panel will provide facts and structure to a conversation about terrorism that is becoming increasingly racialized, said Nedda Sarshar, a Remembrance Scholar and senior writing and rhetoric, policy studies, citizenship and civic engagement triple major.

The panel pairs with an intergroup dialogue dinner later in the week at Hendricks Chapel, which will be about Islamophobia on campus.

Returning Tuesday to Remembrance Week is “Celebration of Life,” an eclectic performance including poetry, music and other arts exploring the tragedy. Thursday will include a return screening of “My Brother’s Bomber,” a three-part documentary by Ken Dornstein, whose brother was killed in the attack.

Throughout the week, 35 chairs will be set up on the Quad, each representing where the SU students killed in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing were sitting on the airplane. Tied to each chair will be a white balloon shaped like a dove. Card-making to thank first responders will be set up in Schine.

Remembrance Week will end with a rose laying ceremony, a remembrance convocation and the release of the dove-shaped balloons.

Remembrance Week is organized primarily by the 35 senior Remembrance Scholars — one for each student lost in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing — who are given $5,000 scholarships for their final year.

The Lockerbie Scholars are two students from Lockerbie, Scotland who study at SU for a full year. All scholars are involved in Remembrance Week and are guided by faculty, said Vanessa St. Oegger-Menn, a Pan Am Flight 103 archivist and one of the program organizers.

“You’re able to work with one another in this very professional, yet very intimate setting,” said Sarshar of the organizing committee.

The Remembrance Scholars organize the week’s daily principles, as well as the ideals of Remembrance Week, around a philosophy of “look back, act forward.”

“I’m so proud of the scholars every year because … they’re tasked with something that’s really challenging,” said Kelly Rodoski, news and communications manager for SU and one of the program organizers. “To ‘look back and act forward’ is to … appropriately and sensitively remember these wonderful students that we lost.”

One goal of the Remembrance Scholarships is for those involved to form a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the complexities and effects of terrorism and to educate both themselves and the people around them, St. Oegger-Menn said.

“Getting to see how history can be used to teach us something, and how it can be done so well by such an incredible group of young people … is really inspiring,” St. Oegger-Menn said. “It’s one of the best parts of my job, and one of the best parts of what we do at Syracuse.”

Here’s the 2016 Remembrance Week schedule:

Weeklong Events

Pan Am Flight 103 Exhibit | All day Sunday – Friday, Quad

Card Making for First Responders | Monday, 9 AM, Schine 228; Tuesday-Thursday, 10 AM, Schine Atrium

Sunday 10/23

Candlelight Vigil | 7 p.m., Schine 304ABC, Wall of Remembrance

Monday 10/24

Promenade Pop-up Museum | 10 a.m., University Place Promenade

Panel: “Doing Memory, Doing Justice” | 7 p.m., Slocum Auditorium

Tuesday 10/25

Celebration of Life | 7 p.m., Hendrick’s Chapel

Wednesday 10/26

Interfaith Dialogue: “Islamophobia on Campus” | 6:30 p.m., Noble Room Hendricks Chapel

Thursday 10/27

Open Archives | 2 p.m., Spector Room, Bird 608

“My Brother’s Bomber” with Ken Dornstein | 6 p.m., Newhouse 3 Room 141

Friday 10/28

Open Archives | 2 p.m., Spector Room, Bird 608

Rose Laying Ceremony | 2:03 p.m., Wall of Remembrance

Remembrance Convocation | 3 p.m., Hendricks Chapel

Dove Balloon Release | 4 p.m., Quad

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the screening date of “My Brother’s Bomber” and details regarding an intergroup dialogue session were misstated. The film will be shown on Thursday, Oct. 27 and the dialogue session will be about Islamophobia on campus. The Daily Orange regrets these errors.

Published on October 19, 2016 at 9:28 pm

Contact Bridget: [email protected]