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Student speaker urges strength amid uncertainty
By Hope Green
As a journalism intern in Washington, D.C., last fall, Sorboni Banerjee
had bigger things to fret about than deadlines -- like remembering to
take her daily dose of Cipro.
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Sorboni Banerjee (COM'02) Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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Working in the capital during the September 11 terrorist attacks and
the subsequent anthrax scare, Banerjee (COM'02) quickly learned to put
her fears aside. When she speaks at the May 19 Commencement exercises,
she says, her address will be "a message of how
to be strong in uncertain times."
Earlier this semester, President Jon Westling invited the University's
most academically accomplished seniors to submit a speech draft. A committee
of faculty members and administrators received 35 submissions and heard
4 finalists deliver their drafts before selecting Banerjee to speak to
the class of 2002.
Banerjee's address will touch briefly on her experiences in the College
of Communication's Washington Journalism Program. She was in a political
reporting seminar the morning of September 11 when one of the four hijacked
planes smashed into the Pentagon. That same day, she was scheduled to
debut as a correspondent for the Keene (N.H.) Sentinel, working out of
COM's D.C. newsroom. With little time to absorb the shocking images on
television, she first called her parents in Rhode Island, then dove into
her first assignment: tracking down and interviewing New Hampshire congressmen
after they had been evacuated from Capitol Hill.
Several weeks later, she wrote a first-person account for the paper about
living with the anthrax threat. She had visited the fifth floor of the
Hart Senate Office Building on the same day Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle received his contaminated letter, and although she tested negative
for exposure, she received a 60-day supply of Cipro as a precaution.
"It was surreal being down there in Washington," she says. "In
a way, I felt safer there, because I always felt that if something happened,
I was going to be the first to hear about it."
A broadcast journalism major, Banerjee has few qualms about speaking to
a crowd. In April she was on a COM Great Debate team that spoke against
the United States removing Saddam Hussein from power. She has performed
with the BU Stage Troupe, most recently as Miss Prism in Oscar Wilde's
The Importance of Being Earnest.
"I came to COM because I liked theater and art and writing, and I
didn't really know what to do with it," she says. She started as
an advertising major, then switched to broadcast journalism midway through
her sophomore year. "I realized it was everything I like to do. You
can be theatrical and interact with people every day, and when you're
editing a video it's almost like a piece of artwork."
The daughter of an engineering and physics teacher and a social worker,
Banerjee has had internships at a CBS affiliate in her home state of Rhode
Island, at WHDH (NBC Channel 7) in Boston, and at New England Cable News.
While in Washington, she also interned at Belo Broadcasting.
After graduation she will be sending her résumé and a demo
tape to small television stations. "With on-air reporting, you have
to start at the bottom and work your way up," she says. "Eventually,
I really want to get back to reporting from Washington again."
16 May 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations