{"id":241346,"date":"2026-03-20T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=241346"},"modified":"2026-03-26T15:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:14:11","slug":"uconn-magazine-of-mice-and-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/03\/uconn-magazine-of-mice-and-men\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Magazine: Of Mice and Men"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>S<strong class=\"stagWeb semibold\">e<\/strong>ptember 11, 2001. Orlando, Florida.\u00a0Park duty radios start crackling with urgency all over Disney\u2019s Animal Kingdom. It\u2019s a little after 9 a.m. and the park has just opened to the public when park duty manager\u00a0Peter LaPorta \u201986 (CLAS)\u00a0is called to an emergency conference in the main office.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s been a terrorist attack. He\u2019s told to evacuate the parks \u2014 something that has never been done in Walt Disney World\u2019s 30-year history.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe literally had this box in the guest service office covered in dust,\u201d LaPorta recalls. \u201cIt was an emergency kit. I broke open the seal and inside were thousands of park tickets and a guide for steps about what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over loudspeakers, guests are instructed to leave the park. LaPorta and other managers line Animal Kingdom\u2019s exit gates, handing out tickets to guests as they leave. The American visitors are \u201cbewildered, shocked, a complete and total mess,\u201d says LaPorta. But foreign guests, particularly those from Europe and Asia who have lived in war-torn countries, are incredulous. \u201cThey were just like, \u2018What are you guys freaking out about? It\u2019s up in New York.\u2019 They couldn\u2019t understand why we were evacuating the park when all the activity was happening 1,000 miles away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In that moment of chaos, LaPorta drew on the one leadership principle that had guided him since his days at UConn: \u201cStay calm in whatever situation you\u2019re in,\u201d he explains. \u201cI learned that if you become a hot mess, everybody around you is going to be a hot mess.\u201d He tried to inject that calm into the tense situation, telling anxious guests, \u201cWe\u2019re not used to this, I\u2019m sorry, but we\u2019re trying to look out for the safety of everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/magazine.uconn.edu\/2026\/02\/10\/of-mice-and-men\/?utm_campaign=magazine_spring2026&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=uconn_today_readmore\">Read on for more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s September 11, 2001, a little after 9 a.m. and the park has just opened to the public when park duty manager Peter LaPorta is called to an emergency conference in the main office. There\u2019s been a terrorist attack<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":241348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2226,2649,2712,2235,102],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-241346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-clas","category-blue-pride","category-student-success","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-magazine"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 14:19:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241347,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241346\/revisions\/241347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/241348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241346"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=241346"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=241346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}