How will the nation decide the future of Ground Zero? Panel members at a lecture entitled “Negotiating Common Ground: What to do with the World Trade Center Site” addressed this complicated, emotional issue last night at Harvard University’s Kennedy School Forum.

Mediator Larry Susskind, vice-chair for education of the Program on Negotiation, told the audience of approximately 50 students and faculty there are several constraints of determining the WTC site’s future.

“Obviously, there are legal, financial and design constraints,” Susskind said. “For the people in New York especially, there are psychological, emotional, and spiritual constraints.”

Still, Susskind said people should not just think about constraints but the ideals they want represented.

Courtney Cowart, the panel’s first speaker, was evacuated from the WTC on Sept. 11.

“The human emotions we bring to this will not help hinder this,” Cowart said. “It was a privilege to be inside the cataclysm that most of the world witnessed from the outside because of what I saw. What I saw was the discovery of common ground.”

Cowart was evacuated from the site, but later returned to volunteer. She said her life has taken a different direction since Sept. 11; she now works for the NYC Nine-Twelve Community, an organization she helped to establish in order to reconnect people who were also in the towers that day.

“I probably bring a unique perspective to this both having been there on Sept. 11 and being involved in the recovery of it,” she said.

She recounted witnessing people throw their arms around total strangers, thousands of volunteers searching day and night for one survivor and people from every walk of life feeding the workers 24 hours a day for nine months.

“What was represented here I think was that we have the power to discover common ground,” Cowart emphasized.

“We know it’s going to take a lot of conversation where people feel for each other in order to determine Ground Zero’s future,” Cowart continued. “We believe we already have a running start from our interactions at Ground Zero.”

Hugh Kelly, of the economic consulting firm Hugh Kelly/Real Estate Economics, said the space couldn’t accommodate all the proposed changes and said organizers will have to come up with something other than current ideas.

“Their have been many proposals for what to do with the World Trade Center site: memorials, office space, retail space, museum, transportation hub. Sixteen acres can’t accommodate all that,” Kelly said. “One of the real challenges is to look outside that.”

Susskind said the plan for Ground Zero has to “represent putting some things ahead of others.”

Audience members disagreed about who should decide the relative importance of proposals for the WTC site’s future functions. Several attendees agreed the public — which has different views and valid viewpoints of what should be done — should be involved in generating ideas for the project but the actual development should be left “in the hands of experts” with sufficient experience.

“Maybe there can be a preliminary screening of what people want the land to be used for,” said audience member Dave Lockwood. “But where do you draw the line?” he asked moments later.

Panel member Maria Volpe, professor of sociology and director of the dispute resolution program at John Jay College, CUNY, recognized this dilemma.

“There has been no shortage of advice, feelings, thoughts, and forums. There’s no shortage of people trying to find common ground in a city that’s so complex,” Volpe said.

“We want to find common ground, not break it up,” Susskind said.