Students experience September 11 aftermath

“I’ve got to get out of here…I…I’ve got to get out of here right now.” I kept repeating these words over and over again.

I was in a windowless classroom roughly three miles away when the Twin Towers were hit. By the time the teacher excused us from class, the second tower had just collapsed.

It was 10:30 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001.

I clenched my friend Tim’s hand as we stepped out of the school building and into the beautiful sunlight, unprepared for what we would see next. Standing on the corner of West 72nd St. and Broadway, I looked to where the Towers once reigned high above the city. In their place, toxic black smoke and ash rose into the sky, creating a dome shape over the city and entombing downtown Manhattan.

The streets were crowded with blank-faced people heading north, away from downtown.

The silence on Broadway was deafening. There were no taxis honking their horns or people laughing and talking to each other. Occasionally, the silence was broken by a fire truck or police car zooming by with sirens blaring.

The only other noise was the sound of the news broadcasts. The masses of people crowded around radios that dotted the sidewalk, and televisions located in numerous businesses flashed images of the Twin Towers tumbling to the ground.

I couldn’t believe it. This isn’t supposed to happen. Not here. Tears began to stream down my face. I quickly wiped them with my shirt sleeve.

I need to call my mom. I put the cell phone to my ear…beep…beep…beep. No service. Apparently everyone was trying to get an outside line.

I wanted to help. So Tim and I walked the couple of blocks to the Red Cross Building on 66th St. to donate blood. It was so packed that they had us fill out a form and asked us to return in two hours.

While walking back to 70th St., I heard a plane approaching from far off in the distance. People walking along stopped, looked up and froze, awaiting their fate. I thought planes were about to rain down on the city. A few seconds passed, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief when they noticed that it was an American fighter jet.

It was 1 p.m., Sept. 11, 2001.

Back at the Red Cross, hundreds of people waited in line for their turn to give blood. People were telling stories and praying for loved ones who may have perished in the Towers. If someone was able to get an outside line on a cell phone, they shared with others.

I gave blood, drank my orange juice and headed back out to the sidewalk.

It was 5 p.m., Sept. 11, 2001

The 70th St. Pier was a place that Tim and I would go to relax and stare up at the city. Instead of admiring the Twin Towers, we stared at the smoke cloud that had taken their place, a cloud that progressively darkened each time a new building caught on fire.

The silence on the pier was interrupted by a the voice of a middle-aged woman yelling, “Hey Norman, come over here, and take a picture of me with the smoke in the background.” Daggers flew from onlooker’s eyes, but no one said a word.

It was 7 p.m., Sept. 11, 2001

Back at my dorm I lay on my bed, upset, terrified, exhausted and homesick, when my phone rang. It was my mom. We cried together. She was safe. I was safe. We were lucky.

It is now September 2005.

Like the smoke, the events of Sept. 11, 2001 clung to my consciousness and altered me forever.

They also changed the nation, and the way society views itself, affecting communities everywhere. The ripple effects of a moment four years ago are still evident today at GC&SU.

In response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the United States government put more restrictions on F1 visas (international student visas), making it extremely difficult for international students to study in America.

Now, international students have to go through months of waiting, background checks and interviews at the embassy. They have to pay a non-refundable Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) fee of $100.

Implemented shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, SEVIS is a system for maintaining information on the international students and exchange visitors in the United States and involves the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“The mission of SEVIS is to balance homeland security with facilitating foreign student and exchange visitor participation in America’s outstanding academic and cultural exchange programs,” according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Web Site.

“I was the lucky one, I didn’t have any problem about my F1 visa, but I personally know more than ten people who couldn’t get one,” said graduate student Baybars Bakay, a Turkish international student getting his master’s in instructional technology.

Traveling by plane is “more restricted, it takes longer. Now, every time I fly, immigration takes everything out of my luggage and checks it all,” said Nichi Witayanonaketavee, president of the International Club and a marketing major.

“The attacks made everybody more suspicious than they were before, especially about Muslims. I am a Muslim, and I don’t believe a Muslim person could do that,” Bakay said.

After the attacks, Bakay and other international students started a club called ‘Diversity and Tolerance to “explain how international students feel when people look at them with suspicion,” Bakey said.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 9 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry