Our Voice
Unity after Sept. 11, gone
We all remember. From the most elderly of faculty members to the youngest of freshmen, we all remember. Sept. 11, 2001, is a day that will live in our memories forever as one of the most devastating days in our country’s history.
When it happened, I remember being in Mrs. Rogers seventh grade geography class, and one of the high school teachers, whose name escapes me now, kept popping her head in and out of the room giving us updates. Nobody in the small classroom with the exception of my teacher were exactly geopolitical whiz-kids, so we had a tough time grasping what was really happening. Of course being in seventh grade lends itself to some of us making jokes as to our well informed predictions of who might be behind such a heinous act.
Later on in the day, I walked into my English class, and my teacher, Mrs. Kirkland, was in tears. It hit me at that point that this day would have deep, long-term ramifications. This little preface of what I remember from that day leads into this: It really didn’t matter what was going through our minds when this happened. At the time no one was thinking clearly. It was just a gamut of emotions, most of which fell somewhere between heart-break and unadulterated anger. Now that we can look back on it over what’s nearly been ten years to the day, we have a better understanding of what it all meant.
It meant that we needed to hunker down. Our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends and other members of our respective communities were going to be deployed to where ever they needed to go, and possibly lose their lives in order to keep this from happening ever again.
It meant the political landscape would be forever changed. Everyone now needs to know where every politician stands on how they will protect us from another attack of this nature.
It meant airport travel will never be the same, and it’s just something we will have to accept. Sometimes you may need to take off your shoes to board a plane, and if that is the case then so be it.
But one thing that has been lacking since that infamous day was the unity the country felt in the immediate aftermath. The country was never more unified. The images of people at candle-lit vigils, flying American flags from everywhere possible, and people just putting aside their differences because now we know life is too precious to harbor hatred for one another.
In these ten short years, we seem to have lost sight of the unity we once had. It should not take something like 9/11 for us to stay strong and stand together, as we did in the aftermath of the attacks.
Do not just remember 9/11 as a day that will someday just occupy space in a history book; remember how it brought us together as families, communities and as a nation.
This is also something we can take to heart as a campus. If you don’t believe that cliques don’t exist once you get to college, you’re in denial. On the ten year anniversary of the most vicious attack on U.S. soil, we need to forget our differences. Put aside the exclusive things we feel make us what we think we are, and just be one collective voice to air our support to our troops overseas and to each other. We should not need something like this to remind us every year, once the weather starts to cool down, and the images of that hallowed day plastered all over our televisions and minds rise yet again, that we are one people, united.
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