Today: Mar 28, 2024

Flashback: 9/11

Ellis McGinley Managing Editor

20 years ago, four coordinated terrorist attacks took the lives of thousands on United States soil. On Sept.11, we remember those lost in the incidents which would shape a nation and spark the long war which followed. 

In this first edition of our new flashback column, we take this opportunity to look at how the university students covered the aftermath of the attacks in the weeks after. 

“In the wake of the terrorist attack on New York City and the Pentagon, the United States government is scrambling to outline how the terrorists made it through U.S airport security,” Meghan Stearns, then-staff writer, wrote just sixteen days after the attacks.  

“Coolers and backpacks are being banned at baseball games. Airport security is getting tighter. Face recognition cameras are being ordered by public, municipal and entertainment organizations,” she wrote, years before these policies would become the norm for so many of us.  

According to coverage at the time, campus hosted interfaith meetings, handed out pamphlets on grief or stress management and held counseling for students. 

“Then there were those who weren’t about to leave the T.V to which they’d been glued since last Tuesday,” Nicole Bodnar, the staff writer at the time, wrote. 

“I didn’t go to classes,” [Eddie Acosta, then-student] said. ‘I think that everyone should have been home to pay respects for those who lost their lives.”  

The article also urged readers looking to help to donate blood and included quotes from then-students requesting the university to hold a blood drive on-campus, although the Red Cross requested the campus to delay its efforts to do so, reported the paper. The university excused students who participated in the National Day of Mourning, although they did not cancel classes. 

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