Ten years later: Remembering 9/11

Ten years ago Sunday, Americans witnessed a moment that defined a decade.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, students watched as news networks showed footage of hijacked planes crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon again and again. For students, both those at USC in 2001 and current USC students, who were in elementary or middle school at the time, the event was monumental.

“It’s one of those incidents where everyone will remember where they were and what they were doing,” Vice President for Student Affairs Michael L. Jackson said.

That’s undoubtedly true for both generations of students.

“I remember exactly,” said Jennifer Medina, the city editor of the Daily Trojan in fall 2001, who was on the phone with a friend in Washington, D.C., when the Pentagon was hit. “I hadn’t thought of it for a while, but I’ve never forgotten.”

Neither group of students is ever likely to forget, but the reverberations of 9/11 have been felt differently by both generations.

Medina remembers a sudden change.

“We were far away enough that it wasn’t like everybody on campus knew someone who died, but I think there was a widespread recognition that our lives had changed, our futures had changed,” she said. “A lot of people shifted thinking about careers, thinking about what they wanted. I think there was a sense of invulnerability before.”

“We really did have a sense that this was a new normal.”

The college students of 2001 were unfamiliar with the concept of terrorism, convinced of America’s invincibility and unprepared for an attack by anyone, let alone a stateless terror network. When disaster struck, they wanted to know more.

“Students where asking why,” said Steve Lamy, vice dean for academic programs for USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences and a professor of international relations. “University students are different from the general population. … They want to understand.”

Led by the Office of Religious Life, school administrators held a multi-faith service in Bovard Auditorium to promote understanding — specifically religious tolerance — and later held a teach-in to try to explain the new phase the country had entered. Medina said she had never seen Bovard more tightly packed with students than it was for that service.

Initially there was also an uptick in student interest in Middle Eastern studies. More students wanted to learn Arabic, and there was a bump in enrollment in international relations classes. There was even a spike in interest in ROTC, as students looked to help their country.

For those USC students, it was a new normal. For this generation of Trojans, it is just normal.

“Today they know the word terrorism,” Medina said. “Everything up until [9/11] had felt far away.”

Inevitably, some current USC students had family and friends directly affected by the attacks. But for those who didn’t, the event is almost, as Lamy put it, “ephemeral.”

“I feel like I should be dramatically affected,” said Paige Connell, a junior majoring in biology. “But I was 10. I lived in Washington. I didn’t know anybody. … I care, I just don’t relate.”

That sentiment is not uncommon. Students feel distanced; they were too young to know what was going on.

“They know about it, but I’m not sure they define themselves as the 9/11 generation,” Lamy said.

And on the surface, it seems the direct effects of 9/11 have passed. Interests have shifted away from the Middle East and toward China. Students care more about fixing the economy. Religious tolerance is expected, not taught. The idea of a war against a group of people rather than a country is no longer one that needs explaining.

But that, some say, is what makes today’s students the 9/11 generation; these ideas are embedded in the way students think about the world and manifest in students’ increased concern with world affairs or the growing interest in spirituality.

“For myself, it has opened up the conversation that there are different belief systems,” said Jennifer Gray, a senior majoring in economics and accounting.

Other students recognize that even if they weren’t directly affected, the events of 9/11 shaped the world they grew up in.

“I feel like we live in a totally different world,” said Greg Karber, a second-year graduate student studying screenwriting. “There’s a greater preoccupation with security. People are scared.”

The immediate interest in the Middle East and in learning about terrorism might have faded, but the effects of 9/11 can still be spotted in the attitudes and outlooks of college students.

“They also call your generation the Harry Potter generation,” said Varun Soni, USC’s Dean of Religious Life. “You’re very invested in ideas of good and evil. I think that’s why college students more than any other population were so boisterously celebrating the death of Bin Laden — because it was the end of a long journey that started on 9/11 for those students.”