Editorial : 9/11 anniversary offers motivation for students to revisit questions of their youth
Whether 7 years old or 15, many college students remember Sept. 11, 2001, as an onslaught of images and news broadcasts that our parents or teachers failed to clarify with watered down or uninformed explanations.
As adolescents — many of us protected by parental censorship — a detached sense of sadness prevailed as the only possible reaction. For those children indirectly affected by 9/11, curiosity, anger and fear all lay beyond our understanding of what happened.
Ten years since the event shook our childhood and our idealistic or unformed notions of national security, how much smarter are we? How well do we know why and how 9/11 happened?
Talking heads in the media often describe the event as the most profound in our generation’s short history and the biggest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Our generation had neither access nor ambition to search for answers a decade ago. But how many of us returned to that day as adults and resumed asking the questions we couldn’t fathom forming back then.
We turn to our grandparents to explain Pearl Harbor, to revisit the visceral feelings we cannot experience for ourselves. One day, our generation will be the last that lived to feel 9/11 and its immediate aftermath; one day our grandchildren will rely on us for answers. The knowledge of future generations depends on how thoroughly we respond.
The best way to honor the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and its victims would be to understand what happened. If you haven’t yet, revisit those questions you wished you could have asked or wished your elders could have answered on Sept. 11, 2001. An abundance of investigations, research, reports and articles offer the resources once unattainable.
Talk to your professors, start debates in class and complement the emotions that day invokes with real knowledge. The emotional stories, the sadness, the patriotism tell part of the story; utilize this weekend, when coverage of the anniversary becomes inescapable, to read the analysis, the perspectives and find the answers you’ll one day have to provide.
