story188.xml

story188.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-03-07

I am a college student at the University of Baltimore and I was at the school that morning. I had a 9:30 class and I was wasting time at the computer center on campus. About 9:10 or so, someone came in to the room and said we were under attack and they had bombeed the World Trade Center in New York. I doubted this highly, yet I had to investigate. I immediately went to the New York Times website, where I found a photo of the first building on fire, with an accompanying video. My first thought was a lone person with a mental deficiency had hijacked the plane, and something went seriously wrong. Unfortunately, I had to go to class without more information.
I arrived at class, and the professor had only heard breifly about it with no details. Some classmates had not heard anything at all, since it happenned during their commute. I seemed to be in possession of the most knowledge, so I relayed the information I had. We debated about whether to continue with class, and I opinioned that one nut job should not disrupt the entire class. I had no idea of the depth or impact of the collision at that time, but it was my hope that minimal damage had occurred. We decided to continue our class on American Political Institutions. I have since come to regret that decision.
My next class was at 11:00, and it was an Ethics class. I saw our professor taping a note to the door that class was cancelled due to the tragedy, and I asked why it was so devastating that class would be cancelled. After all, that spring, class had not been cancelled after a six inch snowfall, so I could not fathom this garnering enough impact to cancel class. He informed me of the second tower being hit, in addition to the pentagon. That made it entirely different. Our country was under attack. By whom? Why? How? Yet most importantly, I rembered thinking - What did we do to piss someone off that much to want to cause such distruction? In the weeks to follow, I would learn more about the intervention of American policy in foreign lands, and I realized they had a point. It did NOT justify the action they took, yet I was able to sympathize with their frustration.
I was not initially upset due to the tragedy and I often wonder why. My base reaction was one of concern, for I did not understand why this was happening. In all honesty, I was amazed that it had not happened sooner. It was a compliment to our intelligence gathering organizations that a similar attack had not yet occurred to our country, considering our vulnerability due to our pursuit of freedom. We made some quick adjustments, and we constantly undergoing change due to the events taht happened that day. Our sstruggle for freedom is not over and we have to make yet more changes aqnd sacrifices. May God have mercy upon us.