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November 2006                                                                            Volume 11 - Number 2

Perspectives...

Remembering 9/11
By Noelle Hauer

September 11, 2001 was a warm and sunny Tuesday.  I was in my senior year at GW and that year all my classes were scheduled in the afternoon.  Normally I would have slept in but that morning I had an appointment with a faculty advisor.  My roommate had the news on but I only glanced at it as I walked out of the room.  There looked like there was some sort of commotion going on in NY.  As I walked out of the dorm nothing seemed out of the ordinary on campus.  People were going to class like usual.  While I was walking towards the Academic Center the second plane had probably already hit the Towers.  It wasn’t until I was walking back to my dorm room that I found out that four planes had crashed; two into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and the last somewhere in Pennsylvania.  One of my roommates and her boyfriend were packing stuff into his car to go to his house in Bethesda.  They tried to convince me to go with them but I considered I would be safer at GW then stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the highway.  That afternoon my other two roommates, some friends and I watched the television as more and more information began to unfold.  

We couldn’t believe that something like this had happened to our country.  We had all known or heard something about terrorists but terrorists were something that happened to other countries or someone you saw in the movies.  We knew while sitting there watching the television that this event would change our views of the world forever.    
Following the event, I was overwhelmed by the public and international response.  Many police officers and rescue workers from all over the country took leave of absences to travel to New York City to assist the city.  I witnessed the out pouring of goodwill towards the families of victims.  On campus there were several fundraisers and various drives to raise money, clothes and food.  The French paper, Le Monde, carried the headline “We are All Americans” (Nous sommes tous Américains) which seemed to sum up the international feeling towards the attacks.  From this tragic event came an outpouring of love and unity.  We all seemed to say, “Ha, you can’t keep us down terrorists, we’re here to stay.”

On October 7, 2001 the “War on Terrorism” officially began when British and American forces shot aerial bombs towards Afghanistan.  On October 20, 2001, the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan looking for members of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.  It was during this time that the unity I had felt before began to melt into tension in my dorm room.  The family of one of my roommates immigrated to the US from Afghanistan.  She was concerned with what was happening to her family that still lived in the country.  She understood the need for retaliation and supported the US war against the Taliban but was concerned with civilian casualties.  She began to question certain tactics used by the US forces and this was seen as her not being loyal to our country by another roommate.  There were many arguments between the two roommates.  Eventually our Afghani roommate moved out and into another room ending what was once a tight knit friendship between the four of us.  I still talk to both roommates but “the group” has never been like it once was.  Even though I did not personally lose someone in the events of 9/11, I feel like I still lost a little.