STUDENT LIFE ARCHIVESLate-rising students hurry to class. A game of frisbee breaks out on the quad. Friends make plans for the weekend. As another day begins at Washington University, campus will teem with all the activities of normal life.
But on this day, the five-year anniversary of 9/11, some students will also pause to reflect on a day that was anything but normal.
In the shadow of ground zero
Just a quarter mile from the site of the former World Trade Centers, Stuyvesant High School and its students experienced the attacks of 9/11 in a profoundly personal manner. The experience remains vivid today.
“In New York, the general feeling was very much look what happened,” said sophomore Julia Baskin, a Stuyvesant freshman at the time. “A reminder of it was right in front of our face.”
Reflecting on the attacks made Baskin feel more closely associated with her home. Those near to the attacks, she said, were affected in a particularly unique way.
“I think it was an attack on America as a whole, but in terms of understanding, New Yorkers had a different experience than anyone else did,” said Baskin. “When you’re in St. Louis, you’re removed from it.”
Sophomore Teddy Daiell was also a freshman at Stuyvesant High School on the day of the attacks. He, too, remembered the event from a distinctly New York perspective.
“I didn’t expect much when I came out here because I didn’t think it affected Missouri as much as it affected New York City.”
Still, said Daiell, the attacks clearly affected the country deeply.
“I know that a lot of people took it very hard,” said Daiell.
“An attack on America”
Other students described similarly indelible memories.
For Sarah Laaff, a senior from the Boston area, the tragedy also struck close to home. Though removed from New York, she was forced to confront the results of 9/11 first hand while working as a camp counselor.
“I had a camper who had lost a parent in the attacks,” said Laaff. “In that way I felt like I felt closer to it because it really penetrated by life in a way that people far away weren’t affected.”
The events of 9/11 unified the country and were experienced together, she said.
“This was an attack on America,” said Laaff. “It was the entire country and what we stand for.”