Normalcy.
One year ago today the nation became obsessed with this idea,
after terrorizing hijackers murdered thousands and crumbled the
country’s strongest symbols of financial power.
People desired their previous, more innocent lives.
“Remember the ordinary if you can,” the New York
Times asked of its readership in their Sept. 12, 2001, editorial.
“Remember how normal New York City seemed at sunrise
yesterday, as beautiful a morning as ever dawns in early September
… “
As the country difficultly pursued a sense of normalcy in a
world in which literally everything had instantaneously changed,
UCLA too searched for its niche within redefined boundaries ““
a changing campus within a shaken world.
For the nation and campus, the path to normalcy was not easy.
One year later, it is still being blazed.
Aaron Goodenough, a fourth-year economics student, said the
nation is still different and will never really go back to
“normal.”
“It hit us pretty hard,” he said. “In certain
instances and situations we can still live our lives … as we move
on we’ll forget about it.”
But the country is still on alert, he said, and people are still
worrying. With violence in Afghanistan still going on and a war
against Iraq possibly lurking in the near future, normalcy is tough
to find.
Tina Yamamoto, a fourth-year psychology student, said,
“People are trying to forget, but with the war and the
anniversary it brings out new fear in people.”
The attacks hit home, as Chancellor Albert Carnesale
explained.
“Whether the carnage occurred in New York, or in
Washington, or in Mexico City, or in Beijing or in Nairobi is of
secondary importance,” he said to a crowd of 8,000 mourners,
gathered on Royce Quad, Sept. 13, 2001. “Wherever the lives
were taken, this was a dastardly attack on innocent men, women and
children everywhere.
“In that very real sense, this was an attack on the UCLA
family.”
Some UCLA connections were direct.
Three alumni ““ Dora Menchaca, who earned a Ph.D. from the
School of Public Health in 1986; Christopher Newton, who earned his
M.B.A. from the Anderson School Executive Program in 1998; and
Ruben Ornedo, who graduated from UCLA in 1984 with a
bachelor’s degree from the School of Engineering ““ were
on American Airlines Flight 77, which was headed for Los Angeles
before it smashed into the Pentagon, killing all on board.
After the attacks, UCLA mourned along with the rest of the
country. Students and faculty and other community members gathered
for the memorial at Janss steps, crying and hugging
““Â some calling for the bombing of the Taliban, some
advocating a peaceful response, and many too involved in the
present to think of what would come.
Muslim students met in prayer, fearing backlash against their
community even though they condemned the attacks over and over.
Though Westwood was speckled with American flags ““Â on
cars, in front of pizzerias, at the Shell gas station ““ signs
of normalcy eventually showed up.
Students returned to their studying. Recreation soccer players
returned to Royce Quad for their twilight pick-up games.
UCLA continued on with some of its old business. A little over a
month after the attacks the school celebrated its 75th anniversary
in its Westwood location.
University of California officials continued their work to
implement a admissions plan taking personal obstacles into greater
consideration.
In fall, UCLA’s athletic director announced he was
leaving. In winter, so did the executive vice chancellor. In
spring, replacements were found.
Nationally, stories about Michael Jordan returning to
basketball, corporate greed, Mideast violence and later child
abductions stole some of the attention away from Sept. 11. But the
attacks were always there.
The previously-suffering economy went into a full downward
spiral after Sept. 11. The UC faced the threat of student fee
raises.
Even before the United States attacked Afghanistan on Oct. 7,
some UCLA students were calling for peace. On Sept. 29, 2,500
peace-advocates marched through Westwood, while some
counter-demonstrators held signs reading, “Give war a
chance.”
The national anthrax scare came to UCLA too. In late October and
early November, University Police followed up on dozens of
“suspicious white powder” reports, including a case of
powder that a UCLA employee said likely fell from a donut and a
surgical glove found with powder in a trash can.
Three roommates in Hedrick Hall bought gas masks to protect
themselves from bioterrorism.
True normalcy wasn’t found.
Everywhere the national news went, UCLA followed, as hundreds of
students and professors discussed the latest developments in their
Sept. 11 seminars.
Sometimes UCLA made the headlines, as the nation followed.
During times of heightened sensitivity after the attacks, a UCLA
library employee was suspended without pay after he responded to a
mass patriotic e-mail saying the U.S. should not support
Israel’s “apartheid regime.” His story made
national headlines.
Various national media also followed stories linking student
groups to terrorists. In their November issue, al-Talib,
UCLA’s Muslim newsmagazine, printed advertisements from three
supposed charities that were later targeted the next month by the
U.S. State Department for allegedly having ties to terrorist
groups.
Even as the world progressed further from Sept. 11, universities
were continually reminded of terrorism.
In late July seven people, including five Americans, were killed
by a terrorist bomb at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
On Monday, an Emory University building was evacuated after a
woman opened an envelope with powder and said her hands were
itching and she was having difficulty breathing.
The reminders of the new world in which people live are endless.
The public will not be able to fulfill the New York Times’
wish to simply remember Sept. 10, 2001.
With more war looming, reports of threats to personal freedoms
continuing, and terror warnings never-ending, the impact of last
Sept. 11 is still unknown. But one thing is certain: as they pursue
normalcy, the historic day is forever stuck in peoples’
memories and hearts.