Online exclusive: Two years later: students reflect on effects of Sept. 11, 2001

“There’s no forgetting it, even if people wanted
to.”

So says Brian Drishelle, a graduate student in moving image
archive studies, on the significance of the felled Twin Towers in
New York City and the battered Pentagon.

“We’ve never lived in a time where our country has
been attacked on its own soil so I think that it was a
shock,” said Holly Atkinson, a recent alumna.

As the UCLA campus commemorates the two-year anniversary of the
Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, many students paused to reflect
on the event that slowed the nation to a halt, and to assess its
long-term impact on their lives.

Responses varied between those who believe they have returned to
normalcy and those who still feel deeply affected. But overall, the
grip of fear and feeling of vulnerability that followed the attacks
has faded from the minds of Bruins as they take on another academic
year.

For second-year civil engineering student Gerard Covento, the
impact of the attacks has subsided, but the memory remains
permanently clear.

“It still stands out as one of those key dates in
life,” he said.

The attacks’ effect on other students has been directly
tied to the amount of coverage it receives from the media.

“For the first three months (after the attacks), there was
a lot of media coverage on it and was always in your face,”
said Ryan Cheung, a fourth-year computer science student at
California State University, Los Angeles.

“(You were) forced to think about it, but it’s
pretty much died down now,” he continued.

Atkinson added that the fading of the impact of Sept. 11, 2001
on Bruins’ individual lives can be largely attributed to the
far distance between California and New York.

But since the attacks, the establishment of the Department of
Homeland Security, the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act and resulting
military actions have left institutional reminders of that day.

The United States’ invasion and subsequent occupation of
Iraq has also affected students in the sense that they have to
prepare for anti-American sentiment when studying abroad. Matthew
Jones, a third-year finance and economy student at the University
of Texas-Austin who was visiting UCLA, said he will head for
England and Ireland in two weeks. Some of the advice he has
received, he said, includes claiming Canadian residency to avoid
ridicule for being from the United States.

“I’m just going to try and blend in as much as
possible,” Jones said.

The direct campus effects of the attacks included the expansion
of academic seminars designed to address current events and a drop
in the number of reported hate crimes ““ particularly against
Muslim students ““ on university grounds.

But people aren’t as tolerant as they could be, said one
student leader.

“Things have improved,” said Mariam Jukaku,
president of the UCLA Muslim Student Association. “I worry a
little bit, but mostly the university has been supportive of the
Muslim community over the last two years.”

However, she cited an incident last spring at the UCLA Medical
Center when Muslim prayer rugs were apparently soaked in pork blood
““ a substance with which contact violates a primary tenet of
the Islamic faith ““ as an example of progress still to be
made.

Thursday will be just like any other day at UCLA. The university
does not have any memorial services or events planned, save for a
special polyphonic chime of the campus bells at noon. Many Bruins
have approached the day in the same way, shedding the tendency of
looking back in favor of looking ahead.

With reports from Menaka Fernando and Charles Proctor, Bruin
Senior Staff.