Terrorists' attacks proved defining moment for Class of 2005

Courtesy of Birmingham-Southern College Students at Birmingham-Southern College hold a vigil after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

May 24, 2005

A UMNS Feature
By Vicki Brown*

Weeks—sometimes just days—into their college career, the freshman class of 2001 focused on choosing a major, adjusting to roommates, making new friends. Then terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

"We went from worrying about what is my life going to be like for the rest of my life to what is the world going to be like for the rest of my life," says Thomas Martin, a 22-year-old Birmingham (Ala.)-Southern College student who graduated this month. He plans to attend Duke University Divinity School in Durham, N.C., to become a United Methodist minister.

Martin and many other 2001 freshmen at the 124 United Methodist-related schools, colleges and universities are heading into the world for jobs or graduate school this year. Many say the defining moment of the attacks early in their college careers made them more political, gave them a more global outlook and created an immediate intimacy with their fellow students and professors that lasted through graduation.

Courtesy of Syracuse University A Syracuse University student makes ribbons to support victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

A seminary professor in Madison, N.J., changed the way he taught church history to include more about the role of Islam as an outside pressure on the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation—including parallels to world events today.

"I've seen an abiding interest in asking if Christians can have a dialogue with Muslims and what it means to deepen our understanding of an old and beautiful religion," says Terry Todd, associate professor of religious studies at the Theological School at Drew University, of his students.

A student headed for a Foreign Service career says the attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq may have subtly influenced his career path and will be a big factor in his future.

"I know that my career in the Foreign Service will be deeply affected by those events," says Dominic Randazzo, of the Class of 2005 at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa. "I want to learn more about the rest of the world. I'm going to volunteer to go to Iraq (for an overseas internship in a U.S. embassy).''

Randazzo, one of 10 students nationwide to be awarded the new Charles B. Rangel Fellowship for graduate study in international affairs or a related subject, will intern on Capitol Hill and in an overseas embassy. A political science major, Randazzo says every American should forget past differences and step forward to make Iraq a prosperous nation.

"I think there's no other choice for those of us who were opposed to war," Randazzo says. He adds that the attacks made his generation more interested in exploring diplomacy and dialogue on the world stage.

All the United Methodist-related colleges held special prayer services and candlelight vigils after the terrorist attacks, and many had symposiums on terrorism, organized blood drives, or arranged for special speakers to help students learn more about Islam.

"Spiritually, it was really moving to see how people cared for one another," says Erin Wolfe, a 22-year-old history major and recent Syracuse (N.Y.) University graduate. Wolfe, a freshman in 2001, will be working with a group that fights domestic violence, although she plans to eventually earn a master's degree in early childhood education.

She recalls watching other students desperately try to reach parents who worked in downtown New York City and helping organize a memorial service at the university's Hendricks Chapel for a woman who died in the attack. Wolfe believes her classmates are more involved in politics because of the attacks and the war in Iraq.

Erin Wolfe

"We have a greater awareness of politics and a more cynical view of our leaders," she says.

Her father, the dean of Hendricks Chapel, writes in an op-ed piece about a generation that puts "their most deeply held convictions into action." The Rev. Thomas Wolfe writes of how the students formed lines at blood donations centers and held vigils.

"I remember thinking I was witnessing a kind of awakening and embracing a new world landscape," Wolfe writes. Instead of becoming hardened and cynical, the students engaged the world, he says.

Tiffanie Jones, who graduates from Dillard University in New Orleans this fall and plans to attend Howard University in Washington for a graduate degree in social work, recalls how the attacks brought the student body together.

"We would gather at the flagpole and pray. A lot of times we take things for granted, that I'll always be OK. That changed," the 22-year-old Baptist says.

The Rev. Dan Fortenberry, retiring campus chaplain at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss., says the Class of 2005 is more global in outlook because of 9/11. He sees the graduates as a class of theological thinkers who struggled not only with the violence but also with the discrimination against Muslims they saw afterward.

Paige Henderson, who graduated from Millsaps in May, agrees. She was dating a Muslim at the time and saw him suffer fear of reprisals as well as discrimination.

"I think it made me more aware of diversity," she says. "It opened up our eyes to the global situation."

*Brown is an associate editor and writer at the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry.

News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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