Ten years ago this Sunday, most of us were just finishing elementary or beginning middle school, too young to know how little we — or anyone else — actually knew. Word trickled in that day to our classrooms and cafeterias, from our parents greeting us at bus stops and personalities on TV. Buildings vaguely known to us as the “twin towers” and “Pentagon” had been toppled — and that was just the beginning.
That Tuesday turned into quite the education. It was our first taste of true hatred, of a terror unlike anything this country had ever known. It was also our first taste of how united we all are, despite the divisions that can occasionally feel insurmountable.
It shattered the notion of America as a nation above the fray.
Reflecting on the decade he presided over the University, former chancellor James Moeser remembers Sept. 11, 2001 and March 5, 2008 as sunny days that brought campus together in tragedy. Just as it had at the beginning of Moeser’s eight-year tenure, the University united with the news of Eve Carson’s death.
There “were many more parallels than contrasts” between the two tragedies, Moeser said, with both bringing a sense of fear and insecurity, but also togetherness.
One decade after Sept. 11, it’s saddening to see how quickly the nation has devolved into factions. Gone, it seems, are the days in which two sides could disagree in a respectable fashion. Washington has set a poor example with its ideological entrenchment often preventing two sides from coming together to talk.
UNC hasn’t been much better in this still young semester.
Rather than hear his beliefs and allow them to contribute to a valuable discussion, the Christian a cappella group Psalm 100 unanimously voted at the beginning of the semester to oust Will Thomason for his views on homosexuality. The decision has since fueled a campus-wide debate regarding this community’s openness to all beliefs and identities. It has drawn strong outcry from the LGBTQ community, and for good reason. Psalm 100 felt that a single ideology disqualified him from having a seat at the table, from engaging in what could have been a productive and enlightening conversation.
Another group, the College Republicans, has raised well-founded concerns about Student Congress and appropriations that forced the group to delay a campus-wide conversation with Ann Coulter. Together, the incidents make UNC’s appetite for meaningful discussion far too reminiscent of the nation’s.
