9/11 Anniversary: Searching for the Long View

This is the short view. I was on a very progressive campus on 9/11, and with hindsight, I’m grateful for it.

I came back to my dorm room that morning intending to skip the first session of an intensive French class and take a nap. But as I arrived there, my phone was ringing. My mother asked if I was watching the news and said that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers. The other plane hit while we were on the phone. She was confused, unable to quite process the idea of a second plane hitting the other tower. I was confused, too, and said I would call her later, and I sought out the one common room on the North Campus where there was a TV. A handful of other students were watching the news. Others wandered in and out on their way to showers, sometimes not registering the gravity of what was happening until their second time through the room.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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9/11

This is the short view. I was on a very progressive campus on 9/11, and with hindsight, I’m grateful for it.

I came back to my dorm room that morning intending to skip the first session of an intensive French class and take a nap. But as I arrived there, my phone was ringing. My mother asked if I was watching the news and said that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers. The other plane hit while we were on the phone. She was confused, unable to quite process the idea of a second plane hitting the other tower. I was confused, too, and said I would call her later, and I sought out the one common room on the North Campus where there was a TV. A handful of other students were watching the news. Others wandered in and out on their way to showers, sometimes not registering the gravity of what was happening until their second time through the room.