9/11/01 on Campus: ‘We Really Need to Rally Around Each Other’

Twenty-five years ago, the Class of 2005 had just arrived on campus while the Class of 2002 was gearing up for senior year. Larry Bacow, H12, became Tufts’s 12th president on September 1 and the university began its 150th anniversary celebration. Rapper GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan headlined Fall Fest on September 9. And a September 10 column in The Tufts Daily warned of a new threat on college campuses: internet addiction.

Then, at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, the first airplane struck the World Trade Center in New York City. The second plane followed 17 minutes later. The third struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth crashed in a western Pennsylvania field. 

Tufts students were sleeping, eating breakfast, rushing to class as the terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, unfolded. Some heard the news immediately; others not for hours. 

Arun Gupta, A05, got a call from his father, he told Tufts Magazine. His family was watching the twin towers from their lower Manhattan apartment before evacuating to New Jersey. 

Sireeda Miller, A03, heard the news on her radio. “I started shaking. I couldn’t believe it,” she told The Tufts Daily. It took her several hours to contact her parents in Manhattan and confirm that they were safe.

“I was running late for a psychology class because I overslept,” says Rachel Kaplan, A02. “I ran to class and I didn’t know that something had happened.” She went to a coffee shop during a break and heard the news, then returned to her room to try to reach her family.

“One of my neighbors in the dorm was Muslim,” Kaplan says. “She was scared that people were going to think it was her fault. That was the moment where I felt like we really needed to rally around each other and come together.”

As the morning passed, students congregated in common areas. Some listened to a radio broadcast outside Tisch Library. Many gathered in the campus center, where CNN played in a lounge. 

By midday, Bacow had emailed the community. “We must come together to support each other, reflect on what has happened, and help each other cope with the tragic consequences of this heinous act,” he wrote. Classes and activities would not be cancelled, he said, “primarily to create opportunity for students and faculty to be together, grieve, share.”

Resident advisors, counseling staff, chaplains, and the dean of students were all on call to provide support. The Counseling Center held group sessions and staffed the campus center lobby, where counselors would remain until early in the morning on September 12. Tufts police increased their visibility around campus. The phone lines at The Fletcher School rang all day as media outlets sought experts to comment on what had happened. 

At 5 p.m., hundreds of people gathered on the quad. Bacow and campus religious leaders spoke. Bruce Reitman, A72, AG83, the dean of students, called that evening’s crowd “the largest I’ve seen here since Kent State,” referring to the protests that followed the 1970 shooting of four student anti-war protestors by members of the Ohio National Guard.

Bacow referenced Pearl Harbor and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy Jr., Robert Kennedy, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “I suspect that for each of you—today will be a memory that will also be seared into your consciousness, forever,” he said, according to a draft of his remarks from the Tufts Archival Research Center's collection. “While we will pause to reflect and console…we cannot let the acts of a few keep us from our mission. This is a place that prides itself on active citizenship. I challenge the community to think creatively about how we might lend our help to those who have suffered.”

Kaplan, a member of the Hillel executive board, says the organization decided to move forward with a meeting planned for that evening “and to be a place where people could come together.” About 400 people showed up.

From that gathering came an idea that grew into a lasting symbol of 9/11 at Tufts: Patches for Peace. Eighty-eight campus groups contributed patches to the project bearing messages of peace, love, and unity. The patches were sewn into a 96-square-foot quilt that was unveiled in a ceremony at the campus center on November 7, 2001.

“It kind of created the beginning of a dialogue over the course of the year,” Kaplan says. 

The Days After

The front page of The Tufts Daily on September 12, 2001, included images of the twin towers collapsing and headlines about Tufts: “Campus sobered by attack on America: Students try to cope with tragedy.”

Inside was a letter to the editor from Reitman. “We have at Tufts a tradition of building coalition in the face of adversity,” he wrote. “We have formed and strengthened bonds even when differing ideologies would pull us apart. Let’s continue to be hesitant to assume, slow to judge and persistent in showing compassion.”

That evening, more than 1,000 students participated in a candlelight vigil where chaplains and student leaders spoke.

There was no returning to normal after 9/11. Elements of everyday life, from air travel to security, would never be the same. The U.S. was about to launch a lengthy and deadly military operation in the Middle East, while at home many Americans faced racist attacks—which Tufts community members condemned in an open letter.  

In early October, Bacow wrote to the parents of current students. “I had envisioned a somewhat different ‘first letter’ to you,” it read. Then he detailed the campus blood drives, fundraisers, and symposia organized over the prior month. 

“After a period where all discussion seemed to focus on the events of September 11, we have turned out attention back to classes,” he continued. “Our libraries and our laboratories are busy. Students are again active on the playing fields, the stage, and in the community. Tufts is what it has always been—a place that cares deeply about the education of its students, and where students come to be challenged.”