Seven years, 10 hours, and 14 minutes after the first of two hijacked planes crashed into a skyscraper seven miles to the south, Senators Barack Obama, CC ’83, and John McCain will take the stage in Lerner Hall. Unlike some memorials that turn to the past, Columbia is commemorating Sept. 11 the same way the presidential candidates are—by turning to a better future through community service.
“This is a civic-oriented event, taking in the broader meaning of September 11,” said Columbia College Republicans Executive Director Lauren Salz, BC ’11. The College Republicans and College Democrats agreed almost immediately to refrain from hosting rallies for their candidates, and both groups have stressed the nonpartisan nature of the event.
“One of the things we’ve been trying to do is acknowledge that politics is a form of public service, and that this is going to be a political event, but it doesn’t have to be partisan,” said College Democrats President Chris Daniels, CC ’09.
Although Amelia Josephson, CC ’11, thinks that some politicization is “inevitable,” she doesn’t necessarily mind. “I think it’s appropriate for politicians to be forward-looking and talking about political service, rather than having a memorial, while they have an opportunity to reach all of these young people.”
Letizia Valentin, CE ’08, said she sees this year’s event as a reflection of the country’s changing mind-set. “I don’t think we need to have memorial services in the way we did a few years ago,” she said. “I think it’s really good having an important political event.”
To others, the idea of a straightforward shift in emphasis might seem an oversimplification.
“Even in the immediate aftermath [of Sept. 11], different people were affected in different ways,” Counseling and Psychological Services Director Richard Eichler pointed out. “Whether it’s seven years later or 27 years later, for people who lost a son, or a father, or a wife, it’ll be a day of personal remembrance. It’s not a question of transition as much as different avenues of healing.”
While those not lucky enough to gain admittance to the speeches will gather in Low Plaza to watch it on a large screen, a broad collection of student groups will host a celebration of community service titled “Columbia University Serves 2008.” The event will host a voter registration drive and photos of Columbia students participating in their neighborhood.
Alongside it, a coalition of students will also gather for a silent, anti-war vigil in remembrance of those who died in the 2001 attacks and in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The event, which is not affiliated with any campus group, is taglined “Peace is the greatest service.”
“We also want to keep this nonpartisan,” organizer Rahel Aima, CC ’10, said. “We don’t think there’s anything partisan about remembering death here or in other countries.”
The planners of “Columbia Serves” said they hope to localize ServicNation’s goal of boosting youth volunteerism.
“We’re very action-oriented,” Daniels said. “The idea’s not so much what we can do to memorialize it as what we can do. We want to take the strong emotions that people have around it and do something with them.”
That, at least, is the goal of those who brought the candidates to campus in the first place.
“We weren’t going to originally do it then,” ServiceNation Director of Organizing Emily Cherniack said of Sept. 11. “We didn’t want to exploit the day and its spirit. However, families of 9/11 victims came forth and told us that they want to reframe the day and make it a day of healing.”
According to Eichler, who has been at Columbia since 1986, this echoes the campus’s response in 2001.
“I can tell you firsthand that there was a wish from a great many students to be helpful,” he said of the days following the attacks. “There was a rush of students wanting to give blood—it was something concrete to do. ... In the face of a potent demonstration of evil, it was an urge to demonstrate caregiving and goodness. It’s hard to imagine a better impulse than that.”