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Since 1960 Volume 83, Issue 6
Smells Like Team Spirit
The Last Great War History may
Football fans come out in droves for the start of the new season SPORTS, p. 6
see Sept. 11 as the start of World War III OPINION, p. 4
Daily Titan
Monday September 11, 2006
The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton September 11, Five Years Later
Sept. 11 Paper Garners Acclaim CSUF journalists thrust into covering events of September 11, 2001 By Benjamin Weiner Daily Titan Copy Editor bweiner@dailytitan.com
The mood was somber in the Daily Titan newsroom as horrifying imagery blared from the TV. The shocked student journalists assembled to watch the events of Sept. 11, 2001, unfold. Communications Professor Jeffrey Brody was the Daily Titan faculty advisor that year. Walking into the newsroom, he knew it would be an important day for the student journalists. “Our job, when there’s a world historical event, you cover that event. And you can cover it just as
well from Fullerton as from New York,” Brody said. The campus was closed down and we all thought it was essentially a lost day, said Robert Sage, business manager and advisor for Daily Titan advertising. But Brody came in and fired up the news team. Brody gave everyone in the newsroom an option that day. He told them they could leave and go home, or they could stay and become journalists, said that semester’s Managing Editor Magda Liszewska. “One of the professors came by to give the evacuation order as the rest of the campus closed. We had a choice: go home and be with our families or stay and get the story. One student left. The rest of us hunkered down. We watched out the window as a line of cars headed toward the freeway. Then
we went to work,” said then-Senior Editor Lori Anderson in an e-mail interview. “I couldn’t be any prouder because the students had the opportunity to leave, and instead they rose to the occasion; they stayed, they acted as journalists,” Brody said. After Brody’s pep talk, the Daily Titan crew immediately went into action assigning stories and thinking of angles and contacts. “I had such a great staff that they were already on it,” said Darleene Powells, then editor in chief. “They were already doing what needed to be done.” “We all seemed to be on the same pulse that day,” Powells said. Daily Titan Assistant News Editor Rita Freeman had returned from New York roughly a week before the terrorist attacks. She recalled wanting to sleep in that
9/11 In Your Own Words
unforgettable morning, but was awakened by a phone call from her mother who was screaming about the plane crashing into the first tower. “I immediately thought of my friend Linda who worked on the 13th floor of Tower 2. I tried to call her all day,” Freeman said. Powells, whose name was Darleene Barrientos at the time, called and asked Freeman to go to Los Angeles International Airport and see
“I was scared and
shocked. You feel like you’re watching a movie. You see buildings blow up and break apart. People are actually dying while you’re watching this.”
– Jessica Hadlock Freshman Programs Student Assistant
“It was a wake-up call for America to know that there are people out there that don’t like us. We’re not a perfect nation. I learned that through 9/11.”
SEE COVERAGE - PAGE 3
Memories Still Vivid Five Years After Event
– Jose Carlos Zamora Business Major
“It brought the nation together but it divided us too. It took a disaster to bring us back together, but we still later went on to our own little ways by being divided on the issues.”
CSUF students recall their reactions during and after the attacks
– Jared Overson Biochemistry Major
“[9/11] gave the
By Nancy Mora Daily Titan Staff Writer
nation a time to reflect what our values are and what it means to be a nation.”
news@dailytitan.com
T
– Diane Cavenee Post Grad. Credentials
Tina Fineberg/AP
WTC - David Drinks, of Baltimore, Maryland, looks at ground zero. One of the many images from the exhibit “here: remembering 9/11” hangs on the fence
surrounding ground zero Saturday Sept. 9, 2006 in New York. The fiancee of Drinks cousin, Joseph McDonald, lost his life in the World Trade Center attacks.
RELATED STORY: Sept. 11 Opinion - Page 4 TV. She wasn’t the only one unaware of what was going on. Sonia Serna, a human services major, was woken up by her panicked parents. Serna was shocked and felt sad and fearful after she followed her parents to the TV. “I never thought it could happen,” Serna said. And many others thought the same thing. “It was kind of a surreal moment,” said Daniel Geesing, a freshman majoring in technical theatre who was in the eighth grade at the time. He understood the situation better after listening to the ongoing conversations of teachers and students in school the following day. In Macau, China, Rebecca Sou was studying in class when breaking
news erupted on the television Americans. It alerted them that screen. She stopped to look at an America was not as safe from other image that she never thought would countries as it proclaimed to be. become recorded in her head. Americans were not only afraid of “I felt terrible,” Sou, a graduate future possible attacks, they were business student also afraid of said. “I saw people other people. crying on TV, “In some ways others running to I felt terrible. I saw you are judged escape.” [for being Arab],” people crying on TV, Sou noticed others running to Abraam Mikhael, many people in a freshman the city watching escape. biochemistry the TV and people said. – Rebecca Sou major, crying for the a graduate student who was- Mikhael, who was United States. The studying in China on Sept. 11 in Egypt at the chaos headlined time, is an Arab the newspapers the and thinks that next day, just like people look at in America. Arabs differently since the attacks. Sou remembers a friend of hers When returning to the states, who was studying in New York Mikhael did notice more restrictions when the attacks occurred. Her in the airports, but no one targeted friend skipped the rest of her school him. He said it was because he does year to return to China because her not have the strong accent some parents asked her to. Arabs do. The situation also frightened When he remembers the
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he date is Sept. 11. It doesn’t even need a year mentioned to define its meaning. Five years ago, on Sept. 10, 2001, The Orange County Register printed articles about a high-priced house for sale in Laguna Beach and the triumph of a well-known university’s girl’s soccer team just minutes away from Cal State Fullerton. An earthquake shook hard enough in Los Angeles that even Orange County felt the magnitude 4.2 tremor. But the quake did not compare to the rumble of the two hijacked airplanes in New York the next day. Televisions around the world glared as news stations from every channel aired live footages of the situation. Aurora Lopez, a Togo’s employee at the Titan Student Union food court, didn’t want to leave sight of her TV on the morning of Sept. 11. “My cousin didn’t let her kids go to school that day,” said Cristina Pineda, a dishwasher in the TSU food court. “I was worried.” But many of those who tried to go on with their daily routines kept themselves current by crowding into offices or classrooms and listening to a radio or watching a TV. “At first, I didn’t know what was actually going on,” said Flor Valente, a senior majoring in psychology. “And then I figured out it was in New York.” Valente was sitting alone in her high school library when she noticed people gathering around the library’s
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depressing images of Sept. 11, Mikhael feels bad for the innocent people who died. “It’s very terrifying to think about it,” Mikhael said. “ You get on a plane and you may never come back.” While some people judged those Arabs, there were those who grew suspicious of people in general. After receiving a call from her mother, Allison Varzally, an assistant history professor, turned on the TV. Varzally said her emotions were full of sadness and fear, but she grew to be more concerned about her father who worked in New York City. Before Sept. 11, Varzally was looking forward to finishing her doctorate degree. However, after the incident, she was distracted and felt melancholic. She didn’t feel safe. “I had to fly within a week,” Varzally said. “I was a little bit anxious about my fellow passengers.”
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“Part of me felt sorry for the people who died, but another part of me felt like there was more behind it.”
– Eddie Perez Biology Major
“I think America is going to feel the trauma for a very long time. [9/11] signifies the change in the way we have to live from now on.” – Vivek Mande Accounting Professor
“It means nothing.
It’s tragic that people died but people die all over the world all the time.”
– Robyn Blackfelner English Major
SEE WORDS - PAGE 2
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