NEWS | p. 5
FEATURES | p. 9
SPORTS | p. 13
Students attend 21st annual Sharkapalooza
Joe’s Pizza & Pasta delivers slice of New York
Former Shark selected in 2025 MLB Draft
THURSDAY
SEPT. 11, 2025
THE CURRENT
VOLUME 36 ISSUE 2
NSU's student-run newspaper, housed in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts
Living with 9/11: Memories Never Fade By Alexandria Munroe On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Grace Telesco, currently an associate professor and director of the School of Criminal Justice at NSU, was on her way to teach a crisis intervention class at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. When she emerged from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, she realized something was happening. “I saw what looked like confetti coming down, like this glitter,” Telesco said. “It was actually the first plane [that] had hit the first tower at a quarter to nine in the morning.” At first, she thought it was an office fire. But as she arrived at work, the news broke of the second plane striking the second tower. “It was the bluest sky. It was so clear,” Telesco said. “I remember thinking, ‘A pilot wouldn’t get confused and hit the World Trade Center.’ And that’s when I knew it was a terrorist attack.” Almost 25 years later, many college students only have secondhand knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, because they
COURTESY OF ©ecrow / Adobe Stock
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center Complex before the 9/11 attacks.
were not yet born. “I first learned about 9/11 just like everyone else around my age, when we got introduced to it in first or second grade,” said Nasir Trower, junior sports management major and New York City-native. “It’s emphasized more in the city [because] our families
Princess Cruises docks at NSU
were directly impacted that day, but our generation has that distance from it, mainly because [the] majority of us weren’t alive.” For students who didn’t grow up in New York, the lessons focused on the basic information instead of lived experiences.
COURTESY OF CHRIS DELBONI
By Alexandria Munroe and Jessica Rodriguez Princess Cruises and NSU have set sail on a new venture with the cruise line’s professional dancers and choreographers now rehearsing their ship entertainment on the third floor of the Don Taft University Center. The American cruise line, owned by
Carnival Corporation & plc, hosted two preview events on campus this summer. The first preview announced two original performances, “Illuminate” and “Meridian,” which will be performed on Star Princess, the second of the company’s new sphere-class of ships and the largest ship in its fleet. See PRINCESS CRUISES, page 11
See LIVING WITH 9/11, page 3
The Shark Pantry supports students By Antonio Miguel Escorzon
Cast members present a number from “Illuminate,” a show for Princess Cruises’ new ship, Star Princess.
“I’ve never heard anyone’s personal stories from 9/11,” Andito Wills Jr., a junior finance and business management major, said. “We talked about it every year in school, but it was always just the basic facts of what happened, like a history class.”
Four years after opening, the NSU Shark Pantry continues to find new ways to reach out to the student community, such as hosting its first Scoop N’ Chill event on Aug. 22 during Waves of Welcome. The Shark Pantry is located on the second floor of the Don Taft University Center. Kate Gittleman, director of STEM Initiatives and Outreach who runs the Shark Pantry, said the event was an ice cream social to help students learn more about the pantry. The Shark Pantry staff wanted to show its presence to students when the fall semester started, Gittleman said. Andrea Villalba Torres, second-year graduate student in the registered dietitian nutritionist master’s program and NSU Shark Pantry coordinator, said the Shark Pantry is a resource for students. “Although we do see a lot of individuals when we are open during the [fall and winter] semesters, a lot of people don’t know about us or don’t know exactly what we do,” Villalba Torres said.
Opened in November 2021, the pantry allows students who may be struggling financially to get enough food for free, Gittleman said. “The real focus and goal of the food pantry was to provide our students access to food so that we could support them, not just in the classroom,” Gittleman said. Villalba Torres said students can register through PantrySoft, so they can go to the pantry during operating hours. “Students sign up, we queue them in, put them on the list and then when it is time for them to check out all their food items, they just go in and grab what they need,” Villalba Torres said. “They are allowed 10 pounds of food a week and then they just provide us their name afterwards, once we are at the checkout station.” The pantry is donation-based and welcomes food and other items from NSU students, NSU faculty and the local community. See SHARK PANTRY, page 8