Terror in the skies

Students were left stunned, saddened and frantic to reach friends and family on the morning of Sept. 11 after a pair of hijacked airliners slammed into and demolished both towers of New York City’s World Trade Center. The attack is the worst terrorist episode ever carried out in the United States.

Television stations carried live footage of the buildings’ collapse, including pictures of a hijacked Boeing 757 slamming into the south tower. The attack began at about 8:45 a.m., and by 10:30 a.m. both buildings were absent from the city’s skyline. In Washington, about 100 people died when a plane crashed into the Pentagon.

“Our society changes as of today. This is a watershed event,” said Law Prof. Robert Precht, the attorney for one of the four men convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in 1993.

“I’m overwhelmed. I kind of wish I was back in the city I can’t reach my friends, the lines are down. I used to work down there, on the 82nd floor of the World Trade Center. I don’t know if any of my co-workers actually survived,” said Phillip Ng, an LSA sophomore from New York.

Classes for the day were canceled around noon. About 15,000 students attended a vigil in the Diag the night of Sept. 11, shortly after President Bush made his first address from the Oval Office.