Staff Editorial: A challenge to respond

There are certain times in the course of history when the concept of life is redefined; when the events of the day seem just far too incomprehensible to describe with simple words; when the travails and challenges of everyday life finally — and tragically — gain stark perspective.

These are the turning points of history: the wars, the assassinations, the disasters. They share a similarly horrific quality, they force us to reevaluate the society around us and they test our resolve as a community and as a nation.

Every generation seems to share — and endure — at least one. Our grandparents experienced Pearl Harbor. Our parents, the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

For us — for college students and young people at Penn and around the world — yesterday’s tragedies in New York City, Washington and western Pennsylvania provided exactly such an experience. And it was a day that will profoundly change the world which we will all soon lead.

The attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon affect us not just as passive observers of events. They affect us as students, as Americans, as New Yorkers and Washingtonians and friends of both. They affect us as brothers and sisters, children, mothers and fathers. They affect us as students and professors and alumni and colleagues. And they affect us, more than anything else, because we are compassionate people who cherish life and hold our freedom sacred.

Whoever was responsible for yesterday’s killing was attempting to undermine those very values: life, through the savage and cowardly execution of mass murder; and freedom, through the cold and systematic intimidation of an entire nation.

But that kind of intimidation can transform reality only if it is allowed to do so.

Over the course of the next few days, this community — and countless others around the world — will be confronted with two challenges: to respond to this tragedy, and to move forward.

While our government starts the process of finding out who is responsible for these events, we at Penn must react with compassion, support and an unwavering dedication to rebuild, re-energize and return to the way of life that was shattered with the first airplane hijacking yesterday morning.

The next few days will also reveal the painful extent to which this community — our university, our neighborhood and our city — has been affected by this tragedy. And we, the survivors, must respond. Strongly.

The University has helped that cause, by establishing a comprehensive network of support. Take advantage of those resources — of Counseling and Psychological Services, of the interfaith prayer services and of the many symposia and discussions that will occupy the next few weeks.

And please, take advantage — and take care — of your university’s greatest resource: each other. When the rubble has been cleared and the history books closed on this day, the legacy of September 11, 2001 will rest heavily on whether or not you do.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.