Matthew Mugmon: From tragedy, resolve springs anew

It's hard to believe that a year has already passed.

Many of us were just settling in to Penn for the semester when we were hit with the longest, most arduous day of our lives. And now, here we are again. And in some ways, Sept. 11 still feels like yesterday.

Just as we've asked our parents where they were when the first people landed on the moon, or when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, our grandchildren will ask us what we were doing at the exact moments the Twin Towers fell.

I'll have to answer that question with memories, images and emotions that will still be all too vivid.

Most of them I'd like to forget but know I never could. The footage we all saw of hijacked airplanes, and then of people running for their lives, immediately come to mind, and certainly will again years from now.

Many of the images we'll remember, though, are the very personal ones. For me, one view stands by all the others -- what I witnessed inside 4015 Walnut Street.

There, in an old building on the edge of campus, a group of about 30 college students -- college journalists -- were in the midst of a challenge whose significance they couldn't yet know, a part of something so sweeping in scope that even a year later it's hard to fully appreciate it.

These college students were setting aside their emotions, their concerns about loved ones, their outrage -- to put out a newspaper.

They were interviewing fellow students while many of us were trying to console and be consoled by our family members.

They were trying to figure out just what happened on Sept. 11 so that one day all of us might hope to understand the day's horrific events and how in the world we, as members of the Penn community, could move on from them.

There they were, a bunch of 20-year-olds, trying, in the course of a few hours, to sort out what has proven to be the most significant, far-reaching event in recent memory.

And they didn't stop there. Soon after, some traveled to Ground Zero to offer the Penn community a first-hand look. Others stayed in West Philadelphia, absorbing and reporting on the events' local impact.

Like their counterparts in the world of professional journalism, what they told us and showed us wasn't often pretty. But it did give us an indispensible window into the way in which these events affected our lives as members of this community and as human beings.

These college journalists also documented the best side of human nature, and its incredible potential in the face of absolute horror. Through journalism, we witnessed a community's resonance and generosity, and some unprecedented heroism to boot.

Then working for 34th Street Magazine, The Daily Pennsylvanian's weekly arts and entertainment supplement, I observed first-hand most of the achievements of my fellow DP staffers.

That certain inner drive that allowed them to devote hours and hours of their time away from class to the difficult and often frustrating but ultimately rewarding world of journalism continued to impress and amaze me.

I had been in this organization for two years before Sept. 11, but never since that day have I looked at it, or any newspaper, in the same way.

And I've never felt luckier to be a part of something like the DP.

These days, whenever I take a look at any newspaper's editorial page, I feel a rush of relief before I can even start reading. The media is certainly not without its faults, but Sept. 11 and the following 12 months have shown just how crucial journalism and a free press can be.

Every day, I'm reminded of the ability that national newspapers afford us, as citizens, to be a part of a democracy, to speak out against injustice, to set an agenda and to effect change.

The scale may be smaller at a place like Penn, but it's for precisely that reason that we, as students, have a special advantage. With an organization like the DP -- one that is independent of the University it reports on -- any student has the chance to shape campus discussion and make a tangible difference on any level.

You can be a part of that force. Come to our Sept. 12 introductory meeting and become a reporter, a writer or a photographer. Help lay out our pages or develop our Web site. Contribute to our arts and entertainment magazine.

There are other ways to get involved, too. The DP is a corporation, and you can learn what it means to run one by being part of our advertising, marketing or finance departments.

Or, you can choose the more indirect route Read avidly, offering your own insights through our online feedback forums and submissions to the editorial page.

It's up to you to help keep that living record of the worst -- and the very best -- of our campus and our world.

Matthew Mugmon is a senior Classical Studies major from Columbia, Md., and executive editor of The Daily Pennnsylvanian .

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