By Jesse Coleman
All across campus the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, students huddled around TV screens at home, at work and in BYU buildings, waiting to find out about friends and family and anxiously watching events unfold across the nation.
Teachers postponed class and turned on overhead media to connect their students to the ongoing drama. As Americans reel from what appears to be the worst terrorist attack in history, students at BYU attempt to come to grips with the unfolding situation.
Elisa Beiler, majoring in advertising, said she originally felt helpless when she heard about the attacks.
'There''s not much you can really do about it now until we find whoever is responsible,' Beiler said. She suggested however that BYU students could put together a relief organization to help those affected.
Another student, Jacqueline Costenelle, majoring in broadcast journalism, typifies what many students felt when they originally heard what happened.
'I thought the world was coming to an end,' she said.
Jesse Wood, majoring in communications, said he felt more frustrated than anything else. 'I''ll probably be angry once I find out who did it,' Wood said.
As students look for who will take the blame, most are in agreement that the U.S. government should take some major action.
BYU student David Clegg said he was anxious to see what the U.S. government will do. Clegg''s family lives in Fairfax, a town about 10 minutes from Washington D.C. and not far from the Pentagon, one of the major sites of one of the terrorist attacks. Clegg had received no word from his family at the time of the interview.
Clegg said he sees the need for serious action in retaliation to this event. 'I think they need to do a very careful investigation and definitely take some serious action. I''m not one for war,' Clegg said, 'but we must show that the U.S. will not be toyed with or taken lightly.'
Students across the campus feel one of the best things they can do is pray for the family and friends affected by the attack.
'We need to pray for our leaders at this time,' Clegg said, 'because it''s going to be very important the decisions they are going to make.'
Vanessa Harrison, a senior majoring in horticulture, agrees we should pray for those who need help.
'We should do our best to find out (who did this) and do something about it,' she added.
Reid Fuller, an electrical engineering major whose brother lives in Midtown, New York City, about three miles from the World Trade Center, said he feels there isn''t much we can do about it.
'If it''s a nation, we can''t really go after the civilians. There''s nothing we can do if it''s terrorists, and that''s the scary part about it,' Fuller said.
Another student with family in New York City, Catharine Moody, sees this terrible event as a unifying event for the nation. When Moody first heard about the attack, she thought immediately of her sister, who lives in Manhattan. Though she is now sure her sister is all right, she feels this is a situation that needs to be taken very seriously.
'We should see this as a serious thing and not to take it lightly,' Moody said.