Editorial Understanding Normalcy in a Time of Crisis

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One year after the September attacks, Americans, for the most part, have restored normalcy in their lives. On the one hand, this return to normalcy is comforting: it indicates the resiliency of the American spirit, a spirit that was touted heavily by public figures in the immediate days and first few months following the attacks.


On the other hand, however, a return to the normal pattern of our daily lives points to something far more disturbing. The terrorist attacks evoked a reaction in us that was typically American. We grieved in the immediate aftermath, and came together as a nation united by crisis and loss. We rediscovered religion and community, and relished in a "new slowness" caused by the scope and severity of the attacks.


As the year progressed, however, these emotions were quickly supplanted by other crises which diverted our national gaze from the horror of that single day. Corporate scandal and the failing war in Afghanistan rose to the fore, and partisanship returned once again to the halls of Congress. While the terrorist attacks lurked in the background, we focused our attention on the other stories — private and public — that dominated the evening news and our quotidian lives.


At Middlebury we have not been immune from this trend. In that second week of September, the College was transformed from school to grieving center as students took stock of their loss, pondered the implications of the event and joined loved ones in mourning. Quite quickly, however, normalcy returned to our daily schedules, with commitments in and outside the classroom or office consuming much and leaving little time for reflection.


At this College we are well-positioned to not resort to the empty sentiment that risks becoming a prevalent feature of this and subsequent anniversaries of the terrorist attacks. We have seen much of this sentiment in the year since the attacks, represented most prominently in memorial items sold commercially — hats, bumper stickers — but more recently in myriad television documentaries re-enacting the day in all its horrific detail. Conveyed in these means the complexity of emotions evoked on Sept. 11 risk becoming something contrite or, even more dangerously, fading into what New York Times columnist Frank Rich recently described as a collective "historical amnesia."


Drawing from the strength of our academic tradition, particularly in international studies and religion, we have the luxury to understand the September attacks in their broadest context, not simply that portrayed on television or broadcast on the radio. An academic understanding of the terrorist attacks must not, however, come at the expense of how we have learned to comprehend it emotionally. Rather, the strength and complexity of these emotions must be placed alongside the political undertones and implications of Sept. 11 locally, nationally and internationally. As we did in these pages last year, the editorial board of The Campus urges all students to stay informed of events of local, national and international significance, particularly now as the threat of war looms near once again.