September 11, 2001: Teachers and students panicked but were not allowed to leave my high school campus. Students frantically tried to call parents working in nearby New York City but found all phone lines out of service. No one knew if his parents, siblings or friends were safe.
My brother and I came home and witnessed our mother crying unlike I've ever seen her before or since. My father, arriving from his office a mile north of ground zero, seemed smaller, older, and more tired than ever before. My parents were alive; several of my friends' parents were not. The next week, my community paper filled two pages with small head shots of all those who had died in the attack.
That's what I remember most about September 11: the loss of life and innocence, the destruction, the anguish and the terrible cost.
Since September 11, I have taken grief for championing the ideals I hold dear-- -- ideals that I believe will prevent another attack -- such as unabridged civil liberties and personal freedom. In advocating these ideals and working for candidates who represent them, I have been a called a communist, an anarchist, an atheist, a heathen and even unpatriotic.
Yet none of the names I have been called and actions taken against me for simply advocating my beliefs, hurt me so much as when I attended the September 11 remembrance ceremony hosted by the College Republicans on Sunday.
I arrived in time to hear President of the College Republicans Jared Ede giving a speech about how September 11 has affected his family, especially his brother serving in the Marine Corps. Mr. Ede's speech was appropriate at first. He announced that the College Republicans were proposing the placement of an American flag in every classroom on campus, and the flying of the American flags at Hopkins at half staff throughout the month of September.
I don't disagree with these ideas; there is nothing wrong with placing more American flags on the Homewood campus or hanging our flags lower on their masts to memorialize the month of the terrorist attacks.
What I do take issue with, however, is the politicization of the September 11 ceremony. Mr. Ede and his cohorts knowingly turned the ceremony from a nonpartisan event into a College Republicans event.
If you look closely, you'll see that the two liberal speakers who preceded Mr. Ede were window dressing compared to the overall event. The money for the event came from the neutral Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, but event organizer Marc Goldwein carried it out with the primary help of the College Republicans.
Mr. Goldwein himself admits that months ago he made the decision to use the College Republicans for any help he needed. Only a couple days before the event did he finally ask any board member of the College Democrats for help. He used non-partisan funding to hold an event that was staffed and prepared by the College Republicans, and then gave that group's president a podium to announce a College Republican initiative.
We were all affected by the events of September 11. Any occasion that is in memory of September 11 should be nonpartisan and neutral; if the College Republicans help to prepare the event, the College Democrats should be included. If the president of the College Republicans speaks, so too should the president of the College Democrats. Getting two democratic speakers to offset a Republican staffed event where a College Republican agenda is announced is not neutral. In doing so, Mr. Ede and Mr. Goldwein turned the memorial into a partisan rally.
This memorial should have brought campus political groups together. Instead, it was used to promote one group's initiatives.
Mr. Ede and Mr. Goldwein used September 11 to promote their group's initative. On September 11, more than any other day of the year, the people of the United States should come together as a whole and partisan rhetoric and agenda be left aside.
--Aaron Glaser is a junior political science and philosophy major from Nanuet, N.Y. He is vice president of the College Democrats.
