Students and staff reflected on the terrorist attacks during events commemorating the six-month anniversary of Sept. 11
Interim Chaplin Maud Steyaert organized a noon event on the Tea Shop steps with speakers from the Mills community and an alumna who is a firefighter with the Oakland Fire Department. She also opened the chapel up to students the evening of March 11.
“Tonight is for people who would like to reflect on this anniversary in a private way,” she said of the evening event.
Professor Emery Roe, Oakland firefighter Maria Sabatini, senior Mary Jones and Avis Hinkson, dean of admissions, spoke to about 20 people gathered in the noontime sun during the early event. Three students sang Mozart’s “Dona Nobis Pacem,” or “Give Us Peace,” to end the remembrance.
Sabatini, who graduated from Mills in 1986 and now works to help firefighter deal with trauma, said she is still haunted by the images of Sept. 11.
“It is important to acknowledge that we have reactions to these images,” she said.
Sabatini encouraged audience members to be supportive of one another.
“It is incredibly brave to talk and listen,” she said.
Hinkson said that Sept. 11 still has an impact on her.
“I think about the people who lost their lives and the families that are left,” she said remembering the event that shocked students and the nation. Now, she said, “we should take a moment to live our lives to the fullest.”
Roe spoke about the policy that led to terrorist attacks.
“This is a major set of intolerable alternatives,” Roe said about the events following Sept. 11, a well as the circumstances leading to the attacks. “We should have compromised a long time ago. I ask you to reflect on how we can talk to our leaders,” about this situation he said.
Steyaert said she organized the events to give students a moment to pause and mark the anniversary of the event that took approximately 2,717 lives.
“Our goal is not to find answers or even to agree on the questions, but to reflect,” she said.
