For most of the campus, life is returning to normal as fewer updates about the incidents are circulated, and conversations shift from emotional reactions and personal stories to critical analyses of the events and ensuing military, political, and financial reactions worldwide. “Students are facing a natural tension between moving on with their studies and returning to normalcy and feeling slightly guilty about doing that since there has been very little closure about what this all means to them, the United States, and the world,” says Wells, dean of student affairs.
      On October 8, a day after the United States and Great Britain began bombing Afghanistan, the University held a memorial service in honor of the alumni who are dead or presumed dead, and the students, faculty, and staff members who lost close relatives in the September 11 attacks. Families of those killed or missing filed into the front rows in Hendricks Chapel to hear words of comfort and songs of remembrance. Midway through the service, two students lit white candles as the names of the deceased alumni and the SU community members who had lost close relatives were read aloud. SA president Ben Riemer ’02 told the assembly that although Americans are moving on with their lives, they won’t forget September 11, 2001. “We’ll remember the people who lost their lives and lost their loves,” Riemer said. “It is this remembrance that will drive us forward.
      “My generation is leaving college now with a very different mission,” Riemer said. “There’s a long and uncertain road ahead. And as this country has done in the past, we shall overcome, but we will never, ever forget.”

Each year Syracuse University awards Remembrance Scholarships to 35 seniors in honor of the 35 SU students killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Among other duties, the Remembrance Scholars organize the annual Remembrance Week, which this year was held the week of October 21.
      "The events of September 11 changed Remembrance Week in ways that are difficult to describe,” says Lisa Mueller ’02, one of this year’s Remembrance Scholars. “We all felt a greater personal connection to the honor of being Remembrance Scholars because our perceptions of loss were greatly heightened. Our empathy with those who lost loved ones in the Pan Am disaster has become even more intense.”
      Among Remembrance Week activities were a convocation at Hendricks Chapel; a rose-laying ceremony at the Wall of Remembrance; the showing of videotapes concerning the tragedy; a front-window display at the Schine Student Center; and Make a Difference Day, during which students performed community service at various locations in the Syracuse area to honor the dead.
      "We felt a responsibility to not only honor and remember those who died on Pan Am 103, but to honor and remember all those who have lost their lives to terrorism,” Mueller says. “All of our activities were centered on themes of honor, remembrance, tolerance, and love.”