Originally posted September 13, 2001
Students grapple with terrorism

[September 11, 2021]   At Lincoln Community High School, social studies teacher Stephen Sauer attempted to put the events of the day in perspective for students as they sat watching history unfold live on Channel 1.

He told his students, "This is history you are living in. You are seeing something which is unprecedented in history."

Sauer went on to say all of the following:

"I have told kids in the past, ‘Because we are a free society, we are vulnerable.’ I never imagined that something would happen on a scale like this.

"The kids seem be responding really well. They've asked questions like, ‘Who’s responsible?’

"We had just watched as a plane flew into the building, and a plane flew by over here. We all made eye contact. You just get heightened, you get a little more sensitized when you watch these things happen.

"They’ve been handling it well though — asking good questions and watching pretty attentively."

Like other past catastrophic events, such as the assassination of JFK, Waco, Columbine, and when the Challenger blew up, it is expected that this week’s events will have an impact on our children. When they travel to D.C. or New York, or wherever they go, they'll be thinking twice about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

When asked what the influence he thought this event might have on the students’ political involvement, Sauer responded, "I'll be curious to see in the days ahead what they think once we know more about what happened — their reaction: Are we supposed to go out with guns blazing or do we use diplomacy? How are we going to handle that?"

Wednesday evening

Lincoln College students, faculty and staff gathered in regard for the national events that occurred on Tuesday. Student housing director Steve Snodgrass, creative writing instructor John Means and religion instructor John Welter spoke on a variety of topics dealing with how we as a community can cope with what has happened. Mr. Welter’s speech was moving because he compared the events to what he witnessed during the race riots of the ’60s.

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