23 years ago today, the United States was attacked in one of the deadliest attacks on US soil since Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. This attack came to be known as 9/11. A common cry after the attack was “never forget,” and it was a phrase used by President Bush down to the average citizen.
“None of us will ever forget this day,” President George W. Bush said on September 11, 2001.
As we remember this event 23 years later, have we lived up to this slogan?
The memory of remembering where you were on that day has not faded for some. Dr Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, the history department chair and a professor of Middle East history, still remembers where he was when he heard the news.
“And that’s where I was on 9/11/2001, on my way to Algebra on a Tuesday morning,” Wolfe-Hunnicutt said.
Wolfe was on his way to class at Cabrillo Community College where he was studying history and trying to decide what his area of focus was going to be.

In the aftermath of those attacks, he went to many talks explaining the context around the attacks, as experts looked to explain how we got to that point.
These talks really helped him focus in on the area he wanted to study, leading him to attend UC Santa Cruz and even Stanford as he sought his Ph.D in History with a focus on the Middle East. The 9/11 attacks played a pivotal role in his life as it set him on the trajectory that led him to where he is today.
This is a much different experience from Elias Figueiredo (Senior, Biology), who was born two years after the attacks. He describes learning about them through his parents who experienced them while living in California, while watching the news as it unfolded.
This has led to a shift in views and remembrance of the attacks, as you have the generation that experienced them and those who were born after them and have only experienced them through the stories of others.
“Our students are, generally speaking, born after 9/11. So it wasn’t a sort of decisive or formative moment in their consciousness. Our students who are a little later in life who actually do have a visceral memory of it, but it doesn’t sort of zing, or have the same kind of emotional reaction, and it doesn’t have the shock and awe value that it once did,” Wolfe-Hunnicutt said.
Wolfe-Hunnicutt says it doesn’t have the same effect on students that weren’t born yet as it does for people like him who experienced it.
This definitely impacts the way the upcoming generation remembers the attacks.
Destiny Barraz (Junior, Criminal Justice) talks about learning about them in middle school. She describes being sad and upset when she thinks about the attacks, but doesn’t remember them as she was born in 2001 and was less than 1 years old when it happened.
“I think it started in middle school where we would watch, like, the documentaries about it,” said Barraz
Figueirdo also describes learning about them through video.
“They would show these videos of everyone coming together and putting together like resources to help those affected by it,” he said.

They remember through videos and the reflection of those who were there versus those that had personal experiences related to the attacks, which can make it difficult for them to understand its impact.
Figuerido describes how hard it is to understand it all.
“But it is hard like, no, I wasn’t alive when it happens, so trying to get that context for what it means is interesting,” he said.
Wolfe-Hunnicutt gave his opinion on if we have “forgotten” 9/11.
“I think we kind of have, yeah, I think it’s faded,” he said, “It doesn’t command the singular attention like it once did. We have moved on to other things.”
Figuerido describes how he remembers hearing about 9/11 on the anniversary growing up in school but now, not so much.
“In grade school, like elementary, middle, I would say yes, because we would do, they would show the videos and everything. But really after that other than in history classes in high school, we really didn’t discuss it and especially like in college,” he said.
Barraz brought up an interesting point that it is not easy to remember something that hurts.
“It’s not something that everybody wants to remember, so it’s kind of hard to do,” she said.
As of writing, nothing is happening on campus today to remember those that lost their lives and those that gave their lives so that more wouldn’t lose theirs like those on flight United Airlines Flight 93.
Have we forgotten 9/11 or have priorities changed? Have we moved on as a country? It seems we might have failed to live up to the slogan that was proclaimed all over the country after the attacks, “Never Forget.”