By Renata Terazzan
Co-Editor-in-Chief

Two twin buildings were struck down in a cloud of smoke and fear. Screams pierced the silence that surrounded the fall. Ambulance and police sirens zoomed through the streets to help the survivors. Phones rang off the hook from one American household to another in order to find their loved ones. This was September 11th, 2001.

15 years have passed since then. But it’s effects are still seen today.

If you’ve ever taken a flight, you have been a first-hand witness to its most long-lasting and impactful effect. It is the security check that screens everything from your shoes to that bottle of moroccan oil shampoo that you never took out of your carry-on. Two months after the attack, the TSA (the department that screens you at the airport) was created and an extensive list of restrictions was implemented in every airport across the United States. The severity of this list was a way to make sure that the American people would never have to experience the horrors of that day ever again.

Then, there are the effects that are not seen so clearly. These are found in our own homes. It is the way your parents pull you closer when there are reports of “suspicious behavior” in the supermarket. Or when people sometimes get scared when you say you’re moving to the “Big Apple.” Or simply the way your mom hugs you for that extra beat before you leave for something as common as school.

To some, the events that happened 15 years ago was just yesterday and they can still remembered the panicked frenzy that was the United States of America that day. But some, in our very own school, were not even alive to see it happen, to remember the panic, or all the changes that ensued from it. For the very first time this year, the Class of 2020, this year’s high school freshmen will learn about 9/11 in their history classes – an event that happened before they were born. Now, what separates the classes of 2017, 2019, 2018, and beyond from the class of 2020 is not just a year, but a terrorist attack that has changed the way this country is, just as much as when Paul Revere said “the British are coming” or when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. 9/11 has become a historical event that will always be remembered for generations of Americans to come.