This year, I commemorated the events of Sept. 11, 2001 by speaking to various people on campus about their experiences on 9/11. Dean Ben Lieber, a native New Yorker, recalled that he was in his office at the College on 9/11. He remembers immediately being worried about the Amherst College community. Several people with close ties to Amherst lost their lives that day including friends and family of students and alumni. Dean Lieber and the administration made sure that those students immediately affected by the events of 9/11 had counseling available to them, and set up televisions in Valentine so the student body could follow the events.

Several alumni of the College lost their lives on Sept. 11. When I interviewed him, Dean Lieber recalled one case that hit especially close to home. Maurita Tam, who graduated in May of 2001, was in the World Trade Center when the planes struck the two Towers. She, along with thousands of other Americans, lost her life that day. Many of Maurita's friends were still students at Amherst College on 9/11. In fact, Maurita had just finished writing an e-mail to one of her friends at Amherst around 8:30 a.m. Just 16 minutes later, American flight 11 from Boston crashed into the North Tower.

I asked Dean Lieber what role Amherst College should play in this post-9/11 world. His immediate response was "Terras Irradient, let them bring light to the world." He stressed that we have a new urgency to shed light to the darkest corners of the earth. 9/11 expanded and transformed the world. Here at Amherst College, we learned how fragile our community is and how vulnerable human life can be. Although Amherst College does not take a political stance, one of its main goals is to teach students to think clearly and analytically. Dean Lieber stresses that the need for clear thinking is the greatest it has ever been in Amherst's history, and the College is fulfilling its mission.

Fortunately, many students at the College follow Dean Lieber's call to bring light to the world. For example, Zac Mason '08, who was deeply affected by the events of 9/11, is a political science major and studies Arabic at UMass. Mason is trying to learn as much as possible about the world so that he can serve his country. He aspires to work in an advisory post so that he can contribute to a U.S. government that works to prevent something like 9/11 from ever happening again.

Looking back at these past five years, the U.S. has not accomplished the Bush administration's stated mission to spread democracy and freedom across the globe. After 9/11, President Bush and his administration set out to "make the world a safer place for democracy." If I think about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Africa and any other region in turmoil, it is clear that this world is more dangerous and unstable than it was before 9/11. For these reasons, places like Amherst College are now more important than they have ever been. Our students, faculty and administration are involved in hundreds of causes and organizations that work to make the world a better place. Student groups such as Educate!, which provides scholarships for refugees in Africa, or Nuestras Raices, which tutors students in an afterschool youth program in Holyoke, are just a few examples of how the College community is bringing light to the world. Amherst prepares its students to think clearly and to react in this oftentimes confusing and dangerous world, which gives me hope that maybe our generation will be better prepared than our current politicians were to solve the root problems behind terrorism. Terras Irradient.

Serviansky is a sophomore majoring in economics.