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[Eva Marie Harris/The Daily Pennsylvanian]

I had originally planned to use this column to write about a different kind of tragedy.

A few weeks ago, you see, an old high school classmate of mine -- a friend and football teammate of my brother, a suburban kid who used to spend his weekends and summer days hanging out in my basement -- was found dead in his fraternity house at the University of Maryland.

Though authorities were never able to pinpoint the cause of death, they initially speculated that it may have been related to alcohol poisoning. Then the focus moved to drugs. Then to a mysterious physical altercation. Then -- and now, as best as I can tell -- to a dead end. They just don't know what happened.

I wanted to tell Alex's story because it's one that resonates so loudly in college communities. Alcohol and drugs, after all, are major players and major threats around our campuses, and the death of one of our own -- especially under such suspicious circumstances -- always seems to arouse interest on a very personal level. It was a story we could learn from, and it was one I think this community needed to hear.

But the events of Sept. 11 changed my plans. Suddenly, Alex's death didn't seem quite as significant in the big picture. Suddenly, the importance of one person just didn't ring as loud in the context of thousands.

I spent my summer working in New York City, in a building right off of Union Square. I lived at 636 Greenwich St. -- one block from the Hudson River, and a little more than a mile up the road from where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

Every morning when I left for work, I would stare down Greenwich Street at the concrete and steel giants that cast shadows even as far north as my building. In a city full of skyscrapers, there was always something different about the Twin Towers -- something bold, that reinforced the "This is my city" attitude that so many New Yorkers exude.

And so, when I was awaken on the morning of Sept. 11, and when I first caught a glimpse of those majestic buildings falling to the ground, it felt as if a little part of my identity -- as a New Yorker, and as a three-month neighbor -- was falling along with them.

It's not often that I use my column to write about personal experiences. Columnists, I've always believed, are part of The Daily Pennsylvanian to present opinions and perspective on the main issues of the day. My position as editor of this page, furthermore, has always forced me into writing broad, impersonal commentaries on broad, impersonal subjects. Besides, trite stories from my uninteresting personal life just never seem to fit.

But over the course of the last few weeks, I've seen a profound change in the way that Penn students respond to the events around them. It's forced a change in the way I organize this page each day, and it has further deepened my respect for this great institution, as well as the people that roam its halls day after day. It deserves mentioning.

For many of us, " the news" is an inherently distant concept. Even here, amidst a relatively small community in a tiny little pocket of one city, we have trouble associating ourselves with the world around us. Administrators become cold, distant figures when the DP reports their salary figures. We tend to deify certain athletes. And even our student leaders, whose paths we often cross at fraternity parties and football games, often seem far-off and aloof when they talk about restructuring committees and improving "the community of scholars."

The recent tragedies changed that. Whether because the terrorists struck such awesome and familiar national symbols, or because they struck us when we were least expecting it, our collective reaction has been an overwhelmingly personal one -- one that has bound us closer to the community around us.

That's why many of us cried when we first heard the tragic news. And it's why my e-mail box, admirably, grows wider every day with the reflections of so many students and alumni -- all of them anxious to share their thoughts during these moments of universal anguish.

What we have seen, I think, is quite similar to what I felt when I first heard of Alex's tragic death. He grew up around the block and went to school with me. When he died, I read the newspaper accounts with a level of interest and concern I rarely do. I wanted to make sense of it in a way that could help others.

The World Trade Center tragedy was much like that, except on a scale far more enormous. In many ways, we all related to the Twin Towers. Whether or not we had even been to New York, we all seemed to know someone there; to remember some visit to lower Manhattan; to connect in some personal way to the grief befalling our friends and neighbors.

For good or bad, this tragedy has brought us together like nothing else. We respond to dissent more personally and more passionately. We take time to show our concern, and to speak out when mistakes -- like one which ran in a column yesterday -- ruin overriding messages. We generally show a greater concern for the people and culture around us.

That, if nothing else, should be what we learn from the aftermath of Sept. 11. Hopefully, the lesson will allow us, one day, to go back to a time when one person's tragedy finally makes us sit up and think again.

Jonathan Margulies is a senior Management concentrator from North Bellmore, N.Y. and editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian.

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