Smeal Op-Ed: The Class Of 9/11

Andrew Bergstein is an instructor in marketing and a faculty adviser at Penn State's Smeal College of Business.

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (May 18, 2005)—This month and next, millions of young college graduates who had just began their collegiate journeys on 9/11 will take their diplomas and head into the "real world," a place many fear will conspire to rob them of their freedom and youthful good looks but where they hear the pay is better and the restaurants are more expensive.

To many of the graduates I have spoken to the past few weeks, the second Tuesday of September of their freshman fall seems like a long-ago blurry memory.

It seemed like a fine time to be a college freshman. The dot.com bust was old news along with annual federal budget deficits. High school economics teachers had taught them about cycles, and this one would be going in their favor. Their parents had good jobs and investment portfolios. Peace and prosperity were the steady states of their lives.

The first weekend football game and parties ended, new books were bought and the campus map consulted. Parents were long gone in their minivans and SUVs. They carry their book bags from the predominately freshmen dorms. It's a crystal clear, warm sunny Tuesday morning on campus.

8:45. Someone's cell phone hums. It hums again. I can't believe this kid is so rude that he's actually going to take a call in class.

"Sorry, but it must be important. It's my older brother."

Another cell phone rings. A laptop pops open. No one moves.

"I can't get through to Mom. My Dad's office is on Wall Street; his phone is dead. Come on Mom pick up the phone. My sister just started a new job and moved into the city; how far is that building from Greenwich Village. My whole town's volunteer fire department works for NYFD including my cousin. Damn it Dad, answer. Mom, answer the phone already... Mom... Mom..."

A kid who has never shaved says, "This is our Pearl Harbor. This is what my Grandfather always told me about. I don't want to leave college and go to war. I don't want to die." He looks right at me for reassurance. I think of my own father who went from an 18-year-old playing touch football on a fraternity lawn to a badly wounded Marine lieutenant on the beach at Iwo Jima.

I go to each of my classes that morning and am surprised that they are well attended. Like primal animals, humans seem to gather together when in danger. Most are in shock. As the week passes, they will come to class in even greater number; some crying. It eventually becomes an opportunity to teach about how the global business climate will be impacted.

My generation remembers exactly where we were and how we heard that President Kennedy had been shot. When asked, the Class of September 11th now mostly recalls somewhat vague emotions rather than actual memories of that morning and the weeks that would follow. Maybe it was because they spent 24-to-48 straight hours watching the explosive amount of media that permeates every pore of their bodies. Maybe they just got numb. Maybe they think it really doesn't affect them—since there isn't a military draft. I wonder if they have blocked it out.

Many of the students in Guard and Reserve units who originally were scheduled to receive their diplomas this spring have been called to active duty. A few are back trying to catch up. Those who have returned don't seem to want to talk about it to their non-veteran classmates. One young returned Marine told me, "look, they don't need to know what it looks like to see someone die in the seat beside you." Now seniors, my students respect people in uniforms; they just don't want one for themselves despite the hard-working recruiters and innovative advertising.

After a severe downturn from 2002 to 2004, hiring of graduating college students is recovering. The members of the Class of September 11th I know seem ready, willing and able to work and more often than not are thankful and respectful. Some even use the word "sir." Did these habits start in pre-school, while they spent after-school with their grandmothers while their parent(s) worked, or are they maybe thankful to have been in a safe harbor during the last few years?

It's probably too early to tell how this year's graduating seniors will view things when they are in their own "real world." And only time will tell if they think and act differently as employees, citizens, voters, friends and family members in part because the second Tuesday in September of their freshman year didn't turn out to be just another nice, sunny day on campus.

REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.

Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the eBusiness Research Center, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.

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