Wednesday, September 26, 2001

I am a sophomore at Starr's Mill High School, and I was taking an English test on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, when our principal's voice crackled on the PA system. He announced that a few planes had been hijacked and had crashed into the World Trade Center. Immediately following that, he made the strict announcement that we would not be able to watch CNN, go on its Web site, or listen to the radio. The only reason he told us about it is because some kids were listening to a radio during class for class work and heard the news; otherwise, we would not have known about it. My school blocked out any communication to the outside world, thus triggering several rumors to spread like wildfire through my school. When I left English, everywhere I listened, people were discussing the events. Some exaggerated by saying that there had been 10 planes hijacked and some were heading to the CDC center in Atlanta. Since no one was able to confirm or deny these rumors, we had to sit for five hours worrying about what was going on in the outside world while our teachers droned on.

This caused several people to become worried about family members and leave school. But the thing that makes me really mad is that we are all at least 14 years old to 18 years old and we were denied to the right to know what events were happening. From what I understand, several other schools in the county were allowed to watch the events as they were unfolding, including some elementary schools. I mean, we are talking about letting five- and six-year-olds watch the plane crash through the WTC.

My school made a wrong decision, suggesting that it does not trust our maturity level and allowing those rumors to be spread like that. Please publish this in hope that in the future when world-changing events are happening we will know what is going on.

Darcy O'Connor

Fayetteville

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