ONE YEAR AFTER

ONE YEAR AFTER

 One year after

By Anna Stubblefield
Herald Staff Writer

Tolerance, faith and understanding resounded across Brown's campus Wednesday.
President Ruth Simmons' speech outside Manning Chapel urged students to defy indifference. DELTA TAU FRATERNITY MEMBERS gathered to remember their fallen brothers. And the Rev. Janet Cooper Nelson, University chaplain, encouraged students to huddle together and reflect during a few minutes of silence at an evening candlelight vigil.

Simmons congratulated Brown students, as well as many Americans, for striving to learn about unfamiliar cultures and religions in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.

"We have the option to judge the difference between the people we were on that day and the people we are now," Simmons said. "Marking the anniversary of Sept. 11 allows us to measure our own growths as human beings.

Americans feel less free now than they did in the years before 2001, Simmons said, and we must balance our safety with our regard for fundamental liberties. We must always maintain vigilance, she said.

About 300 students huddled together at a 10 p.m. candlelight vigil on the Main Green. As students struggled to keep their candles kindled, Cooper Nelson reminded the community that it too was windy last year at the candlelight vigil held days after Sept. 11, 2001.

She soothingly urged students to stand close together and to make a new friend.
Students said they attended the vigil to feel part of the Brown community.

"Exhibits and lectures are great, but you are not necessarily connecting with the people around you," she said. "When you are standing next to someone who is holding a candle, it's reassuring and it really does give you a sense of that Brown community.

Earlier Wednesday evening, Cooper Nelson presided over a short memorial ceremony on Patriot's Court for the SIX BROWN ALUMNI who died in last year's terrorist attacks. Four were brothers in the DELTA TAU FRATERNITY.

Fraternity members appeared with patriotic ribbons and tended to a TREE PLANTED on Patriot's Court in honor of their fallen brothers.

Charles Kimes '80, a Delta Tau alumnus, thanked the current members for their dedication to the memory of the four victims. Ryan Gill '03 expressed his gratitude toward the University.

"It means a lot that the University recognizes that our lost brothers were not just victims - they were heroes," Gill said.

This appeared in The Brown Daily Herald on Thursday, September 12, 2002

 Anna Stubblefield / Brown Daily Herald