Twenty-five years ago, I experienced Sept. 11 as a college student. I was a student at Florida A&M University, where my band mates in the world famous Marching 100 were preparing to board a charter bus to travel with the Rattler football team. Then the news came: A plane had struck the World Trade Center. Another had hit the Pentagon. And then another had crashed in Pennsylvania.

Like millions of Americans, I remember that morning vividly. I remember the uncertainty, the fear, the disbelief. I remember the images that seemed impossible to comprehend. And I remember the days and weeks that followed: grief, questions, and alongside the terrible loss, an extraordinary sense of connection among people who under ordinary circumstances might never have crossed paths.

Today I am a college president. And there is something different about Sept. 11 in 2026: Many of the students entering our classrooms were born after the attacks. They know Sept. 11 as history. They may have studied the events, visited the 9/11 Memorial, heard stories from their parents or teachers, or seen the photographs and footage that have become part of their collective memory. But they did not experience that morning.

That raises a question every generation must confront: What do we owe a generation that does not remember?

We owe them the truth. We owe them the stories. And we owe them an understanding of what happened, not........

© NY Daily News