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Monday, September 12, 2011

Student Communities and Technology Since 9/11 « Student Activism

Student Communities and Technology Since 9/11 « Student Activism:

Student Communities and Technology Since 9/11

Ten years ago yesterday I was at the same place I was twenty years ago — on the Binghamton University campus in upstate New York. (In 1991 I was a student, in 2001 I was advising a statewide student organization.)

I woke up in Albany on the morning of September 11, and drove on empty highways to Binghamton for a scheduled meeting, listening to reports of the attacks on the radio. A few days later I wrote this summary of what I found when I arrived:

Binghamton was surprisingly subdued — much calmer than I’d seen it when the Gulf War started in January 1991. Lots more people have cable in their dorms now than did then, though, so I expect most of the students who were really worried were in their rooms by the phone.

In 1991, if you wanted to keep up with a breaking news story on a college campus, you usually had to go to the