Charles Kunz, a liberal arts sophomore, was 25 miles away from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He remembers the pungent smell of smoke permeating his hometown of Rye, New York. "It changed New Yorkers," he said.
But that's not the case with most ASU students.
A recent e-mail survey performed by the Cronkite School's Precision Journalism class revealed that most students feel removed from the attacks. Only about 10 percent of ASU students worry about being a victim of a terrorist attack. Even fewer -- 5 percent -- said the threat of terrorism has caused them to change their daily routine.
Kunz said this is because many students didn't experience the attacks firsthand.
"With a large part of our student population being from Arizona and another large part being from states such as California, Illinois, Minnesota and Washington, a lot of students were far removed from the attack."
Kunz was one of 157 students who took the e-mail survey between Sept. 3 and 6. The survey has a margin of error of 7.8 percent.
Jason Gerrol, an ASU law student who participated in the survey, gave another reason why students haven't changed their routines. "Considering the prevailing sense that there is little, as individuals, we can do to prevent an incident, we choose to live our lives as we did prior to 9/11."
Another respondent, electrical engineering junior Donald Patterson, said there is less reason to fear an attack. "I project that the increased training for domestic security and the hyper-sensitivity of the public has had an effect on the cowardice of the terrorists."
While most students don't fear another domestic attack, neither do they regard the national color-coded terror alert system as helpful. Sixty-seven percent of respondents say they don't pay attention to the changes in color.
"The color system lends itself too easily to ridicule and parody," said Harvey Smith, a graduate student in liberal arts and sciences.
Gerrol said he doesn't have much faith in the code because "the notion that security officials have enough of an understanding of terrorist activities to designate when we are in a yellow alert or orange alert, for instance, is simply unrealistic."
Sandy Almendarez is a journalism senior. Reach the reporter at sandra.almendarez@asu.edu
