September 6, 2002

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff,

At this time last year, Sept. 11 was just another day on the calendar. It was to be an unremarkable Tuesday, with classes, meetings, lab work and the other routine events of the early days of a new academic year.

That all changed, of course, that terrible morning. As unimaginable horrors unfolded in New York, northern Virginia and rural Pennsylvania, the university's routine -- indeed, the world's -- came to a halt.

As members of the Johns Hopkins community, we suddenly faced the loss of a valued staff member; a number of alumni; and family members and loved ones of our students, faculty and staff.

As members of the wider community of humanity, we had to cope both with a vast calamity and with the incomprehensible and obscene notion that people exist who would deliberately cause such a catastrophe.

Sept. 11 would never again be just another day on the calendar.

As the first anniversary approaches, members of our community have planned observances around the university. Each of us will have the opportunity to express our thoughts and emotions in our own way. There will be silence; there will be music. There will be prayer; there will be reflection. There
will be opportunities to join together; there will be opportunities for solitude.

These observances will culminate that evening in an outdoor vigil on the upper quad on the Homewood campus, to which members of the university community from all campuses are invited.

The schedule as we know it now is posted at
<http://webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/today/sept11.cfm>. Other events are still being finalized; they will be posted at the same site as information is available.

I ask all faculty and supervisors to be as flexible as they can, so that students and employees who wish to participate in these activities may do so.

This anniversary provides us with a chance not only to remember and mourn, but also to take stock of where we have come in the past year and to look ahead to where we are going. I look forward to sharing this opportunity with many of you.

Sincerely,

Bill Brody