Aided by the light of a single candle, 13 speakers called on hundreds gathered last night on the South Lawn to remember the events of September 11, 2001 and the days that followed.
Vigil speakers, members of a variety of different University organizations and representing a range of different faiths and backgrounds, offered words of prayer, glimpses of their own memories and urgings of tolerance and peace.
Speaker Michael Lusk spoke of a "day that began like any other." He chronicled his morning, watching planes crashing into the two towers of the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon.
"It felt like the world was crumbling around us," Lusk told vigil attendees.
While most speakers offered their thoughts as indirect victims, Commerce student Arshiya Singh said she spoke as a target.
Singh recounted visiting museums in Washington, D.C. with her father, a Sikh wearing a turban and bearing facial hair, eight months after the attacks.
She told how she and her father were followed by security guards in every museum they entered and how her father was asked to participate in security checks twice simply because of his appearance.
"The pained look on my father's face that day is etched in my memory," Singh said.
In the midst of a lineup of students and between musical performances by the Virginia Women's Chorus and the New Dominions, Politics Prof. Gerard Alexander spoke of important lessons to be drawn from the attacks.
"It was an attack on us, on all of us, and the values we hold," Alexander said. "It reminds us there are predators in the world who want to destroy us, not because of what we do, but because of what we are."
Alexander highlighted the "amazing restraint of Americans" following the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. and concluded by encouraging remembrance.
"Lessons themselves do not stay learned forever," he said.
It was in the spirit of commemoration that Kim Brown, a second-year Architecture student and resident advisor, brought her first-year residents to the candlelit memorial.
"It's important in these situations to remember what has befallen us so we don't make the same mistakes again and so history does not repeat itself," said first-year College student Rachel Kallem.
Another of Brown's residents, first-year College student Michelle Owusu, said she wanted to pay respects to the families and the victims.
"This is the only time today I've been able to think about it," Owusu said.
First-year College student Mark Joshua looked on as people began walking onto the Lawn and said he hoped more people would attend the vigil.
"I hope it's not showing people have more important things to do at a time like this," Joshua said.
The Remember September 11 Candlelight Vigil was hosted by Embrace Diversity, a new CIO organized to increase awareness of diversity on Grounds.
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