College Remembers 9/11 Victims

Westmont students gathered on Kerrwood Lawn to honor the victims killed in the 9/11 attacks six years ago.

Dr. William Nelson, religious studies professor, led a prayer service and moment of silence. Taps was also played at sundown.

Senior Aubrey Bettencourt, president of the conservative club, organized this year’s event. She and several students looked at the 260 page casualty list and decided that the anniversary of the attacks shouldn’t pass as just another day.

“We as students remember 9/11 prominently,” she says. “It was our Pearl Harbor. We can tell you where we were and what we were doing. This anniversary is an opportunity for us to get together and try to grasp how this changed and shaped the world we’re in.”

Bettencourt and two dozen student volunteers placed 1,500 flags on Kerrwood lawn. Each American flag represents two victims and the 115 white flags recognize the nations who lost victims in the attacks on four American planes, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in 2001.

Nelson, a chaplain for the United States Air Force Reserves since 1993, graduated from Westmont, earned master’s degrees from the Institute of Holy Land Studies and Princeton Theological Seminary and received a doctorate from Harvard University.