Across the nation, people sat glued to their televisions in shock as the country transformed in a matter of seconds. Hundreds of then-Brandeis students gathered around a small television in the Usdan Student Center to watch as the World Trade Center came down.

"Because so many of our students have Northeastern roots and because the attacks happened in New York and Washington, it just seemed like there was an additional intensity to it here," Dean of Student Life Rick Sawyer, who watched the twin towers collapse with the rest of the Brandeis community, said of the atmosphere on campus on Sept. 11, 2001.

That afternoon at 2 p.m., a shocked Brandeis community came together again in front of the Goldfarb Library, where then-University President Jehuda Reinharz and the University chaplains spoke about the events of the morning.

While neighboring Bentley College cancelled classes and Harvard University made its classes optional, Reinharz made a controversial decision not to cancel classes, a decision also made by Tufts University, Boston University and Boston College. "I just felt this is not a time for students to be alone," Reinharz said, according to the Sept. 14, 2001 issue of the Justice.

The administration worked to seek out students who lost someone in the attack and offer help in any way possible, according to Sawyer, who met with two students who lost family that day.

"One was a young man, a freshman who had just gotten here. My memory is that he was a single child and his father worked in the World Trade Center. … I met with him and he told me he was going home. … I remember him telling me with his father gone, most likely, his mother would need him and want him there, and he wouldn't be coming back. And he didn't," Sawyer said.

Another student, a first-year from Long Island, lost her brother, who had just started work as a stock broker in the World Trade Center at the time. While Sawyer recalls only meeting the two students who lost immediate family members, he said many others knew at least one person who was killed in the attack.

Community advisors stationed themselves throughout the dorms to be available to students, and first-year community advisors walked up and down the halls to check on their students. Students signed a "petition for responsible action," which was sent to then-President George W. Bush and Massachusetts Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, and Waltham Group held a blood drive so students could contribute to the relief efforts. A few BEMCo members left school immediately to travel to Ground Zero and find a way to help.

"I distinctly remember one of them walking in and just saying, … ‘We're leaving Brandeis and going down there. I don't when we'll be back and what they'll let us do, but we're going down as EMTs, and we're going to try to do something,'" Sawyer recalled.

And while the administration was briefly concerned that issues might arise for the Muslim population on campus, ultimately, "This is Brandeis," Saywer explained. "Those students told me there was never any issue. … They were just as upset as anybody, and we were almost self-embarrassed that it had even crossed our mind," he said.

With the nation in panic and a country on high security alert, the senior administration met the morning of September 11, 2001 with a large agenda of serious decisions to discuss. Frantic parents sent e-mails to the school and many proposed shutting things down.

"Obviously Brandeis is a very high profile University. We have a lot of Jews [and] international students. [It's] a microcosm of everyone from everywhere," Director of Public Safety Edward Callahan said in an interview with Justice.

Though the University worked to keep things calm and somewhat normal on campus, important measures were taken to tighten security at Brandeis as most of the country began to reevaluate its security. The University created a crisis communication team in addition to improving the campus notification systems, which resulted in the external siren system on campus today.

A check point at the main entrance monitored all traffic and pedestrians entering campus, staffed around the clock by Waltham police officers and Brandeis public safety officers. Callahan received updates from Department of Homeland Security and trained staff building captains who would know what to do in an emergency. Many of the security messages that go out on campus today are a result of the events ten years ago.

"It was a tough day to get through. Not just the day but the weeks, the months, the years afterwards. … We were in a time period when people would report suspicious packages because they were afraid of mail bombings. … It was a tumultuous time," Callahan said.

 A decade later, this past Sunday, hundreds of Brandeis students gathered around the heart shaped Chapel's pond in an event coordinated by the Interfaith Chaplaincy and the Student Union to remember the day in 2001.

 "Historians all around the world called 9/11 a defining moment. A day which would define our generation. How we acted, how we thought, how we believed, all in the aftermath of September 2001," Herbie Rosen '12 said in the opening speech of the event.

Elementary-aged children unable to grasp the enormity of the historic tragedy at the time when the World Trade Center came down, Muslim, Jewish and Christian students alike sat huddled together on Sunday, no less confused by the events of 2001, but marked by a sense of purpose as adults.

"9/11 is what happened to us. 9/12 and every day there after is how we respond to it," President Lawrence said at the event, remarking on the loss of national innocence on 9/11, similarly lost in his parents' generation on Dec. 7, 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor and in his own generation on Nov. 22, 1963 with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Unable to ever return to Sept. 10, 2001, Lawrence stressed the importance of our actions in the aftermath, both as part of society and the smaller Brandeis community.

"It's an incredible community, and we cannot waste it. In our small campus of 3,000 something students, we have proven time and time again that we shall be here in support of one another, no matter what the circumstances may be," Rosen said of the chance to act together. "Consider what your contribution might be while appreciating the opportunity and fortune to be here as a community."

Echoing the sentiments of Rosen and Lawrence, Rawda Aljawhary '13 and Rachel Downs '13 presented Brandeis with an interfaith challenge posed by President Obama to 2,000 colleges and universities across the country to do a year of interfaith service. "Sept. 11 can be a day that reminds us of divisions. …. As Brandeis students this is not how we face tragedy," Aljawhary said. Along with 200 other schools, Brandeis is planning a year of interfaith dialogue and programs to create understanding of the diversity on campus.

Following the vigil students celebrated the importance of community at a barbeque co-sponsored by the Department of Student Activities and Chabad at Brandeis.

"I think that with all the challenges we've talked about [which] are real and we have, that we can take enormous pride as a society and as a campus in how we've responded," Lawrence said.

-Andrew Wingens contributed reporting.