Jay Lagare

No, not December 7, 1941 which was the date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I’m referring to September 11, 2001. The date a group of Islamic extremists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

I remember it so clearly. My officemates and I were playing Starcraft when we heard the news over the phone. We checked the news websites and they were all unreachable. Overloaded. SMS messages soon came pouring in. One said: “The World Trade Center is no more”. I didn’t believe it.

Only when I got home and watched the replay of the planes hitting the towers and their crashing down did it finally dawned on me that the World Trade Center was really gone. And that these events has just changed the world greatly. This attack awakened the United States to a new, previously ignored, threat.

Five years hence and we wonder if the awakening has really done much. Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose. Afghanistan is still in turmoil. It can even be argued that the Middle East is more strife-torn than ever. All because of the United States’ War on Terror.

But does this mean the United States should have done nothing? No. It just means that it needs to do more and that the rest of the world has to join in. Not doing anything is just letting the threat grow to eventually come out again more destructive than ever. This threat is not just against the United States. It is a threat against the whole world. Or at least the part that wants freedom.

Last tuesday evening, I went to school and enlisted for the trimester. No, there’s no online enlistment. But normally, it’s a relatively quick and easy affair. Unfortunately, there was a power outage and most of us weren’t able to complete the final step: payment of fees at the university cashier. Since, most– if not all– of us MBA students are working and living far from the campus, this is definitely an inconvenience. But not exactly the school’s fault.

Fortunately(?), I have an exam on the next day at 6 to 8 PM. I figured it would be good to go to school early and pay before the exam. But I forgot the check at home so I didn’t go to the cashier. No, they don’t accept credit cards or bank transfers. Some of my classmates who did go to the cashier found out the hard way that the cashiers, although open, do not accept payments on wednesdays!!!

Yesterday was the last day for regular payments. So I made it a point to go to school after work so I can finally pay and not get fined. I got there around 5:30 PM only to see my classmate Carla sitting on a bench in front of the cashiers reading a magazine. She told me she has been waiting since 5 PM because the cashiers will only accept MBA tuition payments for after 6 PM. Gelo, another classmate, walked in soon after. He told me he was there earlier at 3 PM, had queued up along with other students paying their dropping fees, and was told the same thing when it was his turn. O_o

My and my classmates’ experience would not be out of place at a government office but not in a supposedly progressive-minded institution as a university, one of the “premier” ones at that. No wonder it is deteriorating.