Across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center’s twin towers, on the Stevens Institute of Technology campus where he studied engineering, he watched plumes of smoke billow from gaping openings where the planes had just hit.
It was an unusual winter in Washington, D.C. While the city was buried beneath the area’s largest snowstorm in recorded history, AU students relished a week without classes and witnessed the collapse of the Mary Graydon Center canopy as it succumbed to the weight of over two feet of snow, falling to the ground with a resounding crash.
The typical AU student lives an economically-secure life on a tidy campus of material comforts. But for the 106 campus custodial employees who do the tidying, the prospect of a secure and comfortable future remains indefinite.
