Twenty-three years ago, the tragic terrorist attacks on September 11 (9/11) resulted in the death of nearly 3000 people. Many teens have grown up hearing the saying “Never Forget”, a phrase that honors the victims while always remembering 9/11. However, some MFS students believe that the school did not recall the anniversary of the attacks the way they would have liked.
When Upper School Director Noah Rachlin was asked if he felt it was the school’s responsibility to educate students on the September 11th attacks, he answered it was a “pretty challenging question.” Rachlin noted, “One of the things that we are trying to navigate as an Upper School is that different things matter differently to different people.”
Rachlin elaborated, saying that while “[some students] may have a connection to those who lost their life … There are also students who now have a distance, whether that’s temporal or physical or otherwise, which means that it can be just as impactful as another day for them.” Rachlin also added that addressing what “matters to students is something that we’re [the administration] always trying to be mindful of.”
Liam Richards ’26 said he believed that MFS did not do a sufficient job acknowledging the anniversary of 9/11. Richards claimed that “the bare minimum [response] would be talking about it in Meeting for Worship or Community Time.”
But that week’s Meeting for Worship, which happened to fall exactly on the day of 9/11, had the meeting query: “What are the ways you take care of yourself? What is your happy place?”, relating to mental health instead of the anniversary.
Worship Planning Committee Clerk Chloe Marshall ’26 explained, “9/11 was also the same as Suicide Prevention Day and [Worship Planning Committee] had received a request from Mental Health Forum to have a mental health-related query.”
Marshall asserted that the query did incorporate the remembrance of 9/11: “9/11 was a very traumatic event, and during the intense political climate of the world right now it can be important to take a step back and focus on your mental health.”
During a Diversity Committee meeting on the same day, the September 11th attacks were more clearly acknowledged. Diversity Clerk Miles Wilkins ’25 said, “As [Diversity Committee] usually begin[s] with a moment of silence, Sophia [Lalani ’25, Diversity Co-Clerk] thought it [would] be best to recognize the lives lost on 9/11 by taking an extra long moment of silence for the group to reflect.”
Bodhi Vance-Harris ’26 said he found it “ironic that the only time 9/11 was mentioned throughout the day was in a student-led discussion” and that he felt as though “a little more could’ve been done, especially by the faculty at school.”
The ways in which important events such as 9/11 are discussed, or not discussed at all, can potentially leave many different impressions on those in the community, especially newer members. Upper School History Teacher Whitney Davidson, a new faculty member this school year, shared that “as a newcomer, I was surprised not to hear anything about [9/11]. At the end of the day, I realized and was like ‘Wow, it’s 9/11 and no one has said anything.’” Davidson said her previous school, Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, held a “memorial ceremony every year.”
Richards stated that “even though [he] was disappointed with the way MFS handled 9/11 this year, [he] hopes that in the future the school can acknowledge it in a way that is beneficial to both the students and the memories of people we’ve lost.”
