It’s been only one year since Northern Michigan University’s Northern Lights Dining hall served students the sour meal of “sausage bombers” on the day when the nation remembers the thousands of people who died during the World Trade Center terrorist attacks: the Anniversary of 9/11. 

A majority of the students on this campus, along with myself, thought that this dish was a heinous way to honor those we lost. Although it was deemed as a ‘slip up’ made by the NLD staff, their timing seemed impeccable. The staff still, to this day, have never issued a statement on the naming of the sandwich or apologized for the oversight. 

I woke up this morning bright-eyed, hopeful this campus could redeem itself from its major mistake made on last year’s anniversary. As I was taking my light stroll to my 9 a.m. class, my serene music was interrupted by the blaring sounds of fire trucks barreling their way into campus, and shortly after, a fleet of police cars flooding the campus parking lots. 

I figured a freshman chemistry class didn’t go to plan. Someone probably just made a toxic gas and the building had to be evacuated, which is no biggie. It for sure wouldn’t be the first or last time that’s happened.

While sitting in my class, halfway through it, a friend of mine showed me their YikYak, the anonymous site where students can post pictures and message threads for anyone in the community on the app to see. You can imagine the horror I felt when the post they showed me was the infamous photo where President George W. Bush was informed the Pentagon was struck with the caption ‘Sir, they hit Weston’. 

For the past two hours, as of the writing of this column, this post has been number one on the trending page on the app with over 200 students liking the post. 

Students have also begun to speculate what caused the incident that led to the need for the evacuation. Some say the construction tripped an alarm, there was a chemical leak in a biology closet, or some just like to blame the freshman chemistry students.

Despite the fact there is no concrete reason for what took place to cause the alarms at Weston, what we do know is that, yet again, this campus has had bad timing for events on this calendar day. 

NMU can put another unfortunate year in the books for having strange occurrences on campus on the Anniversary of 9/11 that make people scratch their heads and question the morality of those around us. 

Perhaps next year we’ll exceed expectations and have a fairly normal day where nothing controversial happens regarding the attack, but with my experience on this campus, my hopes are beginning to dwindle while my judgment continues to soar high.