My memories of 9/11 are distinct. In fact, it feels like yesterday. I was a 19-year-old undergrad at KU, and on that morning, my life changed. By the end of the day, the list of people missing from my town was in the hundreds. My little brother, six years old at the time, had classmates whose parents were dead. My mother, an Episcopal priest in Connecticut, was doing death notifications with the police in our town. So I decided to fly home.

The first day you could fly into NYC’s LaGuardia airport was Sept. 20, the day after my birthday. So I contacted the Red Cross to get a ticket home and flew from KC to NYC. There were four passengers on my plane. The flight attendants were so nervous they had us play trivia over the intercom and when you got a question right, you received a bottle of champagne. We flew over Ground Zero and watched the thick smoke rise from the rubble — absolutely in shock that in just moments, we would be in the thick of it.

Two days later, my parents, little brother, and I went down to ground zero to witness and pray, and hold each other close.

It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Lots of people wore masks to keep out the dust. There were missing posts on every conceivable surface. There was absolutely no traffic in the city. It was deathly quiet. No sirens or construction sounds or horns honking. And it was hot. It got noticeably warmer as you walked closer to Ground Zero. There were groups of people gathered on street corners singing and praying and hugging and howling with grief.

We got as close as we were allowed — about six blocks from the World Trade Center — and when you looked straight down the street, you could see it all. The mess and misery was right in front of us.

Life changed that day, and many people redirected their attention on a personal and professional level. For many in my age group, it meant committing to the U.S. military, and I lost friends to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others committed themselves to medicine, politics, technology, journalism, crisis management, and education. They all play their part. But educators have the job of teaching entire generations about the world we live in — a daunting task, without question.

America has not yet decided how to educate its students about 9/11, how to ensure that we keep the promise we all made to each other on that day — to “never forget.” Educators need to make a choice to teach the topic each year so the next wave of graduates does not go into the world knowing nothing more than what they see on social media “where were you” posts.

We cannot allow the tragedies and triumphs of America post-9/11 to drift aimlessly, hoping that they will land in history books and be taught to our students.

College is supposed to be a place of higher education — a place created with the purpose of teaching generations of leaders. Colleges cannot succeed at this without providing a complex, challenging, and critical examination of the hardest questions facing the human race. These questions must be asked of our students.

Too often, we don’t look to the younger population for answers to our most troubling concerns because they didn’t fight that war, they didn’t witness that day, and they didn’t survive what we did. This is condescending and close-minded. It also keeps them from gaining the knowledge that we who lived it have.

Remembering takes work. But when that work benefits a nation by bringing up questions on such topics as immigration, first responders rights, national security, the war on terror, rhetorical methods in a time of tragedy, the rise of fundamentalist Islam, or the role of the press in covering catastrophe, don’t we all benefit?

There is an assumption that students know about 9/11 because it makes the news every year. But watching the second plane crash into the WTC on recycled news coverage isn’t the same thing as learning about the events leading up to that day, what happened on 9/11, and what policy changes came about because of it.

Colleges should recognize and address this now. It’s not too much to ask that departments develop a method of teaching this topic that fits within the parameters of their overall work. With some effort and coordination, WSU educators have the chance to do their part and teach students about 9/11. I challenge them to do just that.

It’s not too late to do what we vowed to do on 9/11 — to “never forget.” In the words of Elie Wiesel, “Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”