Ruvym Gilman was a 19 year old junior at NYU on September 11, 2001, living in the Lafayette St. dorm. 

NYU Local: How do you remember the events of the day?

Ruvym: When I woke up that day and turned on the TV I saw that the second plane had already hit the second tower. I was like “what the hell is going on?” They already knew that this second plane was an intentional attack, where they thought the first one may have been an accident. A few minutes later I got a call from some friends living on the 10th floor — they were in hysterics. I asked the girls “do you know what’s going on?” and they said, “we don’t know — we woke up when first plane flew by the building… We heard a crash and we were watching the towers when the second plane hit it.” The girls were on the balcony, they had climbed out the window, and claimed they saw “black figures” falling from the building, and while I was on the phone with them the first tower fell. I eventually went upstairs and told them we probably should get out of there because it didn’t make sense to stay. Knowing that the Pentagon was hit too, we didn’t know if more attacks were coming. It just seemed to make sense to leave. 

We left the dorm and we started walking up town. Literally it was like the entire city was just walking on the streets. I wasn’t passing people who were covered in dust — I was just walking with people who had seen it on TV and figured it was time to leave that area. We walked up to Washington Square Park. NYU was setting up an emergency response center at what is now the Starbucks. They had TVs there with the news on and water and snacks for people who were trying to figure out what they were going to do. Some people were already talking about going down to search for survivors. No one knew if there were going to be more attacks, if the Empire State building or the Statue of Liberty was going to be attacked. People were getting really angry and being like “that’s it — we’re going to war.” Very youthful outbursts… Like it was a World War III kind of thing. And people were trying to figure out what they were going to do for that night. Would they stay in the city? Would they try to get out? How would they even get out of the city? I was torn myself. The cell phones weren’t working and my family was frantically trying to reach me. I eventually got a call through for like 30 seconds and my mom was insisting I go meet up with my grandfather in Midtown and go home with my grandparents in Queens. I went with my grandfather back to Queens and slept on my grandparents’ couch and watched the news until 3 in the morning. No one really knew what was next.

Eventually we went back to the dorms. I was working at the time down on Broadway, right across the street from the World Trade Center. I was going to have work later that day, on Sept. 11, and work didn’t start up again for another week and when I went back, they had the National Guard down there. It was a steaming heap of rubble… a complete war zone. I remember walking out of my job in the evening time before that date, it was the first real job I had, and I came out of the office at 7 or 8 at night and the WTC was lit up at as a 19 year old I was thinking “wow I’m working in this area, this is so amazing, I’m going to make it in my life,” so not having that anymore was shocking and disturbing.

What was NYU doing in the wake to help students?

They set up shelters in Coles for people who didn’t have anywhere else to go. All of Coles was cots. They had water and were trying to accommodate people and link up people with other students in dorms. Most dorms were open aside from the ones below Canal, like Water St. and Lafayette. NYU was e-mailing out information for students. Whatever RA’s were in the storms went around getting people out of the dorms. Then many students were also traumatized by seeing people jump out of buildings. They had social workers for those kids to talk to. But seeing people jumping out of buildings from far away is still removed, so it’s like watching it on TV. It’s so surreal.

Did people talk about transferring afterward?

Yeah, absolutely. People were wondered what’s going to happen to New York — forget about just going to school. I had never seen New York in the 80s when it was allegedly bad. The New York in which I went to school starting in ’99 was a safe New York. So all of a sudden it was like, oh my god — there’s going to be a terrorist attack here all the time. All of these things sort of entered people’s consciousness. It was a new reality and I’m sure many people transferred after that. For a lot of us though it was more like this is what it is now. Be more conscious of packages left on the street, the whole “if you see something, say something” thing. The “threat level” started entering the lexicon. For many many months it was like, what’s going to happen in New York? Will there be more terrorist attacks? I think when we got a few months out and nothing new had really happened and the wars had started, there was kind of like a rejuvenation where it was like, okay we’re going to get back on our feet.

Would you say you noticed that the student body started to talk about Muslims and Arabs in a new way?

Yes and no. I guess in some ways it did inflame passions of everything that was like look at the behavior of this group of people. It was very hard in that sense for Muslims on campus to defend themselves because it was like, yeah who did carry out these crimes? [For them] it was people connected to [their] heritage, who did it in the name that they claim is their religious doctrine, which isn’t true. NYU was totally on top of it. Right away they said “this is not about Christian or Jew vs. Muslim” but this is about people who have twisted and perverted the Quran. Campus rabbis and priests and imams came together and said they wouldn’t stand for intolerance for a group. I remember that they were very proactive. All of a sudden there was a community — we are NYU and we can’t turn against each other.

My roommates from freshman year were both from Saudi Arabia and they definitely felt more uncomfortable and that more eyes were on them afterward, because they looked like they were Muslim with their darker skin. It was very tense but I think NYU was very proactive about it.

Did it impact the rest of your time at NYU?

After things simmered down a bit… life kind of returned to normal aside from that we realized we lived in a new world now. You can’t live your life thinking there will be a bombing in the subway. You have to go to work and live your life and hope for the best. But then around the city there were so many memorials for all of the people who died and you would see posters plastered everywhere of all the missing people. It was always, always there, visible. At the same time, especially as kids in college, it was a selfish time in our lives so things returned to normal pretty quickly. We went back to classes and continued as normal.

Ruvym is now 29 years old living in Park Slope, working at Birthright Israel Next. Since graduating NYU in 2003 he has received his law degree from NYU Law School.

[Images courtesy Ruvym Gilman. Click to enlarge.]