These are the Terrorists Whom UMass Will No Longer Allow to Apply
These are just some of the kinds of students that the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has decided will no longer be allowed to apply (h/t Ali Gharib):
They were teenagers living in Tehran when the Twin Tower’s fell at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, but what they saw haunted them even 6,000 miles away.
Now as doctoral students at the University of Massachusetts, Soroush Farzinmoghadam with the help of Nariman Mostafavi and others have designed a tribute to that day – an installation that will be on display in the Campus Center through Feb. 27.
Farzinmoghadam created “UMass 9/11 Intervention” for his master’s thesis in architecture. He is also a doctoral student in regional planning.
The installation’s dimensions of 9 by 14 are drawn from the month of the attack and the sum of all of the figures in the date 9/11/2001. The sculpture features seven columns – one for each of the four flights, one for the Twin Towers and one each for the Pentagon and the field in which the fourth plane crashed. Their shapes and placement relate to certain moments in time that morning.
Each victim is represented by a glowing strand of fiber optic cable hanging from the structure’s ceiling, with its position and length determined by factoring in the age, year and birthplace of the individual who died. The shorter strands represent children.
“We didn’t do this as Iranians,” said Mostafavi, a doctoral student in building and construction technology. “We are human beings.”
“You don’t have to be American,” to be affected by the tragedy. “You just have to be a human being.”
He said he wants to “address the similarities” between people. Farzinmoghadam, 30, said he is hoping “to use the arts as a tool that helps the conversation.”
The program in building and construction technology is in the department of environmental conservation, which is in the College of Natural Sciences, to which Iranian students will no longer be allowed to apply. which has specific departments—not environmental conservation, but others—to which Iranian national students will no longer be allowed to apply.