We were planning to spend three months talking about rhetorical context and the ingredients for formalized public speech, and I thought it would be useful to know how they entered the audience for public discourse about September 11 and the emotional impact of the event in their own lives.

Most heard about the attacks from family members; many were simply told to "turn on the T.V." 

When asked to describe their emotional responses to the sights, sounds, and messages of the morning of September 11th, students couldn't provide fine-tuned answers.  The sources of their information on that morning came from the telephone and the television.

In contrast, the dominant undergraduate culture of the campus emphasized the Internet as the primary medium of information for news events.  Students were more likely to have read about September 11th from web pages than newspapers, and were more likely to have discussed it in e-mail than over the telephone. 

By the end of the quarter, the exploration of pathos became the chief theme of the class.  Students brought in images, URL's, and media stories to discuss.