“At first I thought it was a joke,” sophomore Amit Bhatla said. “I was checking Twitter and I saw ‘Osama bin Laden’ trending, along with statuses saying he’s dead. So I searched The New York Times and read the headlines. That’s when I realized it had to be true.”

Late Sunday night, President Barack Obama addressed the nation and confirmed reports that U.S. soldiers had killed the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden. According to the statement, bin Laden was killed in a firefight within a compound 100 miles outside of Islamabad, Pakistan. The attack was authorized by Obama on Friday, and was carried out Sunday by Navy Seals.

For 10 years, American intelligence organizations have been attempting to track down bin Laden. After years of false leads, two wars and trillions of dollars, in the words of Obama, “Justice has been served.”
Ours was the generation that came of age during the international war on terror, and bin Laden’s face exemplified “the enemy.” Today’s freshmen were in kindergarten when the towers fell, and now, 10 years later, NW students share their reaction to bin Laden’s death:

“I can sympathize with people saying that we shouldn’t celebrate someone’s murder, but he had to be killed, because it’s under the utilitarianism framework: the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. And, under that logic, I think it’s justified.”
— sophomore Amit Bhatla

“I think it’s great that he’s dead and I’m glad, but I would have liked to have seen him captured, put on trial and made to pay for what he’s done.”
— sophomore Aaron Messick

“I think it’s funny because I figured it out from twitter and Facebook before any news site.”
— junior Andrew Konecny

“The first thing I thought about was tweeting it.”
— sophomore Rena Soller

“I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as we want to make it. It’s a very symbolic thing, but at the same time, he doesn’t hold enough power anymore to cripple al-Qaida. I can see how it could be a very good thing for the victims of 9/11 and those fighting or who have been lost in this war — how it can be a closure for them. But other than that, I’m not really for revenge.”
— senior Luke Meyers

“It’s about time, but it was not really justified. I don’t like people justifying a killing with the eye for and eye logic,”
— freshman Libby Fischer

“I’m glad this happened. It shows that Americans never give up.”
— junior Isabel Miller said.

“My first thought was, ‘Yeah! America,’ and then my second thought was, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen next?’”
— sophomore Alex Dang