When terrorist attacks happen, the focus is oftentimes on ‘How could this happen?’ instead of ‘Why’ or even ‘What happens now, how will they deal with this?’.

On November 13, 2015, Paris, France was attacked by ISIS. For the first few weeks after, this news was all over the media, but since then, some have moved on. The media has moved to the next big story, and the previous was all but completely forgotten. If it’s not affecting our people directly, these attacks are lost in our memories. But for the people of France, or even those who know others in France, they are still dealing with the aftermath of the situation,

There is no clear reason claimed yet as to why it happened, but there are many different theories. According to William Mccants, from The Atlantic, some believe that this has been planned for a long time, Isis was just lacking material to pull it off. Others believe that it’s not really ISIS at all. Whatever the reasoning behind this attack is, there are people who are suffering. At least 129 people died. 129 people whom their loved ones will never get back. 352 people were injured and will most likely be suffering through the fear for a while, if not the rest of their lives.

ISIS attacking Paris has affected many people. Feelings of being powerless, unsafe, and traumatized emit from a lot of the victims. Muslims are also negatively impacted by these attacks. Muslims are often stereotyped as terrorists. Since the attack on Paris, twitter has been filling up with new hashtags. Some of these include: #IAmMuslim, #MuslimsAreNotTerrorists, and #TerrorismHasNoReligion. Muslims have been more susceptible to verbal and physical abuse than they’ve seen since 9/11. In just a week after the attacks, 7 Muslim women in New York were counted for being wrongly abused because of their religion.

“The attack on Paris feels close to home and far away at the same times. I have visited Paris twice and Paris will always have a special place in my heart. It was hard to see the news about the attacks, knowing that I might have walked down some of those streets,” said Ms. Elkins.

In May of 2016, Ms. Elkins, Mr. Lou, and Senor Wells have planned a trip to go to Paris with some of the students. These plans have not changed. “I am not concerned about the upcoming trip to Paris, in many ways I’m more excited to visit Paris.” Elkins said. “I love traveling the world and I will not allow terrorist to stop me, I feel like that if I stop traveling that means the terrorist have won somehow and I don’t want that to happen. The company we are traveling with, has a policy that if the location you are traveling to looks like it might be dangerous they will change your trip to a different location.”

Since these attacks of ISIS, the French president, Francois Hollande Wochit, held a memorial for the victims of the shooting and read off all of the names during the memorial two weeks after the attack. The survivors and the family of the killed and injured all attended. Some had to attend by wheelchair, or even stretchers. At the memorial President Francois Hollande made a promise “I solemnly promise you all that France will do everything to defeat the army of fanatics who have committed these crimes, and that she will act tirelessly to protect her children.” He said, “The terrorists want to divide us, to oppose us, to pit us against one another. They will fail. They have the cult of death, we have the love of life.”