When the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed Sept. 11, 2001, Jordan Humphrey was sitting in his seventh-grade reading class.

"I remember exactly where I was," he said: first row, second seat from the right. And when he went home that night and the air above his Avella home was silent, devoid of planes, he knew his world had changed.

So at 7:30 tonight, Mr. Humphrey plans to keep a yearly ritual alive by attending a Sept. 11 remembrance at Duquesne University, where he is a 21-year-old senior.

Eight years after the attacks, however, he worries that others have forgotten. He said that while in the past such a service would have been a certainty -- and widely attended -- this year, student organizers threw the event together in less than two weeks, and they are apprehensive about tonight's turnout.

"I'll just be so happy even if we get 50 people to come out, because I'll be so proud of those 50 students," said Chris Inzirillo, the 22-year-old graduate student behind the remembrance.

Ceremonies in remembrance of 9/11 will be held across the state tomorrow and Gov. Ed Rendell has ordered all flags at state facilities to be flown at half-staff to honor those who perished in the terrorist attacks.

And yet Mr. Inzirillo is concerned that he is fighting an uphill battle against absentmindedness and apathy on college campuses.

But he said he hopes that even if people do not plan to attend the ceremony, they will stop and stay as they pass through Assumption Commons, the central campus location where he and other organizers will plant hundreds of tiny American flags in the grass.

When Mr. Inzirillo proposed the ceremony, James Regar, the 21-year-old president of Duquesne's Student Government Association, was immediately taken by the idea.

ROTC members from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University will hold a similar event on the Cathedral of Learning lawn this morning.

Mr. Inzirillo and Mr. Regar did not want Duquesne to be left out: Their ceremony is an attempt to remind their peers of an event that shaped their youth.

"We will never really forget the lives that were lost that day, and that their sacrifices weren't made in vain," said Mr. Regar.

The ceremony will begin with the National Anthem and continue with poems, readings and a period of reflection when participants will join hands around the flags, said Mr. Inzirillo.

The Rev. Sean Hogan, Duquesne's executive vice president of student life, plans to give a prayer.

"It allows us a moment to reiterate our need for commitment and service to our nation and the world," he said.

And at the end of the ceremony, the participants, who have been asked to wear red, white and blue, will make a human flag.

Mr. Inzirillo brought the structure of the ceremony with him from Christopher Newport University in Virginia, where he graduated in May.

Talking with friends on Sept. 11, 2006, about his frustration that so many people forgot to wear red, white and blue as he always did, he decided to hold a remembrance ceremony that night.

He said he had contacted students at other colleges via Facebook to try to convince them to host similar events, but Duquesne was the first to do so.

To Mr. Inzirillo, the remembrance is personal. Raised in Mahopac, a suburb of New York City, he felt the impact of the attacks when the father of one of his friends died in the towers.

He said the moment was "a wake-up call."

He remembered that during the following days, "Everybody had American flags out on their front porch. Now, because there's not a tragedy anymore, all that stuff has gone away."