James F. Brennan: Personal Lessons From the Kent State Tragedy
[James F. Brennan is provost of the Catholic University of America.]
When I was 9 years old, my dream job was to be the person who calls off school when it snows. Now that I have that job, it stinks. Over my 10 years of canceling classes because of snow, my decisions have rarely met with universal approval: Without fail, some loud constituency is fast to complain.
This past winter, the Washington area was hit with an extraordinary three blizzards, two of which occurred within a four-day period, and I ended up canceling six days of classes. Upon our return to class, and after much consultation with colleagues, I distributed a plan to make up the lost days, one of which involved taking back a university holiday on the day after Easter. For varied and goofy reasons, this one aspect of the plan produced some negative reactions, most of which fell within my level of tolerance as a provost who's been around the block a few times.
But one reaction, in the form of an e-mail message from an undergraduate, struck me. According to this student, my decision was capricious and insensitive, showing that I just didn't care about students.
The accusation felt like a punch in the stomach. It brought me back almost 40 years to a Monday afternoon in Kent, Ohio, at the height of spring on a breezy, sunny day, when it seemed that nothing in the world could go wrong. Of course, that sense of a pacific spring was illusory because much was going wrong that day. The invasion of Cambodia by U.S. forces had precipitated student protests around the country, including one at Kent State University, where I was a graduate student in the psychology department. On May 4, the Ohio National Guard lobbed tear gas to disperse the crowd. The wind blew the gas in all directions. And then came the gunshots....
I trace my touchiness to the four students who died that May 4th of 1970—with so much in their future. Two of them, Allison Krause and Bill Schroeder, remain vivid in my mind's eye because I had them in class earlier in that academic year. Now that I am a father and a grandfather, privileged to witness the growth of those whom I love, I am ever more poignantly aware of the magnitude and senselessness of the loss. Along with marveling at the growth of my own family members, I've watched my students grow beyond their undergraduate years, and I've seen them move into advanced study and careers, most of them successfully....
I didn't respond to the e-mail message from the irate student who accused me of not caring after I took away a holiday to compensate for a snow day. She couldn't have known that the tragedy at Kent State is always with me. Its anniversary reminds me of how precious young life is and what a privilege and responsibility it is to usher our students into the futures that are theirs to live.
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
When I was 9 years old, my dream job was to be the person who calls off school when it snows. Now that I have that job, it stinks. Over my 10 years of canceling classes because of snow, my decisions have rarely met with universal approval: Without fail, some loud constituency is fast to complain.
This past winter, the Washington area was hit with an extraordinary three blizzards, two of which occurred within a four-day period, and I ended up canceling six days of classes. Upon our return to class, and after much consultation with colleagues, I distributed a plan to make up the lost days, one of which involved taking back a university holiday on the day after Easter. For varied and goofy reasons, this one aspect of the plan produced some negative reactions, most of which fell within my level of tolerance as a provost who's been around the block a few times.
But one reaction, in the form of an e-mail message from an undergraduate, struck me. According to this student, my decision was capricious and insensitive, showing that I just didn't care about students.
The accusation felt like a punch in the stomach. It brought me back almost 40 years to a Monday afternoon in Kent, Ohio, at the height of spring on a breezy, sunny day, when it seemed that nothing in the world could go wrong. Of course, that sense of a pacific spring was illusory because much was going wrong that day. The invasion of Cambodia by U.S. forces had precipitated student protests around the country, including one at Kent State University, where I was a graduate student in the psychology department. On May 4, the Ohio National Guard lobbed tear gas to disperse the crowd. The wind blew the gas in all directions. And then came the gunshots....
I trace my touchiness to the four students who died that May 4th of 1970—with so much in their future. Two of them, Allison Krause and Bill Schroeder, remain vivid in my mind's eye because I had them in class earlier in that academic year. Now that I am a father and a grandfather, privileged to witness the growth of those whom I love, I am ever more poignantly aware of the magnitude and senselessness of the loss. Along with marveling at the growth of my own family members, I've watched my students grow beyond their undergraduate years, and I've seen them move into advanced study and careers, most of them successfully....
I didn't respond to the e-mail message from the irate student who accused me of not caring after I took away a holiday to compensate for a snow day. She couldn't have known that the tragedy at Kent State is always with me. Its anniversary reminds me of how precious young life is and what a privilege and responsibility it is to usher our students into the futures that are theirs to live.