iskew

I completely apologize. I didn't realize that we could forget shit so quickly around here. And by around here I mean the entire fucking nation.

Last night I mused aloud to Cor and her Mom that I wasn't thrilled with intercollegiate Division I sports involving the Hokies not being postponed by at least a week. My rationale was that: a) D1 had the cash to delay it; b) Some of these athletes are 17-18 years old and don't have the experience that a 50 year old administrator would in knowing you need time to grieve; c) If classes are optional, than sports should be too-- and have the wisdom to postpone them (i.e. if rain can cancel a baseball game, can't a hail of bullets?); d) 9-11 killed entire professional games but a single game of squash can't get a delay thanks to the worst shooting massacre in U.S. history?; and finally, the real main reason I worried aloud... e) If the fucking country and media catches you napping at the wheel and letting games like this go on they will move on EVEN FASTER and forget about you.

Cynical? Sure.

I realize and understand all of the good reasons to let these last couple of athletic games go on, but I feel like that last reason against it is pretty damn relevant. No, I don't want to media to continue to ruin any lives, but if you want anything substantial to be learned from this we'll need this thing to stay in the spotlight a while longer.

Proof?

This photo was taken YESTERDAY in New Orleans.


In one of the several Katrina documentaries I've seen there's a great line by Chris Rose about how in the Times-Picayune bullpen they were openly betting how long it would be before a hurricane-related headline didn't appear on the front page of the Picayune; the general consensus was 5 years. They're probably right.

But it took Yahoo! News only 7 days to knock Virginia Tech off.

Of course we will watch history repeat itself. It will only happen in tighter, tighter spirals the more we let human tragedy leave our consciousness as quickly as a cancelled sitcom. I don't want us to dwell, I just want us to understand-- mobilize-- and learn. Because if we're not careful than what changes do happen to higher ed, and I maintain that sweeping ones are on the way, will be made without our input.

Those of you who have attended a residential college campus... I want you to think and imagine with me for a moment. (There's nothing sinister or accusatory here, so take the moment to imagine with me.)

Imagine how the environment felt. Imagine how the air felt as you walked a little crookedly two steps past midnight, back from a party or even a room gathering of a few friends. Imagine the quick aspirate shushes of your friend as you made too much noise in the echoing cinderblock hallway. Imagine how glibly the laughter carried in an empty quad or how hilariously strange the walks of shame were. Imagine the conversations with the retired police officers-cum-security as they shared a cigarette on the steps. Imagine knowing their names.

I have a distinct and numb feeling that we will be able to communicate these feelings in almost storytelling fashion to those being born today.

We're lucky.
Not because we're alive. I want to ask that you pull the camera back farther than that.

The experience of college is about to fundamentally change. The cost, already escalating at rates difficult to comprehend, will no doubt exponentially climb even higher as entirely new infrastructures are created, collapse into old ones and calcify within the permanent skeleton of the institution. Private colleges will be expected to provide the same piece of mind. Trying to do so will ring the final bell for many.

Consider the carbon monoxide detector craze in southwest VA colleges after Roanoke College's issues last summer--- that was a dry run. This will be nation-wide. This will be more akin to our airport safety. Questions will be asked. Answers will not satisfy the litigious public, or worse yet- the parents of Millennials. Moreover one could argue that we have no reason to be sated given the relative disruption this event has caused to the fabric of the country. How many home-grown terrors could have been prevented? McVeigh, Columbine, Anthrax... But in the current political climate this incident gives focus to a wandering opposition to foreign incursions-- it is clear the homefront has not had the attention. Higher Education will become it's pet project.

The profession of college communications has been irrevocably changed as well. The following days, months and academic years will bring (somehow) even more stress on the college communicator, squeezed between an administration struggling with their own addiction to liability fears and the frankness and care that it serves its citizenry. So far colleges have FERPA'd themselves to death withholding information from X, Y or Z entity; soon it will be regulated that you have to reveal certain details by law.

The college presidency will remain as embattled and under attack as it has in recent years, but the changes that will inevitably arrive on campus doorsteps will result in one of the most tumultuous eras of presidential turnover in years. The tough decisions will be weathered just as the president jettisons themselves away to a college that has already made it's changes. There are no kingmakers in this scenario, only sheildbearers.

Meanwhile, the entire financial framework for student loans begins to shake with recent revelations. At first it seemed heinous but isolated. But beyond today's unending news coverage read the smaller headlines implicating a dozen of the nation's top banks in a nationwide financial aid scandal.

Sigh.

College has become a different animal. The next months will release students outside of Blacksburg from the grip of their despair and reminders, but it will only be the summer calm before the storm. September 2007 will result in a wholly different experience for all. September 2008 will further distance itself. And September 2009 will be nearly unrecognizable for those who can now remember their own graduations. But September 2010 more "traditional" (18-22)students will take distance learning than ever-- and that statistic was on track prior to today. Imagine what that statistic will look like under the shadow of the parents today.

I speak for myself on that last note. As I picked up Addy I was attentive to her every smile and laugh. I could scarcely imagine being a parent in this situation, but it overrode my own imagination on being a student. The day was full of anxiety. I know the VT communicators. They are my professional peers. Even being on a college campus today, anywhere in the country, was difficult and full of stress. As the night wore on I could remember my own experiences so vividly. How we had not a care in the world. How my parents wouldn't have a clue as to my whereabouts or activities for days on end. How it didn't seem to matter much. I remember walking among the still calm after a hurricane hit campus. Or during the ice storm of 1996. Mother nature has broken us before and continues to. Man splits you in two; and you almost never recover.

The Millennials fundamentally changed after 9/11/01. Prior to that, several (including the pair that named them "Millenials") predicted a generational profile that was correct for a brief moment in time; until September 10th. They were proven completely wrong after that day. Attempts to define them now are meaningless. Even more, it is important to acknowledge how the other generations will react and alter. Generation X will likely recoil, but this is a horrible continuation of what they have experienced in their adult lives the last ten years. Between grade school and an age when they would likely start raising children they have now witnessed Oklahoma City, Olympic Bombings, Columbine, 9/11, two shuttle disasters, two inconclusive entries into Iraq, impeachment proceedings, questionable elections, the destruction of the Gulf Coast and far more on a national and international scale. Most of those occurred in the last ten years alone. Any Boomer who wishes to peg Generation X as simply cynical can kiss my ass.

And what we are left with are pining half-wits like myself, lamenting change in the void of this sunken heart and stretched soul. Thankfully, my friends working and studying at Virginia Tech were safe. But that comfort is short lived. We are still too close to the fire to realize what has burned.

Our piece of mind is gone.

College has fallen.



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My apologies for these treatises. This is how I have to react. I'm offline Tuesday, so you'll get a reprieve.

There are two things that have loomed over higher education in the last decade; they've circled, even occasionally dipped, but never fully rested to feed and destroy the staid, slow-moving creatures/institutions.

Those two things are winged menaces that have already had their way with the K-12 system. Every single entity in K-12 has seen its confidence torn, it's budgets decimated, it's morale dampened. No one escaped some moderate measure of complete and utter reconsideration and reinvention. Eventually the awful specialness of the flying beasts left, and things transitioned to just become status quo, with administrations and teachers and citizens mumbling, "it's the way it is now" under breath.

The creatures returned to the air and began an ominous track high above higher education. It wasn't a matter of if, but when.

One was No Child Left Behind. It is still in the air.

The other, Columbine.

Today, higher education has seen it's Columbine. This will change life for college campuses as we know it. The slow behemoths will be run down easily. They do not have the same nimble, if weak, bodies of the public K-12 system in America. And if they do not change fast enough, someone may choose to step in and help them change.

It will be like bait for the last looming creature.