What happens after the lights go out on a college campus?

The closing of Presentation College is a stunning development for higher education in the Aberdeen area.  Although its primary reason for being established was to train medical workers, it expanded its curriculum to give students a grounding in the arts and sciences.    During my time as a professor at Northern State, I had many interactions with staff at Presentation, who attended some of the same professional activities I did.  My ex-spouse taught a math class there.  From that experience, I recall that the college hired a dean who created dreadful turmoil among the staff.  He didn't last long, but his time on campus raised questions about what characteristics the college projected about itself.

At the time, I was an officer in the state universities' faculty union, and was asked to consult along with some other colleagues about personnel issues at Presentation.  When disagreements came up, there was no due process, and people would just get booted out the door.  There really was not enough faculty there to consider organizing, and most of the teaching seemed to be done by adjuncts.  Most of the faculty I knew were Catholic nuns.  Some former instructors had a bitter attitude toward Presentation, and one could hear a disparaging undercurrent circulating in the community.   Still, the college had some hard-working and effective staff members, too, who provided good educational experiences for students and bolstered the reputation of the institution.  It seemed to be holding its own.

However, we live in uncertain times for many institutions.  The Covid pandemic has jeopardized many institutions and left failures in its wake.  And the college-age population has diminished.  College officials are noting declining enrollments, rising expenses, and effects of the pandemic among the problems confronting them.   But other factors are at work, too:

Numerous factors challenging small private colleges existed before the pandemic. Pressures stemming from college costs, student price sensitivity and economies of scale in operations predate the crisis. So do declines in birth rates around the Great Recession that have long been predicted to drive down the overall number of high school graduates available to enroll in college in many parts of the country. 

The closing of a reputable college is tragedy.  It diminishes the community it served.  Colleges serve aspirations.  They are a means of realizing hopes.  They provide a means to leave a community, but they also provide the substance for building a community.   

A problem not addressed in the closing announcement of Presentation is what happens to the campus and its buildings after the college is shut down.   The college has some fairly new suite-style dormitories, which could be converted to apartments, but it also has an athletic dome and, of course, classrooms and laboratories.  What will happen to these facilities?

The press coverage of the circumstances of the closing is sparse.  It did point out that the college experienced enrollment growth to 625 students in 2020, but a decline when the pandemic stuck.  Last fall's enrollment was down to 517.   The news release from the college stated, “Its rural location, difficult for many out-of-state students to access, was already a known factor, along with a significant dependency on tuition revenue and gifts. The impact of COVID exacerbated the college’s challenges.”    The Best Colleges analysis points out that colleges show  "the telltale signs of stress [which] include lacking a national reputation, relying heavily on tuition income to fuel the school budget, discounting tuition above 40% to attract students, having a small endowment and significant debt, and lacking online programs to produce revenue."   This fits Presentation, except it does have online revenue from its single productive program.

Aberdeen seems not to be a good setting for a college.  Whereas Northern State in the past seemed to be a solid performer in attracting students, its attendance ranking among sister institutions is now lagging.  It has the least amount of full-time equivalent students of the state public colleges.

However, it does provide a perspective on Presentation's situation.  Tuition and fees at Northern is advertised at $8,845.  Presentation is cited at $22,006.

Money is clearly the problem behind Presentation's demise.  The remaining question is, what happens to a ghost campus?

An increasingly familiar sight across America are the abandoned shopping malls.  No one seems to know what can be done with them, except eventually demolish them.  What can you do with an abandoned college campus?

Did you have yourself a malicious little Christmas?

 While we were in the season for celebrating peace on earth and good will to all people, some of our political leaders demonstrated what grotesque, malevolent assholes humankind can be.  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) led the exercise in Christmas spirit when he put about 130 migrants who crossed the border from Mexico on a bus with instructions to dump them off at Vice President Kamala Harris' house in Washington, D.C., in 18-degree (F.) weather.   Fortunately, some groups who had learned of the matter met them and provided food and shelter and assistance in resolving their plight. Groups that believe in the humane, respectful treatment of fellow humans are being put to the test on many fronts in this age of Trump.  A current White House spokesman called the incident  “a cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt.”  It marks the basis on which America has become divided.  On one hand,  there are people who maintain some moral rectitude in their relationship with others; on the other, there are those who measure their sense of a successful life in terms of how  many people they disdain and humiliate.

 Our politics is no longer defined by love of country, but by who we hate.  Our country's leadership changed two years ago, but the antics of Donald Trump still dominate the news.   His recent events of note included having dinner with a notorious anti-semite and calling a New York Magazine reporter  “a shaky and unattractive wack job”. He casts a dark shadow of malicious dementia over a country struggling to find its moral and intellectual bearings.  Trump is the voice of intellectual and moral ignorance which is the state in which a significant portion of the American population lives.  Although he left office, the press tracks his words and actions.  He gives voice to the anti-democratic citizens who prefer an autocracy to government that operates with the permission and direction of the citizens.  In the latest Republican fiasco of trying to find Congressional leadership, the GOP extended its routine of bumbling and denigrating large segments of the human population.  The GOP has abandoned any pretense of advocating for good will and peace for all humankind.  It has devolved into an incredibly unintelligent quest for power and status.  Its actions resemble those of grade school bullies fighting over who will be the meanest presence on the playground.

The MAGA age is devoted to the cultivation of pettiness and meanness as the preferred human behavior.   MAGAs think they comprise an elite.  However, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, was sent to prison for five months for tax fraud.   Trump was caught mishandling classified documents, and now questions have been raised about some classified materials uncovered in offices once used by Joe Biden.  People will use these incidents as the basis for the perpetual piddling duels that make up much of American political discourse.  During the holiday season, it was difficult to avoid the petty meanness that so many Americans have adopted as their standard demeanor.  After four years of Trump, they seem to assume that they have been given permission to be the assholes they really want to be.

And so, we are at the beginning of a new year which already promises to be one of resentment and recrimination.  It has shown the absence of good will and the presence of malignity.  In America people have the freedom to express stupidity and malice, and some are exercising that freedom to its fullest extent.  

Happy New Year.

Should we celebrate Christ's offenses at Christmas?

The cradle of democracy?

Many people in our time have little knowledge and understanding of the larger significance of Christmas.  Their celebrations center on Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and gift shopping with particular attention to whether the amount of money spent will exceed or drop below the previous year's spending.  They forgot that the day is supposed to mark the birth of a personage who was eventually executed for what he preached to the world.

A problem with Christmas is its December 25 date.  The gospels which recount the birth of  Christ state that his birth occurred during a trip Joseph and Mary were taking to pay a tax bill. Caesar had decreed that the people of Judah were to report for a census and the payment of a tax.  Scholars point out that the tax season was in the fall right after crops were harvested when the people had the money and the time.  So, in the autumn with Mary burgeoning with child, the couple were trekking to make a rendering to Caesar, and the reason the inns were all booked was because a lot of other folks were traveling for the same purpose.   

How, then, did Christ's birthday celebration get set on December 25th?   The pagan world long before the advent of Christianity marked the winter solstice with a celebration that involved decorating with evergreens and other artifacts as reminders of the green and fruitful seasons.  On the darkest days of winter, people need reminders of warmth and light to buoy the spirit.  Officials connected the major events of  Christian history with the festivals that pagans derived from the natural calendar.  So, Christmas comes in the dead of winter and Easter comes during the bloom of spring.   The seasons become the platform for the messages of Christianity, and the people regard them as revelations from God, not merely the flux of the seasons.  The Christian story fits deftly into the narrative of the natural world, and its message is constantly before the people.  The leaders of the early church understood effective communication.

The church embraces the Christmas story as the story of redemption of humankind.  Presentation of that story celebrates the birth of Christ, with little reference to his death.  The church establishes Christmas as a season of joy and downplays the political and social implications of Christ's work on earth.  It is wary about broaching the reasons Christ was crucified.  The real reasons for Christ's execution was because he posed a threat to the power and authority structure.  He was a rebel who challenged the integrity and motives of the ruling class.  He was given the title of Prince of Peace, but he agitated the status quo of his time.  That babe in the manger became the scourge of Galilee.  He offered the promise of peace, but he made people uncomfortable in the process.

The message in Christ's ministry addressed the afterlife, but it also introduced and spread the principles that are the foundation of democracy in our contemporary world:  freedom, equality, and justice.

Freedom: "It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 5:1)

Equality: "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (Matthew 6:26)                "1 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?" (James 2:1-4)

Justice: "Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute,” (Psalm 82:3).

We do not associate the premises of democracy with Christmas, but they are an important part of what Christ and his followers taught.   They are among the offenses for which Christ was sentenced to death. And they are essential to peace on earth and good will to all people.  

On Hating Joe Biden

While browsing through the social media, I noted some intensely hateful remarks against Joe Biden.  People may disagree with him, but he is an affable man who does not inspire vicious hatred among rational and civilized people.  But some of the remarks were of the kind of malicious intensity that drove an idiot to break into Nancy Pelosi's house and attack her 82-year-old husband with a hammer.  That comment, however, is unfair to idiots, because they are not generally driven by such degenerate violence. Nevertheless, such violence is to be expected in a country that cherishes and protects the Second Amendment so that 47,000 gun-owners can shoot down fellow Americans each year.

Our country's motto printed on currency, "In God we trust," should be revised to a more accurate "You can't fix stupid."

Some people will respond to my observations by citing the fact that a lot of people detest Donald Trump.  He is a prodigious liar.  He openly demeans and abuses people.  Before he entered politics, he established a reputation for stiffing contractors and other businesses and engaging in shady business practices.  There is a huge matter of well-documented bad character behind the dislike of Trump.  He is a moral and intellectual malignancy. In fact, to admire Trump is to call one's own character into question.  He embodies the malice that Lincoln worked to remove from our social and political transactions.

Unbridled hatefulness has changed the complexion of our politics.  The attitudes some Americans have toward their diverse fellow Americans is lethal. It is a cancer that spreads and threatens us all.  I used to be somewhat proud of having served my country in the military to help preserve freedom and the right to maintain diverse ideas and culture.  Now, when I think of that service,  I can only hum to myself the song "What a Fool Am I."

Where did all the patrol boys go?

I went to grade school at Garfield in Moline, Illinois, and for the sixth grade my family moved.   I transferred to Lincoln and automatically became a patrol boy.  Patrol boys served as crossing guards at the street intersections around the school.

At that time, kids went home for lunch, except those few who brought their lunch in a brown bag because no one was at home during the day to make lunch for them.   The elementary schools did not have food service facilities back then.  So kids made the trek to school and back twice a day.  The patrol boys' job was to see that the kids safely crossed the streets at designated crossings.  The patrol boys had to be on duty before school and when school let out to oversee the crossings.  They wore white canvas Sam Browne belts to designate their authority and responsibility.   There were so 

many crossings around Lincoln that it took all the boys in the sixth grade class to cover them.   I was elected lieutenant of the patrol, which may sound like an honor, but really wasn't.

There were two officers for the patrol, captain and lieutenant.   The captain was in charge of the morning shift and the lieutenant the afternoon.   Being in charge meant that you had to check the crossings before students started arriving to be sure each crossing had a guard.  If a guard didn't show up, you filled in for him.  If more than one guard was absent, you had to report it to the principal's office so that substitutes could be arranged.   Thus, the officers had to be the first students to come to school and, often, the last to leave.  No kids really wanted to be an officer.   It was considered a sucker's job.

Eventually, the crossing guard role was taken over by adults who are paid.  But back then, there were no organized activities for elementary students that interfered with crossing guard schedules.  And kids didn't resist or complain much about being crossing guards because every sixth-grade boy did it.

Likewise, there wasn't much problem with getting kids to follow the patrol boys' directions because they were taught it was all a matter of safety, and standing in line a bit and following directions was just something you did to make it through the day so that you could do what you wanted.  If some kid reacted with that no-one-tells-me-what-to-do attitude, he would be reported and his parents would be asked to make arrangements for him to get to and from school so that he wouldn't interfere with other children's safety.  Discipline had a totally different aspect then, because the elementary schools were neighborhood institutions.  School was a integral part of daily life in the neighborhood, and was not separated from the relationships and interactions that comprised neighborhood society.  If a kid acted like an asshole in school, he would be known as an asshole throughout the neighborhood.  School consolidation changed the social role played by the elementary school.

Girls were not at that time involved in the patrols, although I recall that one of the grade schools in town did not have enough boys to fill the roster and included girls.  My female classmates were content, however, to expend their time and energy on other pursuits.  They did not have any patrol boy envy.

By the time my children came along, patrol boys had gone extinct.  Those lines of children straggling along the sidewalks around the schools have largely been displaced by hordes of automobiles searching for places to drop off and pick up children.  

Folks generally accepted the custom that they would contribute to the tasks maintaining the safety and well-being of the community.  That attitude extended to the military draft when we were inducted into military service.  But I recall vividly when during a social occasion shortly after I was released from active duty in the Army, I asked a man if he had served and where.  He rather snottily replied that he knew what he wanted to do with his life and it didn't include floundering around in the military service.  It became a bit of a vogue of the time to regard those caught in the draft as feckless dupes who had no purpose in their lives.  We veterans learned to be very circumspect about talking about our military experience.  Among many people, it was not something to be proud of.  

Among a class of conservatives,  public service is regarded as designating an inferior servant class of people.  That class of people thinks the only use for terms such as equality, justice, and honor is to dupe the gullible into thinking they live in a democratic society.  Meanwhile, those conservatives set up a system of privilege and power to keep that servant class in its place.  In their authoritarian hierarchy of fools, even a bumbling moron like Donald Trump can rule.  A large segment within the GOP accepts the abrogation of democratic rule as a means to gain  and stay in power.  In their minds, the serving class doesn't count.  And that means the patrol boys and those who get conscripted into service, those whose service protects the ruling class.

The problems arise when the patrol boys and the enlistees realize they are protecting those who think the protectors don't count.  The protectors decline to protect those who discriminate against them, and democracy must deal with some harsh matters of inequality.  And the question is raised:  can democracy survive?  There are no patrol boys who have reason to protect it.

The Reign of the Stupid

 A fact that gets lost in the angry rage of partisan politics is that Donald Trump is an astoundingly stupid man.  The press focuses on his malevolence and his lies, but tends to ignore that a person must be supremely stupid to do and say the things he does.  The most disturbing aspect of Trump's lack of probity and intelligence is that it appeals to at least 73 million voters.  The United States has abandoned its claim to be the world model for the decencies that comprise a functioning democracy.  While the  political parties wrangle over migrants trying to get into the United States, there is a group of the more astute who are seriously discussing that it has become a nation to consider leaving.  The press has run many articles recently about indications in America that democracy is trending toward failure.  

Maggie Haberman of The New York Times has covered Trump since he became a presidential candidate.   She just published a book on him:   Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breakings of America.  As the title indicates, her book sees the United  States as a severely wounded nation.  As with other books by reporters about Trump, it is filled with accounts of Trump saying and doing things that are stupidly foolish.

In an interview in The Guardian, Haberman was asked if there were any incidents in Trump's behavior that stood out or surprised her.  She said such an occasion  was at a news conference on Covid-19 in which disinfecting surfaces with laundry bleach to kill the virus was brought up,  Trump asked his pandemic advisor at the conference if anyone had thought of injecting bleach into patients to control the virus. Clearly stunned at the stupidity of the question, she muttered "not as a treatment."  That was a moment in which Trump revealed on camera to the world that he is mentally incompetent, and that in electing him president, America revealed that it is in a state of intellectual destitution.  

While some people are not quick-witted or in command of much knowledge, few people are inherently stupid.  They understand that a successful society is one based on sound thinking and relevant information and they a try to make their essential choices on that basis.  Stupidity is a matter of choice.  And that is the regrettable aspect.  Many Americans have chosen stupidity and its associated feeble-minded malice as the goals of their lives.  They see freedom as their right to live mean and hate-filled lives that permits them to castigate people for the color of their skins and possess a content of character teeming with malice.  They elected a president who could lead them in displays of  petty malevolence and pride in stupidity.  

Trump cannot be blamed for the demise of democracy, however.  His malice and incompetence fulfill the aspirations of about half of America.  For a time after World War II, the people in charge of things called that the era of America's greatest generation.  But whatever greatness the American people can claim is being smothered in the fog of conspiracy theories, a nice name for outright malicious lies, generated by people who take great pride in being deplorable.   

The most lethal enemy of America is not communism or totalitarianism, or any form of government that fosters  oppression and injustice.  It is the stupidity, a virulent mental disease which reduces those infected into a violent, rabid lunacy.  As the late comedian Ron White observed, you can't fix stupid.  It is a state in which communication and cognition are not possible.  Although the founders of America conceived of a public education system that might prevent utter stupidity, some people regard it as a human right to be protected.  Schools, in what minds they have left, are a threat to it.

On January 6, 2021, we saw the power of the stupid demonstrated.  Yesterday when Nancy Pelosi's 82-year-old husband had his skull fractured with a hammer by a devotee of  stupid, we were presented with an insight into what the stupid can do.

And if you resent hearing that America may be coming to an end, that's one of the symptoms.

With malice toward all.

 It takes some massive deformities of mind and character to make a person as despicable as Alex Jones.  It is a serious mistake to attribute his malevolent dementia to a  matter of political choice.  There is a deeper, fundamental moral defect that drives him to do what he does.  As a nation, we mount extensive responses when the nation is physically threatened, as we are doing with the Covid-19 pandemic.  More than a million Americans have died from the disease and the fatalities are down to about 375 per day.  We haven't conquered the disease, but have adjusted to living with it, and progress is  being made in prevention and treatment.   We have still to confront the pathology that possesses people like Alex Jones.

We have laws that make the intentional spread of germs a crime:

SDCL 34-16-2. Release of disease germs as felony. Any person who releases or spreads any disease germs intending thereby to accomplish the infection of one or more persons or domestic animals is guilty of a Class 2 felony.

We do not have laws regarding the spread of mental pathogens that make minds unsound.  And the intentional contagion of mental malignancies among the public is what Jones and his ilk do.

People like Alex Jones cite the First Amendment when what they say and do is challenged.  They insist that the right to free speech gives them the freedom to say anything they want.  There was once (and still is in some states) laws against criminal libel.  They largely have been suppressed because aspects of them seem in violation of the First Amendment.  Some legal scholars hold that the civil libel laws are sufficient to deal with destructive acts of libel, although that is demonstrably not true.  Among people like Jones, malicious libel flows like beer at a college fraternity kegger.  

When people tell malicious lies about people and events in our country, we have applied the misleading term "conspiracy theory" to what they are saying, putting them in the category of a superstition.  Denying that the Sandy Hook massacre of children and teachers did not happen, but was a stunt , is easy to refute from the testimony of those who experienced it.  The damage done by the deniers of the mass shooting is a crime as lethal as the shooting itself.  While Jones has been successfully sued for almost a billion dollars for the damage he has done to the lives of affected people, he still is free to spread malice and hatred.

The First Amendment permits freedom of speech, but people still are accountable for what they say.  Jones' spreading of lies should be seen as a crime, just as the intentional spreading of disease germs is.  And people who commit felonies have their freedom and rights suspended so that they cannot commit crimes on the public.  While juries have awarded a billion dollars to those affected by Jones' pathogens, those awards are more symbolic than real.  It is unlikely that anywhere near that amount of money will reach Jones' victims.  And Jones is still free to criminally assault innocent people with his verbal pathogens.

We live in a time when the country is bitterly divided.  Malice-inspired lies play a major role in that division.  Those lies are not  harmless.  They cripple and kill.  And we tolerate them as "conspiracy theories."  

A country that that can't tell the difference between inane babble and lethal crimes against humanity doesn't have much of a future.