About UCEA

President's Letters

The Big Not-So-Easy

In light of recent events, how can I write this column on any topic other than the hurricane whose economic, political, and social winds will not quiet? But what can I say? Maybe three simple and personal observations:

The convenience of "un-"

In the aftermath of astonishing events we seem prone to over-interpret and underanalyze-a usual temptation drawn from frustration, anxiety, and dismay. We need to simplify matters to make them tolerable. What strikes me listening to myself (and others) after Katrina is my excessive use of un: I call the events unimaginable, unthinkable, unanticipated, unreal, and unavoidable. We have since learned that the storm was indeed imaginable and thinkable and anticipated, and at least some of its worst outcomes avoidable. While being surprised is a sincere emotion, it is also convenient; and maybe one of the principal roles of education should be to resist the lazy language of convenience and the convenience of lazy language.

Evacuation vs. Mobility

Who knows how many of the tens of thousands, rich and poor, left homeless throughout the region will return home, and whether we can recreate the uniqueness of New Orleans? Who knows the fate of the badly damaged colleges and universities throughout the area? And who knows the altered futures for displaced students, many of whom have restarted their academic careers at new institutions? I am proud of the efforts of so many in higher education to help displaced students transfer (at least temporarily) to our institutions and allow them to continue their education without interruption. But this got me thinking about the role of higher education beyond triaging students singly during a crisis to its historical mandate of promoting social mobility among those less advantaged.

We all believe that educational opportunity is a cherished promise offered to those who want to construct a hopeful future. And that is a promise kept by many of our colleagues, perhaps especially those of us in community colleges and public institutions. Yet is it possible that the promise is at risk of being tarnished in some of our institutions, when we increasingly associate status with selectivity or how many people cannot get into our schools? I think that CE especially has the obligation to redress the inattention of much of higher education to the life chances facing the urban and rural poor. CE units should be the antidote to the disturbing trend in higher education to calcify, rather than dissolve inherent advantage.

Now as Then

As a college junior, I was an exchange student at Dillard University, a Historically Black College founded in the 1930s. This was a formative experience for me and I am reminded now of a comment made by my roommate when I suggested he join me for a trip to the French Quarter during Mardi Gras. He said everyone knew that the city-like any American city-was deeply divided by class and race and that people experienced the city very differently. He said he had no interest in experiencing that part of the city during rowdy times. It became clear to me then that the city was the Big Easy for some, the not-so-easy for others. I am saddened by the fact that the Dillard campus suffered significant damage but more so by the fact that my roommate is still probably right.

Maybe the right "un" word to describe what we have witnessed is that in our great country, chronic disadvantage is unacceptable. We in CE must insist on this point-however inconvenient to our institutions and our society.