Hawk

A dying campus

2009-12-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

This fall I have been back to Aberdeen a few times on family matters. I was there during Northern State University's homecoming weekend, and I found it depressing. As a student, I noted that the campus had a different atmosphere than campuses I visited where friends went to college. NSU, especially on weekends, was lifeless. Other campuses were busy and there was a sense of activity and purpose that I envied. Even during the week, the Northern campus never seemed as busy as other campuses. Now having gone to graduate school at two institutions, I find that lifelessness even more pronounced at Northern.

Homecoming weekend was strange. I went to the Union for coffee on Saturday afternoon after the football game, and the campus seemed all but deserted.   The only people who seemed interested and active that day were groups of Asian students who seemed to be enjoying themselves. Other than their activity, the campus seemed like it was closed down.

During that weekend, I looked up friends and encountered a few professors I knew. One I had never had for class but knew through some extra-curricular activities. I commented on how dead I found the campus in contrast to others on which I have worked. The professor, who is now retired, said that Northern was struggling. While other institutions in the state were showing enrollment increases, Northern was showing a steady decline. NSU, the professor said, believes smarmy slogans and claims of being a top university can compensate for weak and limited programs and a diminished faculty.   Despite its claims, Northern does not have a reputation for strong academics.

I always thought that Northern had an attractive, pleasant campus, so late that Saturday afternoon, I walked around it. Seymour Hall, where many of my professors had their offices, was gone. There was no trace of it. I had heard it was being torn down, but the empty space I found where it had been jolted me. I know that a young professor who had an office in Seymour was found dead at the doorway from a gunshot wound one morning. His death was one of a series of bad news iltems that came from the Northern campus. I wondered if, in removing the building, NSU was trying to erase some bad memories. For me, that empty space where Seymour Hall stood seemed like a memorial to campus failure.

Weeks later, I returned to Aberdeen and tried to use the university library. Sort of. To look up the catalog on the library computers, you need an account. I don't have one or know if I can get one. There was hardly anybody in the library. I left to try to do my business at the public library, where I found access to a catalog of all the state's libraries and found the materials I was looking for.

I went back to Northern the next day because their library held the materials I needed. Again, I noticed that even between classes, there were hardly any students bustling back and forth. And again, the library was almost deserted. I felt like the campus was in the process of closing down.

Our family had a large Thanksgiving gathering in Aberdeen. Once again, I visited the NSU campus, and it was eerie. No activity or signs of life. Not even the Asian students were present.

The place where I went to school seems to be dying. And it makes me sad. Very sad. While NSU was not the most vital and exciting campus, it had its moments. But from what I have observed, those moments are only in the memories of old alums like me.

When a town of nobodies dies, nobody dies

2005-07-06T21:19:00.000-07:00

Morgan Lewis is dead. He was shot in back of the neck. Who cares? He wasn't anybody important. He was a nobody.

Morgan Lewis taught young people. He taught college students and high school kids. They wonder why their teacher was killed outside his office building door. Why should we care what they think? Our lives go on. Unless we're nobodies.

We teach young people. We teach them that Morgan Lewis was a nobody . We teach them that they are nobodies. That's all they need to know.

A death used to be a community event. It meant that somebody was no longer with us. It meant a loss. Death was news. Death happened to somebodies. Somebodies have relatives. Relatives are an essential part of identity. Newspapers used to report deaths and the identities of those who died. Morgan Lewis had no identity. He wasn't important. He was a nobody.

Nobody dies when a nobody dies.

This used to be America. Everybody was a somebody. It put people over the government. Government answered to them. Then government decreed that its subjects were nobodies. The government answers to nobody.

Aberdeen, South Dakota, is dying. Life leaves it in the form of young people graduating from high school and college and moving on and nobodies dying. Why should they care when a nobody dies?

When a town of nobodies dies, nobody dies.

Small creatures scurrying

2005-07-05T21:17:00.000-07:00

You look like a chipmunk living in fear that some superior force will swoop down and snatch you up in its talons. But you are a professor, aren't you? You scurry from student to student and glance furtively around at other professors walking by. Have you ever gone to the rat lab over in the pyschology department and seen those poor creatures cower, and then join others in attacking another that has been weakened?

Are you looking for a weak one? But you scurried into your burrow before I could tell.