What Happened to Higher Ed?

I don’t think his name was Ed, but I sat down next to the young student who was smoking a joint in one of the college’s public student spaces. I followed the familiar fragrance from the hallway to find him sitting alone, quietly and brazenly dragging on the joint. We had a brief conversation. He was flustered, clearly unsettled and struggling. He told me that the pot was what he needed to calm down.

After reminding him that our security officer was just outside and could also smell his sedative, I asked him if he would be interested in speaking to someone. Perhaps someone who could help him. He agreed, and we went upstairs where I shared an office suite with our student relations team.

I don’t know what happened to “Ed,” but I also don’t know what happened to the bigger Ed. Higher Education.

What I do know is how much I’ve grown to love it. How very much I love our students, my supervisor, my colleagues and now my former staff. Those that I can now call friends. You see, today is my last day in a demi-administrative position. A junior dean. A dean light.

What strikes me most as I’ve moved through the grieving process after 22 years together (well, my entire adult life if you count my substitute faculty teaching position in the early 1980’s when I was in my early 20’s, then graduate work in the late 80’s) is the way the people who make up the organization continue to struggle and grow. Growth and renewal is the imperative.

Of the most important lessons I’ve taken is the requirement of tension in the learning process, in the arts, in the disciplines. Tension and friction are critical ingredients for growth and innovation. No, it’s not easy. No, it’s not meant to be.

In Higher Education (as in our culture at large, and cultures globally) we struggle with each other. In an ideal world, these struggles do what they’re supposed to do. They promote positive human momentum toward a more compassionate, equitable world.

So, what prevents the struggle from creating growth and innovation, compassion and equity. Justice and peace. I believe it’s entrenchment. The enemy of growth. The root rot created when the plant is overwatered. Root bound.

This is what I hope to take with me, and what I hope institutions of Higher Education will learn.

We may be subject matter experts, but that does not mean we are global experts on every single thing. Once entrenched in our thinking, our expertise becomes limited to our field of study. We cease to see the connectivity to other disciplines, to our fellow humans.

And we become entrenched when we are unwilling to listen to others. Unwilling to allow ourselves to be wrong. Unwilling to admit so when we realize we are just that. Wrong.

Higher Education is a profoundly hierarchical system with hierarchy buried deep inside the hierarchy. Some-but-not-all act as if faculty are better than staff, and as a former full-time staff (dean light, even) I can tell you this happens fairly frequently. Some-but-not-all act as if they are better than the frontline security staff. And, at the bottom of the hierarchy, you’ll find the cleaning crew, The night staff. Invisible to most.They don’t even exist.

Compound the challenge with the “isms” that infuse every single layer of the hierarchy.

Regardless of station in the higher education hierarchy, regardless of credentials, education, approach, words, the way you present yourself, some will always be treated differently (devalued) because of their sex, their gender, the color and/or shade of their skin.

My hope for Ed is that they/we learn to listen. To receive.To reconsider our position, our stance. Abandon our collective and individual entrenchment.

I know this because I loudly express my opinion in professional settings. And, I’m often wrong. Corrected. Students even “cancelled” me once (a story for another day). Sometimes I’m corrected on the spot, sometimes upon reflection. Acknowledge, apologize, reframe, move forward. Remove myself from the entrenched position, feel shame, apologize. Repeat.

So, let’s make art, not war, y’all. Let’s move forward. Let’s allow ourselves to be in friction and discomfort without avoidance (I know that tactic- seen it too many times, done it too many times). Let’s not dismiss or devalue the wisdom that is to be found everywhere and in everyone. It is there, if we look for it, and allow ourselves to see it. To feel it.

And, if all that fails… hit the dispensary. Just don’t do it in student spaces. We’re here for them, not the other way around. That’s our job.