Tag Archives: #hocoblogs

That Last Baby

Posted in Children, Uncategorized by

sweet newborn norah

There is something bittersweet about a last baby.

When any baby arrives, you know that she – and no other – was the person your family needed. Each child of any family, no matter the number, adds a new dimension, filling a space that was empty. But your last baby completes your family. She draws the final line of the cube; she is the last missing piece.

And while there is joy – and a measure of relief — to be found in this completion of your unit there is also a feeling of loss. Each milestone your last baby passes is the last milestone your family passes. Knowing this brings you a constant, often irritating, urge to feel the fullness of your time with your child: to burn the magical moments into your memory so that you never lose them.

On the other hand, that same urge to brand moments into your brain is also there when you are waking up every hour to nurse that last baby for seemingly endless months. It helps you “treasure” those less pleasant moments, like when that last baby turns two and finds the Sharpie you thought you hid, or when she turns three and you are carrying her kicking and screaming out of a store. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing you will never have to buy diapers again.

*  *  *

Today, my last baby turns five and the yearning to be able to bring back her babyhood, to revive the time when I was everything to her has been strong.

But I’m not giving in to it. Because this last baby of mine is becoming a person I want to know better. The depth and beauty of her personality are just beginning to show.

norah 5 post

She has spirit and charm and an irresistible spark of impishness. Her voice is cartoonishly cute: sweet, with a hint of rasp, and she uses it all the time. She notices things that other people don’t. She craves the comfort of her parents’ arms, and she hugs her sister with crushing love. She does nothing by halves. She is kind and curious and spectacularly bright. She growls when she is angry. She has brilliant blue eyes, but it’s in her smile that you can see her soul.

She is my last baby, and today she is five. In a few short months, she will start kindergarten, where the path to independence begins. The heartstring connecting us will stretch, steadily, irreversibly, as she comes into herself.

The urge to etch moments into my memory won’t go away. I don’t want it to. There are years of last moments — precious and painful and irritating and fun – ahead of us.

norah horse 2

What Donald Has Done for Us

Posted in Politics by

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Earlier this month, Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out of the Republican primary race, leaving Donald Trump the presumptive nominee.  The day Kasich made his announcement,  I turned the radio to my favorite NPR station, hoping to catch a little more news about his withdrawal. Instead, I tuned in just in time to catch the end of a news story about a man with stomach troubles who, frustrated with conventional medical treatments, attempted a DIY fecal matter transplant as some sort of homeopathic digestive cure-all.

I’m not a DIY fecal matter transplant expert, but from what the reporters said, the process involved soliciting donor poop samples, making gel caps from the sample selected, and consuming said capsule, thereby introducing “healing” bacteria from the donor poop into his guts. In other words, the guy ate someone else’s shit with the expectation that it would cure him of his ills.

Disgusting, yes. But it was also a remarkably apt story to hear on the day the world learned that a Donald Trump presidency could very well be in our future.  It’s a solid metaphor for what I perceive as the mindset behind those who support Trump: through dissatisfaction with the state of our country combined with mistrust of the establishment, people are ready to swallow Trump’s BS, fully believing — despite a total lack of evidence — that Donald Trump is the one man who can solve our problems.

I cannot fathom ever being inspired to perform a fecal matter transplant, DIY or otherwise, to treat my very real and persistent GI problems. I equally cannot fathom ever being inspired to support Donald Trump as a person who can lead our nation through our very real and persistent socio-political conflicts and economic turbulence. It is next to impossible for me to understand how any reasonable person could be inspired by the person or politics of Donald Trump.

To be perfectly frank, Trump supporters are an enigma to me. They appear in my imagination as gun-toting bogeymen, who are either ignorant hicks, racist xenophobes, or opportunistic arseholes (or some combination thereof). After all, only people who don’t know any better, or who really hate brown people, or who care more about the advancement of their own ideals than they do for democracy or peace could support a foul-mouthed, disrespectful, unstable narcissist like Donald Trump.

Right?

Maybe not.

It’s easy for people like me who live in progressive, diverse, and relatively economically secure communities to be dismissive of – or afraid of, or prejudiced against — those who find merit in Trump’s blustering confidence and so-called policies. In many ways, I come from a position of privilege. Society hasn’t failed me, or my family, and I don’t feel as though social changes have violated my core values: I don’t feel powerless in a system that is rigged against me. Donald Trump doesn’t appeal to me because I don’t need what he is selling.

Trump’s personality is a magnet for bullies and opportunists, for the Crabbes and Goyles of the world, and I feel no guilt in consigning a large number of his supporters to a category of people I cannot respect. But I also think there is more complexity among his followers than many of us would like to admit.

I was listening recently to an interview with a man who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary but who plans to vote for Trump over Hillary in the general election. To him, Hillary represents a corrupt status quo that has not and will never work for the benefit of the people.

In another interview, I heard a Trump supporter say that, although he did not agree with many of Trump’s policy proposals he did trust his strength of character. Trump’s brash self-confidence, and his fixedness of purpose were appealing to him, and they trumped whatever reservations the man had about the kinds of policies Donald would pursue.

Donald Trump’s popularity among so many people hasn’t come out of nowhere. We have been paving his road with gold for years now. The last few decades have been marked by upheaval on every level – in politics, in our economy, in technology, in communications, and in our social mores.

And as we have progressed through this upheaval, swaths of our citizens have become disaffected with our political system –  a system that, I think, many of us increasingly fail to understand. We have also  fallen into the habit of “otherizing” those who insist on taking a path that opposes our own. Rifts have become ravines, leaving a vacuum of space perfectly fitted to a person like Donald Trump.

And so, here we are, with a man despised by millions of people across the political spectrum dominating the American political stage. We tell ourselves that this guy is NOT American; that he does NOT represent who we really are; that he has vaulted into popularity in spite of us.

But, as much as I hate to admit it, Trump does represent us, and he is here because of us.

And that is what Donald has done for us: along with all his swaggering, all the cocksure, embarrassing BS he has brought to the forefront of national politics, he has brought something else too — he has given us himself as a mirror, and shown us that he is really nothing more than a reflection of who we are becoming. This is his gift to us.

It’s depressing for people like me to think that we have done anything to deserve Donald Trump as a candidate for president. It’s depressing as hell to think we might actually deserve him as a president.

But there is also a perverse sense of hope that arises when we accept responsibility for the Donald. It means that  Donald Trump (and everything he represents) hasn’t invaded our politics in some sort of hostile takeover– we invited him in. And if we invited him in, we can kick him out.

donalsdolored

Trump’s candidacy also gave us this image of him as Dolores Umbridge and it never fails at making me laugh. 

 

Bath Time is Crazy Time

Posted in Children, Family, Uncategorized by

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There is something about warm, unchlorinated water in a porcelain tub that brings out my kids’ inner Kraken. I don’t know what it is.  Maybe the opportunity to be fully, freely nude releases inhibitions along with common sense. Maybe, like a lion tracking its prey, they can sense that a long day has weakened my defenses. Maybe they just really enjoy the thrill of saving their wildest antics for the one place in the house in which they could drown.

All I know is that bath time is crazy time.

My sweet little water monsters insist on bathing together. They are terrified of the shower, so they bathe exclusively in the tub. I let them, despite the havoc they wreak, because honestly you have to choose your battles.

They use this shared bath time as an opportunity to do things they can’t do anywhere else, like fight over whose side of the tub has more water, or who is stealing whose bubbles. They take advantage of the bathroom acoustics to practice their most blood-curdling, bone piercing screams, joining their voices into a wail like the death omen of a banshee.

I say things like, “don’t drink that! Why are you drinking that?! Bath water is butt water.” And “stop laughing at your sister drinking butt – I mean bath – water. It’s not funny. Seriously, it’s not funny.” Or, “God made our bodies beautiful but please let’s keep our private parts to ourselves.”

By the time they get out, I am done – but the bath time/bedtime marathon is not. They still need to get dried and into pajamas. And it is at this point, when I am at my feeblest, that my younger daughter unleashes the full power of her inner demon.

Released from the confines of the tub, she moves to the second phase of her bath time ritual: the escape. Yesterday, I turned my back on her for two seconds and she was gone. I followed her soggy footprints into her sister’s room, where I found her hiding behind the curtains, her little butt pressed up against the floor to ceiling window.

It’s a cat and mouse chase of Tom and Jerry proportions, and by the time I finally catch and clothe her, I am spent. I am nothing more than a shell of myself.

But then this happens.

Norah Sleeping

 

And I am overwhelmed with love and in awe of the fact that these little Krakens are mine.

 

Mother’s Day

Posted in Adoption, Children, Family, Grief, Holidays, Motherhood, Uncategorized by

My youngest daughter woke me up this morning with a whisper – “Mommy! Is it morning time yet?”

I answered yes, groaning just a little as she climbed over my ribs, wincing as the dog took my opened eyes as an invitation to sit on my hair. “Ok,” she told me, “now you can go back to sleep,” and she slammed the door shut to give me some privacy.

Some twenty minutes later, she returned with my husband, her sister, and a plate of pancakes swimming in syrup. I ate a sticky breakfast in bed while my girls showed me their hand-made cards and the dog pierced my soul with his hungry gaze. It was—if not quite bliss – a moment in which I felt blessed.

* * *

Mother’s Day is not a day of simple emotions – not for me, and, I imagine, not for many others. There are so many struggles when it comes to the relationship between mothers and children. We are all children of a mother and cohorts of a society with a rigidly idealized definition of what motherhood should be. Rarely does the reality fulfill the expectation.

And then there are the women who wish they could become mothers, but can’t, and those who can become mothers, but can’t mother the children to whom they gave life. There are the mothers who have had to give a child back to the earth, and the children whose mothers have left the world too soon.

As the adopted daughter of a mother who died young, the celebration of Mother’s Day has always been bittersweet. When I was a child, it was a day when I felt the pull of my connection with the mother I had never met. It was a day when I honored the mother of my heart – and as I grew older while she grew sicker, it was a day when I wondered what would happen to me if she – when she – died.

After my mother’s death, the day was searingly painful. I had eyes only for what others possessed, but I had lost – twice.

As the years passed, my grief mellowed and so did the pain of Mother’s Day. I became a mother myself, which magnified everything good about the day. And I came to understand that the loss of a mother gives a gift of its own – the experience of being loved by the women who mother the motherless.

These women represent the best of what humanity has to offer. They are the grandmothers, the aunts, the neighbors, the sisters, the friends who love where love is needed. I’ve known these women in my own family, and I have met them in many other contexts, in every part of the world.

Mother’s Day is an easy holiday to celebrate. As children of mothers, it is easy to see their value in our lives. As mothers of children, it is easy to see the gifts motherhood has given us — the weight of a tiny person on your chest, the softness of a cheek, the comfort of a small body still warm with sleep, the fierce strength of a child’s embrace.

It’s easy to celebrate the beauty of idealized motherhood.

It’s harder to embrace the darker side, where mistakes, regrets, and loss reside. But I think it is in this side of motherhood where we find its deepest and most powerful meaning. Because it is here where we find the forgiveness, the persistence, the tenacity of a love that transcends everything, even the grave. It’s here where we find the women whose hearts are the deepest wells, who fill the world with their nurturing grace.

For my mothers, for all the women who stood in a mother’s place in my life, and for my children who have given me more than they know, I am filled with gratitude. And for those we have lost, I will mourn.

mom and me

 

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Michele and Grandma

Get Out and Vote!

Posted in Uncategorized by

Today is Election Day in Maryland and this is a post about voting. But first, I need to tell you about pet turtles and dead caterpillars.

For the last few weeks, my daughters have been lobbying hard for a pet turtle. As our almost 5-year-old recently reminded us, our dog is old and “soon he’s going to die.” And our almost 8-year-old is dissatisfied with the pet-to-person distribution in our family: in other words, there is no pet belonging exclusively to her; she didn’t pick out or name the only one we have; and therefore it’s so unfair.

The new pet campaign came to a head this morning. I’m taking little Wednesday Addams and Dorothy Day on a Girl Scout field trip to our local pet shelter and my husband made it clear that we will not, under any circumstances, be coming home from this excursion with a new pet.

But being the innovative and perseverant children they are, my girls decided that since we already have a flourishing ant population in our house, they would adopt a few wild ants in need of a good home. So, just before lunchtime, they set out in the backyard with bowls, watermelon chunks, and a few spent dandelions.

They caught three ants and named them Tickles, Shine, and Steve. They had a few good moments together before one of the ants – I think it was Steve – initiated a mass breakout and they escaped into the grassy wilds.

I redirected the girls to our front patio and tempted them with a bucket of sidewalk chalk, but they were not to be distracted from their quest for a new pet. After a few minutes I heard an excited cry – my older daughter had found a caterpillar.

It might look from here like this story has a happy ending. It doesn’t. Mr. Caterpillar had shuffled off his mortal coil, and was no more.

“Honey,” I told her, “I think he’s dead.”

“That’s OK” she said, “He can still be my pet.”

So I flicked the poor creature into my daughter’s bowl habitat and then I walked away because some things you can’t change.

Also, I had to deal with the 4-year-old who was sobbing over the fact that her sister now had her own pet, but she didn’t. The fact that it was a DEAD freaking CATERPILLAR carried no weight with her. Meanwhile, her big sister began singing lullabies to the dead caterpillar, because that’s what you do, I guess?

It wasn’t long, though, before the little sister’s heartbreak was alleviated by a burst of schadenfreude. My older daughter had dropped her caterpillar and it fell through the cracks in our deck.

But the fact reminded that, after all their trouble, neither one of them had their own pet. The crying resumed, this time in stereo.

All of this happened at that exact point in the day when hunger and low-caffeine levels make me extra short on patience. On a normal no-school day, I’d be silently cursing the school calendar deities for ruining my life while searching online for boarding schools.

But not today. Today, I’m feeling deeply grateful for the good fortune that allowed me to be born in a democratic country, at a time when women can vote, in a state where voting is easy.

My dad always says that you can’t complain if you don’t vote. But it seems to me like our country is really good at the complaining part and not so good at the voting part. And that needs to stop.

People died for our right to vote. There are plenty of places around the world where people are still fighting and dying for a right we take for granted –a right that some of us scorn. And, even now, in America, there are states and districts that are making voting excessively difficult, if not impossible.

I understand people’s frustration with our political system. I feel it too. But not voting because you can’t be bothered or just don’t care is an insult to those who have sacrificed their passion and even their lives for our right to do so. It’s also an insult to anyone who is denied the right to vote.

So get out there and vote. I did it, with two kids who still don’t have their own pets and are still crying about it. Polls are open until 8. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Speech Isn’t Free

Posted in Education, Uncategorized by

In January, Mount Saint Mary’s University, a small Catholic college used to living a quiet life in the country, burst ingloriously onto the national media stage.

Student reporters for the University’s newspaper, the Mountain Echo, broke a story about a plan designed by school president Simon Newman to cull at-risk freshman, based on their responses to a legally-dubious questionnaire. I wrote about it as an alumna, along with dozens of other alumni and higher education reporters.

The story started out bad, and it has only gotten worse.

In the time since the Echo published its report, the newspaper was temporarily shut down. Its faculty adviser was fired — for no specified reason other than “disloyalty.” Another faculty member who contributed to criticisms against Newman’s plans was also fired for “disloyalty,” despite having tenure. An entirely new advisory staff for the student paper– approved, of course, by the president — was installed.

Faced with an untenable situation in which not only their academic freedoms, but their livelihoods, were threatened, faculty met and voted 87-3 to urge President Newman to resign.

Newman did not resign. He countered by reinstating the faculty he fired as an act of “mercy” — though the faculty themselves were not immediately informed what their “reinstatement” involves or even allowed access to their university email accounts.

He handed out doughnuts to the 70 or so students that showed up at a rally held to support him. He touted a student government survey that indicated a majority of its respondents believed in his mission, as if it were some sort of referendum. He vowed that he wasn’t going anywhere and he brought back the Mountain Echo.

It’s a version of the Echo, however, that reads like a state-sanctioned student newspaper out of North Korea.  Its return was announced with a list of letters to the editor, which were, as a whole, supportive of Newman’s approach. And its home page looks like a catalog of pro-Newman propaganda.

Looking at the newspaper from an objective point of view, you might actually believe that Newman really is, on the whole, embraced by the overall Mount community.

He’s not.

At least one other letter to the Echo editor was not published, despite being scheduled to go out in last week’s edition. The letter was critical of President Newman, but it served as a respectful request for him and the rest of the administration to listen to the voices of those who differ from them in opinion.

I know this letter was withheld because, with my fellow alumnus Nunzio D’Alessio, I wrote and submitted it. Clearly, our request to be heard was denied.

There are many stakeholders who have the best interest of Mt. St. Mary’s University at heart. Students, faculty, alumni, and the Catholic community of which the Mount has been a part for 200 years. We are not, by any means, universally supportive of President Newman or the Board that has consistently backed him up.

Alumni who criticize President Newman have been vilified by other alumni. We have been accused of trashing the school we (falsely) claim to love and damaging the Mount name. The bad press is our fault.

The student reporters who broke the story have been harassed and intimidated. Students who oppose President Newman are afraid to speak out. Some faculty will only use private email servers to discuss Newman because they are certain their emails are being read.

Today, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) announced its 10 worst colleges for free speech. Mount Saint Mary’s is at the top of the list. And until drastic changes to its leadership are made, that is where my school belongs.

From the first time I visited the campus, Mount Saint Mary’s has felt like home. What it is going through now is painful to see — it’s like watching a family fall apart. But I love the school enough to know that disloyalty isn’t speaking your dissent– it is staying silent when injustice and poor leadership threaten to destroy something sacred.

Krista Threefoot,
Class of 2001

Click here to support struggling freshmen at Mount Saint Mary’s.

The text of the letter that was not published in the Mountain Echo is below:

February 10, 2016

Dear Editor,

We, the undersigned, are alumni of this university who have for some time been concerned with the general direction and current state of affairs at our beloved alma mater.

While the precipitating cause of this letter is the recent debacle surrounding the so-called “retention program” (known among us as Bunnygate) and its support by President Newman and the Board of Trustees, we judge this most recent event as evidence of a much deeper problem.

Initial reports of President Newman’s retention plans were shocking. Even in hindsight, the program comes across as misguided. The language President Newman used to describe the culling of 20-25 “at-risk” freshmen, as bunnies to be drowned, was even more disturbing – it hints at a lack of respect for the constituents of the school and the faculty who were attempting to serve their students’ best interests.  

But, thanks to our Mount education, we are able to look past President Newman’s unfortunate choice of words to assess the issue on its own merits. It is in looking past his choice of words, however, that we find our source of concern.

Despite the explanations and justifications the administration has rushed to put forth, we still find little to reassure us that this retention program was intended to be as constructive and supportive as President Newman has recently described.

The Mountain Echo reporters have offered enough evidence to suggest that President Newman did indeed intend to encourage a set number of “at-risk” freshmen to leave the school by a certain date. The fact that this date would have enabled Mt. St. Mary’s to favorably manipulate their retention numbers is not, in our opinion, coincidental. Why would the faculty have refused to submit the data to the administration by that date if they had no concerns about how it would be used?

We are further distressed by the tone of Mr. Coyne’s Message from the Chairman of the Board of Trustees from January 22, and its attempt to cast doubt on the objectivity and methodology of the Echo reporters who broke the story. The Echo has been admirably transparent, providing more details than should be necessary on how they researched and verified information for the retention plan story. (See their Jan. 19 Editorial Note.)

We are alarmed by Mr. Coyne’s blatant attempt to discredit the students, alumni, and faculty who contributed to this story. Mr. Coyne’s letter appeared to suggest that any and all criticism of the President’s methods and motives is the propaganda of some sort of cabal of malcontents actively working against the best interests of the school.

This week, our concern has turned to outrage as we have learned that Mr. Coyne’s letter contained more than just vague accusations and idle threats. The demotion of Provost Rehm and the firings of Professor Egan and Doctor Naberhaus have been made public, along with a well-founded suspicion that their firings were the result of their opposition to President Newman’s agenda.

And it is here where we reach the heart of the matter we find most disturbing: Mount Saint Mary’s shines as a school in the liberal arts tradition where open discourse between people with differing ideas and opinions is welcomed and encouraged. The administration’s suppression of dialogue, its retaliation against those who speak out against it, and its unwillingness to address legitimate concerns about the direction of the school belies everything for which the Mount stands.

We write today cognizant of the many challenges currently facing the Mount as an institution of higher education. We are fully aware that the President and the Board are working hard to save a school facing serious – potentially catastrophic — financial difficulties. We recognize that these financial problems are President Newman’s inheritance, the result of his predecessor’s prodigious spending that increased the university’s debt substantially. We respect President Newman and the Board for their commitment to making the Mount flourish in a changing world.

But we worry that the administration’s unwillingness to engage in constructive dialogue with its critics is symptomatic of deeper problems besetting the University. Contestation and critique are vital aspects of a thriving liberal arts education. When the administration stifles the voices of those who question it, how can we trust them to preserve the Catholic liberal arts learning environment that has so profoundly enriched our lives?

We fear that in its push to make the Mount marketable, the administration is exchanging discovery, dissent, questioning, and critical thinking – the highest virtues of a liberal arts education — for an expanding quest for rankings, prestige, retention, and greater tuition and grant dollars.

Today, we address the Mount administration as academics, bloggers, nurses, therapists, educators, writers, television producers, scientists, journalists, business leaders, community leaders, mothers, and fathers. We are writing as the generation of alumni poised to lead society through the next decade, and we want you to know that the core, liberal arts curriculum and the vibrant spirit of community which characterized our Mount education are critical aspects of the unique contribution we are able to make in our world. The education we received at Mount Saint Mary’s 10, 15, 20 years ago is even more relevant now than it was then.

We ask that you respect our ideas, opinions, and concerns. We ask that rather than dismiss or discredit those in our Mount community who criticize your decisions, you respond openly and with transparency. We don’t want to be told what to think – our Mount education taught us to ask for more from life than directions to follow.

Our Mount education also taught us to speak out against injustice, whenever and wherever we see it.

We see injustice now, in the actions the administration has taken to punish those who refuse to toe the line. We ask that you understand that we will not stay silent.  

Above all, we ask that you work as hard as you can to preserve what we treasure most about our mountain home: its cohesive identity, rooted in the ever-curious, ever-seeking spirit of Catholic, liberal arts education. The future of Mount St. Mary’s University does, indeed, lie within the foundations of its past. On this point, we agree.

We sign with sincere gratitude for our Mount community,

Chinenye Adimora

Stacey Margaret Allen ’01

Adaora Azubike

Sarah Pilisz Babbs C’06

Jason Bacon ’01

Amanda Blizzard ’02

Meghan Bolden ‘04

Patrick Bolden, ‘78

Ken Buckler, ‘06

Toni Burkhard ’99

Martha Ciske – ’01

Lizette Chacon ’02

Eryn Chaney ’02

Joe Creamer ’01

Nunzio D’Alessio ’01

Krishawn Demby ’02

Christy V. Emmerich ’03

Reggie Eusebio ’00

Paul Evans ’03

Jen McAlice Fellows ’01

Michael Fellows

Steve Finley ’03

Angie Gilchrist ’04

Katie Reilly Giusti ’01

Kelley Wilson Griffin ’02

Melinda Hatcher ’01

Fran Harrington ’03

Cindy Stanek Holsworth ’02

Alison Zabrenski Humphreys ’01

Kevin Hunt ’00

Cuyler Jackson ’02

Kristen Johnson – ’02

Kelly Klinger ’02

Jen Mabe ’00

Katherine Stattel Mach ’01

Steve Manley ’02

Leroy Masser ’01

Gina Woods Mastromarino ’02

John W. Miller ’99

Mary Saynuk Monroe ’01

Kelly Wallin Morin ’01

Nola Occhipinti ’02

Ekene Adimora Ogwu ’01

Chloe Mathus Oram ’02

Elizabeth Polit ’01

Katie Sherman Rawson ’01, MBA ’07

Katie Hopkins Repetti ’01

Eric Seebach ’00

Jen Wieber Schildkraut ’02

Rebecca Walker Shoemacher ’03

Nicole Sinclair ’01

Erin McCartin Smigal ’01

Elaine Streck ’00

Krista Wujek Threefoot ’01

Sarah Tucker ’00

Beth Smith Utter ’01

Kate Vancavage ’02
Darlene Kukura Wallace ‘04

Julie Varner Walsh, ‘01

Kate Muldowney Watkins ’02

Matt Watkins ’02

Catey Heimerl Williams ’01

Wendy Brinig Williams ’02

Erin Callahan Woerner ’01

Rebecca Pagan Zamora ’01

Melissa Ismey Zimmerman ’02

An Angry Alumna

Posted in Education, Uncategorized by

For graduates of a tiny liberal arts college that hardly anyone knows about, it’s always exciting to see your alma mater’s name in the international news.

Except, of course, when it’s in the news for doing something  you think is completely unethical – something even Donald Trump might consider shady – in complete defiance of everything the school has stood for over a span of 200 years.

Yesterday my news feed was flooded with stories of my beloved alma mater, Mt. St. Mary’s University and not one of them was good.

During the last decade, Mt. St. Mary’s has changed drastically from the school I knew. It is no longer a college, but a university. It has moved away from its intellectual, liberal arts focus toward a more business-minded emphasis. The school wanted more prestige and needed to make more money. And so things had to change. The leadership steered the school away from its traditional values into a realm more fitting for a corporation seeking to expand its profit margins.

Consider the news that came out of Mt. St. Mary’s yesterday. According to the school’s newspaper, The Mountain Echo, which was used as a resource for a later article published in the Washington Post, the newly appointed president of the university created a freshman questionnaire purportedly to “help students discover more about themselves”, which was to be used instead to cull students whose responses labeled them as being at-risk, with the goal of improving the school’s retention rates.

Higher education institutions are required to submit to the federal government the total number of students enrolled each semester. This number is then used to calculate the freshman retention rate, which is a factor that contributes to many students’ college selections. If a large chunk of a class’ population drops out after the first year, it could indicate something rotten in the state of Denmark.

Mt. St. Mary’s president Simon Newman had the bright idea that if the school got rid of students  who were destined to fail anyway ­before they had to calculate and submit their enrollment numbers, then the retention rate would be higher. Voila! And the best part – he’d actually be doing those students a service by saving them the wasted money of a semester’s tuition, room, and board.

When discussing this matter with faculty — who as a whole do  not support this plan —  President Newman urged them not to think of freshmen as “cuddly bunnies” with this charming metaphor:  “You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”

Because in a bunny-eat-bunny kind of world, you have to take out the runts before they get devoured.

Tough love has its merits, or so they say. I’m not very good at it myself.  But injustice is injustice, and that is what we are facing here. You can’t establish the certainty that a student will fail based on a survey he takes during freshman orientation. In fact, you can’t be certain a student will fail until they actually fail. You can’t treat a group of kids embarking on the educational journey that will shape their future like a herd of cattle being fattened for the market.

It’s disturbing to me that any group of leaders directing a university could think this way.

But what is worse, in my opinion, is that this decision came from a Catholic college that has always prided itself not only on its commitment to academic excellence but also on the strength of its community.

The community at the Mount is, or was, its greatest asset. When I was a student, we knew our professors personally. They took us out for beers and invited us into their homes. I babysat their kids. They treated us like equals, encouraging our curiosity and fostering our intellectual growth.

The community I was a part of helped freshman – and sophomores and juniors and seniors – who were struggling academically. They helped us when we were struggling personally. They invested in us. A small minority of students failed or left for other reasons, but at least they had a fair chance.

The community I was a part of was, in the most powerful sense of the word, a community. We had a shared identity that united us and defined us. And for me, having been part of that community continues to shape who I am today, nearly 15 years after my graduation.  The older I get, the more I realize how vital it is for me to be a part of something larger than myself. I used imagine that I would find my greatest fulfillment as a globe-trotting idealist, saving the world from itself.  Now, I know that my happiness is as deep as the roots I have formed. I have the Mount to thank for that.

The direction President Newman is taking Mt. St. Mary’s is the wrong one and his methods are unconscionable. It needs to be stopped. I’m hopeful that the negative media attention will force him and the board of trustees to change the course they has chosen. But in the meantime, it looks like it’s time for some strongly worded letters.

***

If, like me, you are a Mount graduate or a concerned member of the Baltimore Archdiocese (or if you just enjoy writing strongly worded letters) and you also feel the need to state your objection to the direction MSM is taking, here are some helpful links:

Contact information for the University cabinet: http://msmary.edu/presidents_office/university-cabinet/

Office of the Archbishop of Baltimore: http://www.archbalt.org/about-us/offices/archbishop-office/index.cfm Email: archbishop@archbalt.org

Baltimore Sun news tip contact: newstips@baltimoresun.com, 410-332-6100

 

 

 

 

 

Patrick’s Story

Posted in Important Issues, Politics by

patrick's story

Ten years ago, when I worked for Catholic Relief Services, I took a trip to Africa. The purpose was for me to visit programs, talk to the people who were a part of them, and come home to write stories that would encourage wealthy Americans to invest in CRS’ work.

I traveled to Uganda and Ethiopia. I met hundreds of people and I heard dozens of stories. They were stories of loss and suffering and joy and triumph. For the most part they were stories I treasured; stories to hold on to; stories to share when hope is a bird in a storm.

But there was one story I couldn’t retell, at least not willingly, not until it came heaving out with my sobs on a night when I couldn’t sleep.

It was a young man who told me the story – I think he was about 16 at the time. He said his name was Patrick. I was in a camp for internally displaced people (not the same as refugees: they hadn’t crossed their home country’s borders), in Gulu, Northern Uganda.

If you have ever heard of Invisible Children, you know something of the decades-long war in the north of Uganda, where Joseph Kony and his LRA have made terror their career. The camp was a safe haven (though not very safe nor much of a haven) for people whose lives had been destroyed by LRA forces.

Many of the people I met were former abductees who had escaped their LRA captors. I spoke with a woman who had endured gang rape, many times over, who escaped when she became pregnant, and who delivered her child alone in the bush while running away.

I met another woman whose lips had been cut off because the LRA caught her riding a bike. I saw people who had lost hands and ears for much the same reason.

And though those stories make my eyes well as I write, they don’t compare to the horror of Patrick’s story, which makes me reel even a decade after hearing it.

One night when he was around 12, LRA soldiers came to Patrick’s home. They killed his entire family and they abducted him to join hundreds of his adolescent peers as a soldier in their army.

Before becoming a soldier, he told me, you went through a process of indoctrination. They stripped away your ties to everything — your community, your peers, your identity.  And then they gave you a gun.

Patrick’s captors drilled into him that his gun was his only ally, his only family, his new identity, his everything. His life depended on it — and on his obedience.

All the boy soldiers were trained to accept the impossibility of an independent future. But hope springs eternal and there were still those who tried to get away. One day, a few boys in his group made the attempt. They were caught.

When the escapees were caught, they were brought back to the camp. Patrick and the remaining boys were forced to kill them. They were forced to dismember them, cook their flesh over a fire, and consume it from the skulls of the children who had, just day before, been their peers.

* * *

For a privileged white girl from the American suburbs, listening to Patrick’s story was shattering. It was terrible beyond anything I imagined possible.

But Patrick was matter-of-fact in his retelling. There was little emotion and no drama – it was his reality after all. He was a child who had lost everything and, in his emptiness, been forced to commit an act that could have destroyed his humanity forever.

Somehow, Patrick kept his humanity. He escaped and made it to the camp where he was working with a miracle of a Catholic nun to restore some sense of himself and his place in our world. The trauma he’d experienced had hollowed him, but there was enough of him left to strive for a future.

The night after I met Patrick, I went back to my room in a hotel that was so heavily guarded I was afraid. I was supposed to meet the rest of my co-workers for a big dinner celebration, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I stayed in and revised my notes and cried until I vomited. I slept and I dreamed terrible things, and at some point I was certain I’d heard the sound of gunfire.

I came home with this story buried deeply underneath so many others. I shared the other stories liberally, but this one, Patrick’s, I held within me. It had grieved me so terribly that I feared I would hurt others if I told it. I still have nightmares of skulls boiling in cauldrons over campfires.

But it’s been ten years and whenever this story resurfaces in my memory, it comes back fresh and it fells me with emotion. It is with me again now, as I am reading, over and over, new stories of refugees torn from their communities, stripped of their identities, striving in desperation to escape a reality that could destroy their humanity.

* * *

Patrick’s life was derailed by an army of terrorists, acting under the mantle of a distorted version of the Christian faith. The “Lord” in LRA stands for Our Lord, the one whose birth we plan to celebrate in a few short weeks. He escaped with his existence, and I hope he has carved out a new life for himself. Maybe he has.

As an IDP, a person displaced within the borders of his own country, Patrick wasn’t granted the official status of a refugee. His rights to resettlement in a safe territory aren’t even protected under international law.

“Refugee” isn’t a term thrown around loosely in international officialdom. When we discuss refugees, we are talking about people who have had to prove that they were forced by persecution out of their home country, with no possibility of living safely within their own borders in the foreseeable future. And then, to come to America, they have to prove that they don’t pose the same threat they are fleeing to others.

These are people who have been victimized, terrorized, forced from their homes, and left without a shred of hope of regaining the lives they lost. The only hope they have is found in the hospitality of other nations.

When we open our arms to refugees, we are opening our arms to women who otherwise would be brutalized, children who otherwise would be dead, young men who would otherwise be forced to fight against us. And when we shut them out, we do no less than send them to their deaths, at the expense of our humanity.