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History Being Made

6/14/2014

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                        History Being Made:

                                 My part of 



            Southwest Minnesota State University

            I get Harry Potter updates on Facebook, mostly because I do sci-fi and also because I think the Harry Potter books are one of the literary marvels of our lifetime. When the final two books were released, I preordered them for their midnight sales event. One year I was 9th in Marshall (for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and for the last one I slipped to 29th (for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows).

            The FB info is often about the making of the films, about the actors, now adults, looking back on the filming and all that excitement.

            Those actors, directors, Rowling herself—they must have known they were making history. I like them all—books and films; they’re masterpieces each.

            What I also think about is that rare gift in life to do something and while doing it, realize you and your actions are changing history. The 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion just passed on June 6th. On June 5, 1944, as those airmen, sailors, and soldiers geared up for the morning, they knew they were taking part, however small, in something gigantic and fantastic. Something history-making and history-changing.

            I run in a much smaller circle of world events. I’m not likely to ever produce anything nearly as artistically significant as Harry Potter, although The Marsco Saga may be a success. I doubt I’ll ever be in the political or military spotlight like Eisenhower or Bradley or Churchill, or the ordinary (often drafted) soldiers hitting those beaches at Zero Hour on D-Day.

            My place in history will be pretty small, in that regard.

            I am, however, pleased to know I have contributed to Southwest Minnesota State University.

            This university is significant for two main reasons. It produces its growing share of grads who go off to medical school and fine doctoral programs. Two of my students come to mind. One graduated from Mayo Medical and another is beginning her PhD at the University of Notre Dame.

           But the most significant reason for this university is Main Street. We educate Main Street in so many small towns around here: accountants, teachers, bankers, small business owners, and farmers. During the boys’ state basketball tournament this past Spring when only eight teams were left, SMSU had graduated five of the head coaches. That’s what we do; obviously, we do it well.

           The other significant reason for this university is its affordability and accessibility. For what we do, we are a rock-bottom priced service. Unfortunately, over the past twenty years, I’ve seen the State’s commitment to keeping costs low tip away from students and their parents and towards “tax breaks” and other sham give-to-the-rich schemes. When I came here in 1989, the State paid $2 for every $1 a student paid. The whole state of Minnesota bragged about that. Now, the State reluctantly ponies up about $0.67 (and falling) for every student dollar. Figure out the shift here.

           Besides affordability, accessibility is a major reason we’re here; it makes us such a unique and valuable school. We are not the most diverse student body. Even with three Native reservations within an hour in three directions, we don’t attract many Native students. But, we do attract, retain, and graduate many students who need a fully-accessible campus.

           And, it’s been like that longer than I’ve been here. I don’t think I have gone a semester without a student in my class in a wheelchair, who needs special assistance (like a note-taker due to mobility issues), or who needs to take exams and quizzes in a separate location from the classroom (due to learning disabilities needs).

           I’ve even had students who come in their wheelchairs and with a dog to further help them. For one pair, when I took roll, I noted when Zeus, an 80-pound Lab, was present or when the dog was excused from class. One day I stepped too close to his owner and the sleeping Zeus was up and barking ferociously at me.

           These are the students who make SMSU significant. I’ve taken our students to Europe three times through our Global Studies Program, mostly to England and France. And for all the progressive strides these countries have made, they are a generation or more behind us in disability services. Partly, Europe is built around medieval cities, but partly it is cultural. Americans raise their voices at injustice more willingly than many other cultures. Eventually, someone listens.

           I may not be changing history, but I am adding to this university which in turn adds so much to Southwest Minnesota, the state as a whole, and the nation. We’ve even graduated students from Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia, so we’re international in our own small way.

           Our rising costs concern me, however. For one, the Global Studies Program I am so proud of, has risen in cost so that it’s nearly impossible to enroll enough students to make the trip possible. We used to have a subsidy for the trip and most students received a small scholarship to defray costs. But in the end, it became necessary for students to pick up the whole tab for their trip. This decision raised the cost by nearly 35% to 50%; ruinous cost inflation. 9/11 didn’t help, either.

           But the major disaster in higher education in Minnesota was the ill-considered “merger” of the tech and two-year campuses with the seven state universities, which had had their own extremely successful system. “Hostile takeover” comes to mind to describe this, since no one who was part of the universities wanted it or thought this merger was a wise decision.

           This merger has made nothing better in the state universities and often has made many aspects worse. We can’t select what general education classes to allow for transfer anymore; if a MnSCU campus says it meets set standards, we have to accept it. The two-week online Speech class, taught via a two-year campus, comes to mind as a shame, but it counts.

           It’s a sad state of affairs to see something I’ve worked for nearly twenty-five years hit a wall. If orchard growers thought every apple and pear tree should be cut for firewood, not planted, nurtured and prepared for a future harvest, we’d have no fresh fruit. Higher education, especially public higher education, is planting an orchard; its benefits are far in the future, but they are there. Nurture higher ed and in the end the state prospers. The nation prospers.  

           I hope in my final years here at SMSU, I see an upturn in public appreciation and in support for higher ed. Our work is that important. And I have hope. Our new President is sharp and on the ball. I see her leadership at work and her vision for this institution consistent with our history and our mission. All that is good.

           And I have faith. Good things happen when good people put their minds together to create positive solutions. I’m all for that.

           Harry Potter and Eisenhower would agree.

  

Picture
SMSU Pep Band at our last home football game, November 2013. Mustangs won!
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Logan and the "Retarded"

6/7/2011

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         Riding home from campus on my bike the other day, I passed by a house that is a residence for adults with developmental disabilities.  In social work parlance, it is a group home.  Two residents were each pushing lawn mowers down the street while a third talked to a neighbor.  These residents had a caretaker with them who was kindly walking along keeping the three on task.  This across-the-street neighbor was kidding the men, all in their late 40s or older, because he had seen them out at a local restaurant the other night.  He was needling them for all the BBQ ribs they ate. The good-natured chiding, the laughter, the warm feelings:  it may have been a work crew finishing a long week together or a bowling team after a tournament.  Guys having fun.  Guys sharing a laugh with one of the guys.
             
     I found the sight heartwarming.  
           
     I know one of the residents by name, Tom.  He is quite the Notre Dame Football fan, as I am.  I owned a few ND shirts I didn’t want anymore and made it a point of dropping them by his residence several years back.  He
still lights up when he sees me.  This was during the darker years of ND Football when the Faithful (Subway Alums or graduates alike) needed to rally to the cause.  Tom was right there.
           
     This particular residence has 4 or 5 adults.  It’s a stable group.  I think Tom’s lived there for about 15 years, a few of his housemates about the same. Every workday, a bus gathers them up, drives three blocks to a second group home and gathers another 4 or 5 adults, and off they all go, lunch boxes in hand, to productive work in a sheltered workshop or another business here in Marshall.
            
     As a homeowner, I appreciate these group homes because their lawns are
cut, their siding, windows, and roofs are in good shape.  I don’t want to cast aspersions at any other neighbors in these tough economic times, but the two nearby group homes look far better than several houses around here.  And at first glance you would never suspect these homes are in fact used for institutional purposes.   
         
     I know at SMSU every few weeks, yet a third group of adults with
disabilities comes up to collect recycling.  This particular group is not as high
functioning.  But their caretaker moves them along and they complete their task in a satisfactory manner.

    When we were first married, Marianne worked for an agency with the long-outdated name of “Council for the Retarded.”  In charge of this agency’s PR, Marianne’s first task was changing the name to Logan, because their buildings were on Logan Street in South Bend, Indiana, and their campus had become known as“Logan Center.”  
       
     Of course, “retarded” was the term of choice when this agency first started about thirty years before Marianne joined Logan.  Retarded was a polite euphemism that became the vogue in the 1950s.  At that time, the parents of the children this agency initially served were proud of the name, Council for the Retarded, because few agencies or groups were doing much for their special-needs children.  Back in the early 50s, the correct medical terms and psychological titles for children and adults with these disabilities were idiot, moron, and imbecile.  If I had a child which the state and the medical community labeled as “moron” or “imbecile,” I’d feel that “retarded”was a much softer, friendlier label. “Oh, my son’s not an idiot;
he’s just slow or retarded.”  
      
     How times have changed.  

     About the time Marianne worked at Logan, the last of the Indiana state
hospitals for such adults were being closed.  These institutions had shunted children and adults with disabilities out of plain view, often out of parents’
homes.  In the 80s, group homes like the two in our neighborhood were becoming more and more common.  Two social forces met and agreed on this:  the cost-cutters who never loved any state agency and the social activists who saw warehousing high-functioning adults as cruel.  Warehousing is also self-fulfilling.  It suggests that “these morons can’t do anything else,” so well-meaning bureaucrats set up a system where the developmentally disabled could not do anything else.  But when given the chance, oh, how
these young men and women shine.  We see it every day. 
          
     Logan ran about six group homes when Marianne worked there.  I remember filling in for the caretaker staff one night to make sure the six residents were fed dinner.  I hadn’t barbequed on their grill before, but I gave it my best shot.  Well, the men loved my burnt chicken.  Loved?  They devoured it.  

     A few of them were workers at a South Bend steel finishing works.  They did all the labor of the regular crew.  In fact, a study of their work productivity showed they actually out performed some of the longtime workers there.  These guys were on time each day.  They were scrupulous about their break time and lunch time.  They punched in and out accurately.  They didn’t sneak off to smoke on the company’s time.

    When Logan bought its seventh group home, however, the neighbors raised a stink.  All of Logan’s group homes had to meet stringent State of Indiana regulations. So many bedrooms so there was no overcrowding; so many bathrooms; and an adequate suite for the live-in caretaker. Logan did not want to saturate any one neighborhood, so for the seventh home, it went into a higher-end location. This upper-middle class neighborhood had families with good sized broods of children, thus the houses were larger, well suited for Logan’s needs.

    It was only here that Logan ruffled some feathers. However, at a public meeting, the confrontational neighbors were embarrassed to hear themselves essentially saying they didn’t want “those kind of people” as their neighbors, saying that “those kind of people” weren’t welcomed.  As these complaining
future neighbors heard themselves speaking out, they grew humiliated and humbled by their own heartlessness and mean-spirited attitudes.  
  
     But what good neighbors the group home residents turned out to be.  The group home residents cut their own lawn.  When the guys realized there were two widows on either side, those lawns were cut also.  And what guy can
resist a powerful snow blower?  Plus, South Bend is in the Great Lakes’ Snow Belt.  So, three driveways got cleaned up early every morning it snowed. Baked cookies soon replaced complaints as reluctant neighbors realized what great new neighbors they had.

    Marianne’s second task at Logan was getting the PR ready for the International Summer Special Olympics which were being held at the Notre Dame campus.  By the time the Games were held, my new teaching position across state had moved us away from South Bend and her job at Logan, but the experience has stuck with us.

    Special Olympics.  Group homes in residential neighborhoods.  The
clerk at a local supermarket here in Marshall helping me load my bags of
groceries in my car.  The visible and normal lives of our fellow citizens with special needs.  No longer labeled as morons, no longer warehoused out-of-sight, no longer shunned.  
 
     They’re carrying their lunchboxes, going to work, and every once in a while packing away the BBQ ribs like one of the guys.

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    The Zarzana Eclectic Blog seeks to occasionally publish essays about assorted topics that would interest a wide reading audience.

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