In Tragedy, Institutions Sustain Us

There was a shooting at Purdue University today.

My alma mater. My employer. My house.

The noon hour had just passed when a text message alert notified us of a shooting in a campus building and told students, faculty, staff, to “shelter in place.” We were in lockdown. Within 10 minutes I confirmed that my daughter, a Purdue sophomore, was in a locked building right next to mine.

Minutes later the calls, texts, emails, Facebook messages began pouring in from Michigan to Florida, DC to California and parts in between. They were more meaningful than I can say. A few were friends, most were members of my family… my Purdue family.

We talk about that a lot in my job. The Purdue family. Boilermaker for life. It has never felt as true as it did today.

Tonight, students will come together for a candlelight vigil across the Mall from the building where the shooting occurred. Tomorrow, there will be no classes, but counselors will be available. It’s a drill that, nationally, feels all too familiar.

I’m generally pretty calm in a crisis; I was conditioned to it at an early age. Today was no exception. But a moment always comes when the crisis is past and reality hits. There was a shooting at Purdue today—in my house, not sadly, tragically elsewhere. Here. My daughter wanted to know why no one was doing more to stop these things from happening. How many more would there be? If it hadn’t been before, today it was cemented as her house. And it had been violated.

There are great debates in this country about higher education, about cost, about value, about MOOCs and online education and cheaper ways of preparing students to be productive members of society. The death of one 20-something at the hands of another 20-something is not the appropriate occasion for a debate about such things.

But there’s something to be said for my house, for why doing what we do, how we do it, is the right thing for preparing students to lead.

Tragedy came into our house today, and tonight we came together as a community in shared sadness, shared horror, shared resolve. On campus or from every corner of the world, over 400,000 Boilermakers stand united in the face of a senseless crime. There are lessons in that no online course will ever replicate—lessons about being part of something bigger than yourself, lessons about shouldering a burden collectively, lessons about sharing sorrow that is not your personal sorrow, lessons about squaring your shoulders and moving forward.

For those who would lead, the lessons to be learned as part of an institution, a community, a family like Purdue are irreplaceable. They remind us of our shared humanity and our shared responsibility, and they will never happen when a student sits in a room alone watching a flickering lecture play out onscreen. I do not doubt that there is an expediency that makes online learning an important and viable option for some among us. That said, it will never supplant the value of being part of an institution that offers lessons around the clock, regardless of how painful they may sometimes be.

In the End, There Are Only Words

Not even a month into the New Year and absurdity hits the fan.

Words don’t matter.

That was the message I received. It was intended, I am aware, to fall into the classic sticks and stones refrain from the elementary school playground. But sometimes, a phrase gets in stuck in my brain and whispers incessantly in my ear until I respond to it. Often right here.

Words don’t matter.

Really. That’s funny.

In the whole of human history, has there been a more steadfast constant in our lives? Words, grunted then spoken, supplanted the pictures scrawled on the walls inside the cave. A picture can break your heart, but the truth of a story gets its depth and connects our humanity in the words that transmit it from one person to the next. Language evolved because in the cave we realized that mere pictures were not enough.

Words, I would argue, are indeed the bedrock of human interaction.

In a world that allows institutions, even civilizations, to fall by the wayside with barely a thought, the flexibility of language, of words, is without parallel. Shakespeare used the language with abandon, stretching beyond the standard usage of his audience and, when the situation demanded, adding to the lexicon to capture a thought, an action, a mood. 

And it seems there is a bit of Shakespeare in all of us. Don’t believe me? Spend a few minutes online with UrbanDictionary.com. You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe. Consider some of the new words added to the dictionary in 2013 alone. Crowdsourcing. Mouseover. E-reader. Redirect. Our willingness to allow language to grow and change makes words the most useful tool of human existence.

While the adaptable relevance of evolving language keeps it fresh and irreplaceable, its continuity may be its ultimate beauty. Throughout time the immutable and evocative nature of words is the unbreakable strand of our shared humanity. Love. Sorrow. Hope. Even the formation of the letters speaks meaning, the open, uplifted “love,” the full weight of “sorrow,” the steadfastness of “hope.” They can be seen, felt, heard just as they have been for centuries, just as they will be for centuries.

Action, memory, intent, failure, all are captured by words. What we do matters because we remember, we record, we guide, we inspire... with words. Well told or well written, words capture our achievements, foibles, aspirations, and move us forward from one generation to the next, informed, forewarned, when we choose to listen, about what came before.

All that we are, all that we do, finds immortality in words. They are the only place in which we can live forever. Because in the end, there are only words.