An Old Point Guard Who Still 'Sees the Floor'

Roger Chouinard for The Chronicle Review

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By Michael A. Messner

I dart across the sun-drenched campus of the University of Southern California, where I've worked for the past 23 years, finding angles, zipping around and through the slow-moving morass of students. They mosey leisurely out of their classes, distracted, texting on their phones and plugged into their tunes. They plod sluglike, flip-flops scuffling the cement walkways. In pairs and in groups, talking and laughing, they brake to sudden stops, clusters of cells clogging the arteries of academe.