Monday, March 10, 2008

'In Loco Parentis' Revisited

By Gene C. Fant Jr.

On February 5, a tornado carved a deep gash across the aorta of our campus: the dormitory complex. Along with the university's president, David Dockery, and another dean, I was among the first administrators to arrive at the disaster, a mere two minutes following the direct hit.

We stopped first at the men's dorms. Nothing could have prepared us for the devastation that we saw in the dim glow of the lightning flashes. Several of our students were trapped under a collapsed commons area. To the side of our view, we could see the rubble of the women's complex.

For me, a lasting mental image of that moment will always be the three of us wearing suits, standing in the raw sewage that was gushing out of the broken plumbing fixtures as orderly lines of students headed calmly to the primary academic building. A few students wandered around dazed, and some were bloody. Instinctively we grabbed those students and called for others to help them to safety.

Everywhere we walked, students hugged us and shook our hands. We patted their backs and tried to speak with as much of a comforting tone as we could muster. I was struck by how many times students called out our names, as though their simple articulation offered a kind of solace.

Soon faculty and staff members swarmed all over the campus. We directed them to the shelter, asking them to comfort the students. Our nursing professors and their students established triage positions in several locations. Others arrived at the collapsed dorms and began to help the emergency workers in their rescue attempts.

By midnight, we finally received word that all of the trapped students had been rescued and that, incredibly, no students had been gravely injured. While 51 students had been taken to the emergency room, and several were in the intensive-care unit, the prognosis for all of them was optimistic. Then we received word that all of the residential students had been picked up by professors, staff members, and community folks and were now staying in private homes -- a feat that had been accomplished within a few hours of the storm.

At 1 a.m., I accompanied President Dockery on a quick survey of the campus. I am from South Mississippi, and I have seen many tornadoes in my life. In fact, my earliest memory is hiding under my mother's sewing machine at the age of 2 or 3 as a tornado passed over our house. I walked my aunt's property after it was hit. I almost drove into a twister that I could not see due to driving rain, missing it by less than 20 seconds. I've seen the aftermath of tornadoes more than I would like.

But that 1 a.m. walk-through was like nothing I had seen before. In a handful of acres, something like 1,100 students were now without their living spaces. Of the more than 1,000 cars in the campus parking lots, at least 950 were damaged. I estimate that at least a third of them were totaled. Dozens were piled like snowdrifts against building walls or in ditches. Car alarms were blaring even then. Flashers were still flickering. Generators were groaning in several locations, providing a weak but stark light for the workers.

We found the remaining rescue workers at the worst dorm collapse, and the president asked one more time, "Everyone is out? Everyone is accounted for?" The emergency workers assured us that was the case and that we had had no fatalities. It was nothing short of miraculous.

As I stood in the midst of the rubble, I was, first and foremost, an administrator, surveying the damage and thinking about the thorough preparations made by our vice president for student services and her staff. Their work is now the gold standard for the entire higher-education community. I also began to wonder how we could reopen for the spring semester when we were missing most of our residence halls.

That thought, though, metamorphosed my mind into that of a faculty member. Although my office was undamaged, I pondered why I hadn't remembered to videotape its contents as an inventory in case of a tragedy like this. I tried to remember how recently I had backed up my computer's hard drive. I wondered if I still had a job; could the institution even survive such devastation?

Lastly, though, I stood there as a parent. During that 1 a.m. survey, I saw my friend Mario Cobo, the resident director of a men's dorm, staring into the rubble. His quick thinking and brave efforts helped save those young men who had been trapped. Despite losing everything, he selflessly cared for students who were, in a very real sense, a part of his own family. I thought about my own children and hoped that, should they ever be in a similar crisis, they would be cared for in the same way.

Suddenly I find I have a new understanding of the old concept of in loco parentis. In the shock of the chaos created by a howling storm, the young adults who are our students just wanted to see their parents. Our faculty and staff members, thus, became the very arms and shoulders of moms and dads who were hundreds of miles away. Those of us who were on the campus in the tumult also wanted to see our own children, and our students became our children in that moment.

Most us think of in loco parentis in terms of the university's role in regulating behavior. In my own mind, I have always thought of in loco as a kind of authoritarian concept. I now see it, though, in terms of our responsibilities to our students, not as authorities but rather as preparers, protectors, and passers-on of our vision of a learning community's ideals.

For the past few weeks, we have worked to get our campus reopened, which means that we are providing shelter, food services, and even clothing for our charges. Our goal was to be back in class a mere two weeks after the tornado. On Wednesday, February 20, we accomplished just that.

In many ways, it was exactly what any parent would do: Exert every ounce of energy to ensure that the next generation succeeds.

Higher education is a very diverse enterprise, with institutions of all stripes. There is power in our diversity: All manner of viewpoints and worldviews are represented. Optimism, though, is not one of the perspectives that we have in surplus. By nature, faculty members are skeptics and cynics. We are doubters and detail people who can find the flaws and failings of anything at any time. There are times, I have to admit, when I am acutely aware of how my own cynicism hamstrings me.

Yet that cynicism was very little in evidence in the aftermath of the tornado, event though people kept asking us how we can be so optimistic when we had 20-foot piles of rubble all around us.

Our optimism may be directly related to our mission as a faith-based university. The pessimist in me looked at the destruction and asked, "So, what good is tenure at a residential college that now has no dorms? Better head home and work on that CV!" The voice of faith, though, whispered more reasonably: "Look beyond this. Look to the lives that were saved. To the families who rushed to campus to adopt students. To the rescuers who risked their lives. Look beyond the rubble. Find the hope that transcends these circumstances.

"And get to work."