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First, in the attempt to woo legislators on the right, the legislation was significantly watered down. Not useless by any means, but less than it needed to be. Moreover, the other parts of a reasonable gun safety agenda were dropped long ago. When the President says it was a day of shame in Washington, I’d have to say it has been at least four months of shame. The refusal to act in broad fashion to save innocent lives is a stunning example of how dysfunctional our government has become. While this particular failure on this particular piece of legislation is part of all that, it is a small part.

Second, even if this legislation passed in the Senate, it would have fallen in the House. There is no doubt about that. The victory would have been short-lived and hollow.

Third, it is becoming more clear that the extreme positions being taken by the right are not representative of the American middle. With 90 percent of all Americans supporting background checks, 90 percent of all Republican Senators decided to ignore the people’s will and instead bend to the NRA’s vicious agenda. I think we very well may see this play out again over attempts to pass reasonable immigration reform. While a gang of eight may come to agreement on some plan, the gang that runs the House is not likely to join the team. Our country must be governed from the middle and I believe the Republican Party is showing it has no interest in doing that.

In the long run, it is my hope that when the next massacre happens (and we all know it is coming), that the irresponsible behavior of those that oppose rationality has caught up with them and they are sitting at home rather than in our Capitol.

One of the ideas that we began to experiment with is to bring our teams together during a weekend of competition for food, fellowship, and education. This Saturday evening will be our first formal attempt at this at Oglethorpe. I am hoping we will split the double header to keep things balanced, but heck, if we win two, I am good with that as well. I have designated myself as the inaugural keynote speaker. As a former collegiate athlete, I have a keen appreciation for just how long these guys will want to hear me talk after playing all day. That would be about 45 seconds, but I plan to try to keep their attention for a bit longer than that. I have chosen as my subject matter the letter “P”. “P” as in Paterno, Petrino, Pitino. Pearl (that would be Bruce), and now Pernetti (as in the Rutgers Athletic Director). Admittedly, all of the bad behavior of these men happened in big-time Division I athletics, but there are lessons to be learned for us, even from the big boys. There are lots of platitudes thrown around about participating in athletics: it builds character, teamwork, a healthy sense of competition. And, indeed, being an athlete can do all that. But today, intercollegiate athletics has been horribly corrupted and one is as likely to be exposed to bad characters and unethical behavior as you are to be taught all the good lessons of life. It’s up to our coaches and our athletes to be the standard bearers for all those good things. That will be my message Saturday night.

Lawrence M. Schall

President

Oglethorpe University

4484 Peachtree Road NE

Atlanta GA 30319

o. 404.364.8319

f. 404.364.8324

www.oglethorpe.edu

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Make a life. Make a living. Make a difference.

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Corporations have largely steered away from controversial issues like this one. Goldman Sachs lost at least one significant client when its chairman spoke out, but Blankfein continued to lead on the subject. “I wouldn’t normally speak out on something like this. People are only interested in what I have to say because of my position at Goldman Sachs, and I don’t believe it’s appropriate for me to express my personal views as being those of the firm. But, in this case, this is a business issue. We’re a people business. They’re the single most important thing to us. … We want to treat our people fairly and equally.” Not all of Mr. Blankfein’s colleagues in the corporate world agree. The shareholders of Exxon Mobil, for example, defeated a proposal last year to extend employee benefits to same-sex partners. But there’s no arguing that there’s been an amazing rapid shift in public opinion on this issue, even if some regions of the country are not there yet.

As I was reading Stewart’s column, I could not help be reminded of the recent open letter on gun safety which now has the leaders of over 450 colleges and universities standing in support of it. http://www.collegepresidentsforgunsafety.org I think most of the presidents who signed the letter would express sentiments that mirrored those of Lloyd Blankfein. We almost never speak out on public issues of this sort, but something was different this time. In this case, for us, gun safety is an issue which literally takes the lives of the children and young adults we are tasked with educating. More guns, including more guns on our campuses, will make us less safe, not more safe. And so hundreds of us have chosen to speak out. I think it’s fair to argue that we are a bit late to this issue. After all, more than 1000 children have been dying every month in this country from gun violence for many years. But like many in corporate America in regards to same-sex marriage, we are now in the game even if we arrived late. I do wonder, though, where are the collective voices of college and university presidents on same-sex marriage. Why have we not participated en masse in one of the briefs filed last week with the court?

I suspect that the majority of our institutions in 2013 provide benefits to same-sex partners. I certainly believe that as leaders of those institutions, most of us share Blankfein’s view that our faculty, staff and students ought to be treated fairly and equally without regard to their sexual preference. That’s the case I would think whether or not our personal beliefs align with those business and human resource practices. And so, I ask once again, why are we not refusing to be late on the most significant civil rights issue facing our country today?

While the constitutional questions at issue with the Voting Rights Act are certainly complex, the provisions being challenged have been upheld many times by the court. Sadly, I suspect the result may be different this time around. The most discomforting thing I read from the reports of the arguments is the assertion that fifty years after the passage of the Act, the need for extra vigilance to protect the rights of minorities to vote has gone away. I wish that were the case, but I know it is not. One doesn’t have to look any further than the state of Florida to see a still-ferocious attempt to limit the turnout of voters inclined to cast their vote a certain way. Shamefully, such practices are far too prevalent in many other states, northern as well as southern.

Historically, America has largely been a culture governed by the majority — racial, ethnic and religious. Not belonging to the majority is, at best, discomforting. At its worst, being a minority has meant enslavement, internment, imprisonment, deportation, persecution. While life in America these days is much improved compared to days gone by, we are still not the land of equal opportunity and justice that we like to think. A child’s economic future is still determined to an astonishing degree by the circumstance of his or her birth. Social mobility in the United States has diminished, income inequality has dramatically increased and one’s race, of course, is still an important factor in all this.

I attended every minute of Oglethorpe’s Color Blind panel discussion and didn’t say a word. I was there to listen and didn’t know what to expect. Two hours later, I left feeling even more honored to be the President of Oglethorpe than I was before I walked in. One phrase among many that stuck with me was this: “Race is everything and race is nothing.” It is everything because being Black in America, even at Oglethorpe, impacts one’s life each and every day. And it is nothing because in the end, one’s race can never be an excuse. Yet when asked whether the faculty and students of color felt like they had a voice on campus, every one answered in the affirmative. That’s an extraordinary thing for these students and faculty to feel.

I will never pretend that life at Oglethorpe somehow insulates our students and our faculty from the reality of living in America, but last evening, my belief that we do an amazing job here of facing that reality and talking about it in non-combative ways was re-affirmed. It was a very good night for Oglethorpe.

Now I do think the President’s use of skeet shooting to legitimize his position on gun safety was pretty lame. Whether or not he or anyone else calling for some rationality on this front has ever shot a gun is of no relevance whatsoever. That said, although I am not sure I can produce a photo, I do want to establish my own bona fides. When I was ten years old at my Jewish sleepover camp in the Pocono Mountains, I shot a 22 caliber rifle almost every day during afternoon activity period. If I can remember correctly, daily rifle practice was squeezed between arts and crafts and late afternoon swim period. Granted, that little 22 was no assault weapon, but I do think it had a high-capacity magazine of something like two. I realize now that I have failed to include this experience on my résumé for forty years. A tremendous oversight it would appear. Apparently, one needs to be an expert marksman to have a legitimate opinion about the thousands of people slaughtered every year in our country with a gun.

But let’s run with this argument for a while. So, men ought not to weigh in on women’s health issues given their lack of experience there. Actually, I’d vote for that. Guys who have never played professional football aren’t allowed to call sports talk radio stations anymore. Heck, I’m on board with that one too. People who have never been to war can’t send America off to fight another. Well, that doesn’t sound like too bad an idea either.

I plan on revising my cv in the morning. Do you think I should include my gun shooting summers under hobbies or philanthropic activities?

http://chronicle.com/blogs/letters/if-college-presidents-wont-speak-out-who-will/

If College Presidents Won’t Speak Out, Who Will?

The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, who served the University of Notre Dame as its president for 35 years, wrote an article in 2001 titled “Where are College Presidents’ Voices on Important Public Issues?http://newsinfo.nd.edu/news/9201-where-are-college-presidents-voices-on-important-public-issues/” He began this way: “When I was a college president, I often spoke out on national issues, even when they didn’t pertain to academic life. Yet, nowadays, I don’t find many college presidents commenting on such issues.”

I will suggest that the silence has grown even more deafening in the decade since Father Hesburgh penned those words. This month, the silence was broken. Over 330 college and university presidents signed a letter, which I penned together with my colleague Elizabeth Kiss at Agnes Scott College, calling for the adoption of rational gun-safety legislation in our country. The letter and the names of all the presidents are posted on the Web site College Presidents for Gun Safety. Additional presidents are signing on every day, and other similar letters have been drafted by such prominent organizations as the Association of American Universities, which includes virtually every leading public and private research university in the country. Yes, the silence has been broken.

Father Hesburgh shared that back in 1957, he and one other president, John Hannah from Michigan State University, were members of the five-person U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He wrote about the angry letters he received for his public service and public stances, including when he was named to serve on President Ford’s Presidential Clemency Board at a time when draft dodgers and deserters from the Vietnam War were being considered for pardons. He wrote: “Painful as those days were, however, they taught a powerful lesson. We cannot urge students to have the courage to speak out unless we are willing to do so ourselves.”

I am incredibly proud that so many presidents have spoken out on the appalling level of gun violence in America today. There is no simple solution, but we all believe that part of the answer lies in requiring gun owners to be subject to background checks before they can acquire guns and that there needs to be reasonable limits on high-capacity guns and magazines. We also shared our collective opinion, based on the experience of managing hundreds of college campuses, that permitting faculty members and students to arm themselves on our campuses will make us all less safe-not more safe.

James O. Freedman, former president of Dartmouth College and past dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, my alma mater, authored an article soon after he left Dartmouth on why college presidents have removed themselves from the public stage (“Getting College Presidents Back on the Public Stage,” Harvard Magazine). He reminisced about the day when such presidents as Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945, played a significant role on the national political stage, among other things campaigning for the repeal of Prohibition. He cites A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933, arguing for America’s participation in the League of Nations. We also had Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1945, speaking out against the Cold War policies of the Truman Administration.

And then Dr. Freedman speaks to today and the silence that comes from our offices. Presidents have plenty of critics, he shares, and who needs more of them, especially when so much of our job these days is raising funds from constituents? He quotes Justice Holmes: “Every idea is an incitement.” How true that is. He aptly notes the issue of length of tenure. The presidents cited above all enjoyed decades-long tenures. Today, college presidents serve an average six or seven years. Longevity does indeed provide some cover and certainly newly minted presidents might rightfully lack the confidence to survive an onslaught of criticism. All that said, I come back to Father Hesburgh’s challenge: How can we urge students to have the courage to speak out unless we are willing to do so ourselves?

I don’t suspect that the call to action on gun safety is the start of presidents speaking out on every issue the country faces. In fact, on most of those issues, I am pretty certain we wouldn’t agree. But on this one, in the face of the massacre in Sandy Hook and in the face of the countless deaths by gun violence across America every day, we do agree and we have chosen to speak.

Lawrence M. Schall
President
Oglethorpe University
Atlanta

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Let me say right now that I have always admired Lance. I ride a little myself. Enough to appreciate what a brutal sport it can be. I suspected he doped as everyone in the sport did to compete at that level. And tonight, I will say I think he was brutally honest, and I admire him for that. I don’t think he knows yet why he was so defiant all these years. That’s ok by me. I don’t think most of us know how we are flawed let alone why we are flawed. We just are and we try hard not to be, at least most of us do.

Lance is just a man. He’s done some good in his life. He’s done plenty of wrong. He competed. He won. Those against whom he competed also doped. I don’t condone what he did. I have a really hard time understanding why he decided he needed to be so public in his defiance, but I also know that he won seven Tours and I didn’t win any. He’s cut from a different mold.

I didn’t expect to walk away from the interview feeling better about Lance, but I do. I am not sure he told the truth in response to every question tonight. Still, he was humble tonight and that is not a bad way to be, even if the humility comes very late.