SHUz Embedded Reporter

A Conversation with Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz

 

Father Gregory Boyle: The Eraser Man

In a way, he is a kind of “first responder”: one who runs in the direction of a catastrophe instead of away. For close to 25 years, Father Gregory Boyle has been the pastor of the poorest parish in Los Angeles. Fifteen thousand people come through his doors each year looking for work and for worth. They include addicts and drug dealers, prostitutes and thieves: the kind of people, he readily admits, that you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley – or maybe even in a brightly lit one. His organization, under the loose umbrella title of Homeboy Industries, helps people find housing and jobs, and works with them on family and legal issues. One of the things he is famous for is helping remove menacing tattoos, and no one does more of it in the world. He told of one young gang member who had an unspeakable vulgarity – yes, that one – tattooed across the full width of his forehead. Today, it has been completely erased and will allow him to interact with other people without first scaring them to death. It’s all in a day’s work for Father Greg, who spoke this week at University Commons.

Let the sun shine in!

It looks like the lobby of a boutique hotel in the City: all glass and sunlight and deep, comfortable chairs. The new University Commons Atrium is now fully furnished and operational. Filled with light, it opens to a spacious courtyard that expands the living room outdoors. The courtyard features several levels of seating and will be available for receptions before or after events in the University Commons or the Mahogany Room. It slopes downward to a small amphitheater where musical or dramatic performances can be held adjacent to the Seton and Merton residence halls. And at the center of it all is a lively outdoor fountain where the sound of water splashing will help to make the space all the more inviting. It is one of the most public improvements that reached completion over the summer break just in time for the beginning of a new academic year.


 

You Can Go Home Again – and Again and Again…

After a week of pounding rains and brooding, cinematic skies, the clouds miraculously parted and the sun poured down in abundance – just in time for Homecoming 2010. More than a thousand alumni and other visitors swelled the campus population on Saturday, October 2^nd, for a day of tailgating, football, and wild hugs and high fives. Cars started rolling up to Park Avenue early to find the best place to set up their picnic chests and coolers, and before long the smell of barbecue was filling the air. Whole teams and sororities seemed to reconstitute themselves on the spot as if the intervening year or two – or maybe 20 – had never taken place. A great many came from New York and New Jersey, but quite a few who grew up there now sport Fairfield-area addresses as they make their way in the world close to their alma mater. The day was full of show-and-tell moments: new jobs, new kids, new email addresses to share. Even those on their first or second reunion got to see remarkable changes on campus – from the gleaming new Chapel of the Holy Spirit to the grand canyon that will look very much like the new student services building by this time next year. Every year, Homecoming seems to get better as more and more of the family return to experience and enrich the ongoing life of the University.

Greg Mortenson Speaks in the Edgerton Center for the Performing Arts

I thought, somehow, that he would look larger than life. That his face would radiate serenity or his walk communicate a brisk confidence. Instead, he looked as if he might be a junior high science teacher and live just down the street. Greg Mortenson spoke to students at the kick-off presentation of the Student Affairs Lecture Series. Three Cups of Tea, his best-seller about the power of schools to transform lives in such far-away places as Pakistan and Afghanistan, had been required reading for incoming freshmen, and his slide show of life on the edge in central Asia was quietly moving: rarely flashy but filled with profound lessons that have the power to heal and to change. Although it means leaving his wife and two children in Montana, he spends a huge amount of time “on the road” – building more than 140 schools that now educate nearly 65,000 young people. They are, he says unapologetically, mostly all girls. What is it, he asks, that scares the men who bomb schools – especially those of young girls? “They are afraid. Afraid because they know that if girls are educated, then all of society will change: there can be no turning back.” So, one by one, and classroom by classroom, he helps build schools and build the future. It often means clearing away still-lethal landmines left from decades of warfare: landmines that kill hundreds of Afghan children each year who might otherwise be in school. When you talk to women in this shattered region of the world and ask them their hopes for the future, he recalls emphatically, they have two answers: They don’t want their babies to die. And they want their children to have a good education, one that will help build a new society. When you hear Greg Mortenson explain it, it not only sounds reasonable, it sounds completely realistic as well.

A Constitution Day Look at the Death Penalty

Sadly, the timing could not have been better. Just as the entire country was having its nose rubbed into the horrific details of the notorious 2007 home invasion in Connecticut, the University got to explore issues surrounding the death penalty up-close and personal. Every national news outlet was talking about the case: a Cheshire woman and her two daughters were robbed, sexually assaulted and then murdered, their home burned to the ground. The husband and father, badly beaten, was able to escape from the basement and is now the galvanizing force behind a push to enforce the use of capital punishment in Connecticut and elsewhere. Each year, the University observes Constitution Day, the federally mandated celebration of the crafting of the United States Constitution, with a special program dedicated to the law. The September 17^th forum is organized annually by Dr. Gary L. Rose, professor and chair of the Department of Government and Politics. The long-scheduled conference on “Debating the Death Penalty,” featuring the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Connecticut, Atty. Sandy Staub, came just as the conversation was reaching fever pitch. It is a defining element of university life that issues of such substance and consequence can be debated and explored, even when there is no certain outcome, by the very people who will decide these matters in the future. Thanks, Dr. Rose, for another great teachable moment.

A Radio Field Trip...to the Congo

I felt like a fifth-grader all week listening to Ofeibia Quist-Arcton on WSHU. She was narrating a trip down the Congo River, and it brought me back to Mr. Brown’s classroom and the first extended research project I’d ever done: this, on the Belgian Congo. I searched the almanac and our Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopedia for all the information I could find on this exotic and incredibly distant land. And ever since then, I’ve felt a bit of ownership for this region, and when I hear of it on the news, I think they’re talking about a place I know well – not true, of course – and that I somehow discovered as a kid. The five-day expedition was incredibly detailed. The reporter is a gifted story-teller and her unique accent – I can’t ever pinpoint its origins – makes for a unique combination. This is where National Public Radio, with which our own WSHU is affiliated, really shines. I am, I admit, a public radio junkie, and I listen faithfully – too much sometimes – to the news. While there is a constant barrage of Afghanistan and the BP oil spill and the President’s latest poll numbers, the sun breaks through occasionally with rich and substantial coverage like this. The leisurely pace of the reporting over the course of five days allowed for a measured examination of myriad aspects on Congolese life. It is a huge – and hugely important - region, and we know so little about it. And sadly, this is probably the most I’ve heard about the Congo since fifth grade. WSHU – and its many affiliates – is a true gift, and Sacred Heart University is fortunate to have this great resource in our midst.

Another Opening, Another Show…

You couldn’t have asked for a better day on Sunday, September 5^th. A thousand students were in the process of checking out their new campus and checking in for four years of experiences that they could not even guess at. I was able to meet many freshmen and their parents, and often younger brothers and sisters and even grandparents. We offered them free T-shirts that said “Sacred Heart University” quietly on the front, with the reverse side shouting “Graduation or Bust!” Graduation seemed a long way off for many; the immediate concerns were more compelling: How long will it take to get my things onto the sixth floor? Where is the mail room? What do I do about parking? And of course, where is the bathroom? As I looked out at the hopeful and somewhat confused throng, I thought, as I always do on Move-In Day, here are the future stars of Sacred Heart. They might not even know it yet, but here are the biology whizzes, the prize-winning poets, the nurses who will save lives, the football champions. In this maze of people are future husbands and wives, future rivals, future best friends forever. On Move-In Day, everything is possible.

 

Dr. Bob McCloud Is Building a Bridge to Albania

You see the ads all the time for pricey sports cars with fierce engines: “Zero to 60,” they scream, “in seven seconds,” or some such. Professor Bob McCloud has taken on a task with similar proportions. His aim is to help bring the educational system of the nation of Albania from the starting line to the twenty-first century in a matter of just four years. Long the basket case of European economies, Albania has set ambitious educational goals aimed to prepare “students to excel in an information-based, technologically advanced society, to create technologically savvy citizens, and to prepare children for college and the job market.” Oh, is that all? To achieve this in a globally interdependent world, the two million school children of Albania will need to adopt and adapt the internet – and do so in a hurry. Dr. McCloud is serving as a consultant to the Ministry of Education on a project that will take four years to fully implement. A one-time Fulbright Fellow in Kosovo – the University’s first – he has spent more than 15 months in the Balkans among a people he truly loves. He returns in October to finish this leg of the project and hand the baton to local educators to carry forward.

Incoming Freshmen to Connect with the Community – and Each Other

Benjamin Franklin has a great thought regarding education. He speaks of a man who was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages – and so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on. It’s a caution all of us in “higher education” should remember from time to time. The antidote for that kind of thinking is found right here at Sacred Heart. Dozens of our students begin their college experience not in the classroom or the lab or on the playing field. They kick-start their years of advanced learning by living for a short while in the city of Bridgeport. There, they encounter the struggles and the joys of ordinary people working to raise a family, earn a living, and plan for a better life. As volunteers with Community Connections – typically the incubator to some of the University’s best and most committed students – a select group of freshmen and the upper-class mentors who serve as advisors immerse themselves in a kind of educational process that can’t ever be duplicated in a library or on a computer. These lucky young people walk through a doorway toward independence and full adulthood by sitting on the floor with children as they read aloud in schools. Sometimes for the first time in their lives, they will put on an apron and cook and clean up for others. They will tear down barriers as they put up walls for new homes. And they will share the stories of their lives and their brightest hopes with others in the same boat, and find among their peers friends for a lifetime. This year, we had over 80 applications, while looking for only 40.  The final number will be close to 46-48, with 14 instead of 12 upper-class student leaders. What a great way to start a lifetime of learning and service.