Archive for university of kansas

Kansas Professor Wants My Children Dead!

Posted in Family with tags , , , , on September 23, 2013 by David McInerny

IMG_2974As if we needed any more evidence that our institutes of higher learning have become fetid wastelands brimming with ideologues and doctrinaires… Nonetheless, along came Professor David Guth of the University of Kansas who, last Monday in the aftermath of the Navy Yard shootings, tweeted that he hopes the children of NRA members are among the dead at the hands of the next deranged shooter. Not content with that, he expounded upon his inane logic on his blog. And, when contacted by several media outlets, he asserted that he will take none of it back, and that he has nothing for which to apologize. Such are the mentalities inhabiting many of our colleges and universities. If there was ever a better argument against the idea of tenure…

The University of Kansas, in jaw-dropping predictability, took the usual course of inaction. On Wednesday, it simply asserted Guth’s first amendment right to free speech, and hoped the furor would subside. When hundreds (including me) on Thursday expressed their disdain, and the media caught on, the university asserted Guth’s first amendment right again, but added that Guth’s views were not the university’s views. On Friday, when even more (including me) complained that the university was not going far enough, and after a few more unapologetic interviews from Guth, the university chancellor finally put a gag on him and announced Friday that he was on indefinite leave pending an investigation. Over the weekend, the leave turned into an “early sabbatical.”

For those who aren’t acquainted with academic-speak, allow me to translate. Professor Guth is now on an early paid vacation, lasting typically a year, while his colleagues will be forced to take up his teaching load. Oh, that we all could be punished thus for our transgressions.  Guth, for his part, is loath to part with his 15 minutes of infamy, and is now blaming the NRA for his misfortune and referring to unspecified “thinly-veiled death threats” against him. As I said, jaw-dropping predictability.

The incident hits close to home, though. I happen to be a proud NRA member, and I not only have a child attending the University of Kansas, but he is a member of the NRA also. I wondered over the weekend if Guth would wish my son dead twice for this double infraction. This morning, I decided to ask him. Armed only with my intellect, I made the 40 minute drive to Lawrence, and I had little trouble locating Guth’s office, curious to see if the professor was capable of engaging in reasoned discourse. Alas, his office was closed, but undeterred I found a seating area and decided to wait. (I had noticed from the media photos that Guth is a rather robust-looking fellow, so I thought maybe he was simply out for an early lunch.) I amused myself with the latest issue of American Hunter, and thought fondly of the first pheasant hunt of the year. After some time, I tried Guth’s door again, but no luck. As I turned away, a professor emerged from his office and gaped at me like I was a ghost. You’d think maybe he’d never seen an NRA cap before. Then again, given that I was in the midst of a vacuum of independent thinking, maybe he hadn’t.

I guess we’ll have to keep a close eye on the university and see if the promised investigation ever takes place, or if they’re hoping time will make us forget. I won’t. By the way, before I left, I noticed two courses that Journalism Professor Guth had been teaching this semester were posted on his door. Strategic Communication Campaigns, and Ethics and the Media. You can’t make this stuff up!

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Tempus Fugit

Posted in Family with tags , , on March 23, 2013 by David McInerny

IMG_2389Was it so long ago that I sat, cramped in the bleachers of a high school which these seniors had outgrown, physically and ambitiously, watching my daughter collect honors and adulation from teachers both ready and reluctant for her leaving? Even then, I wondered how we had moved so rapidly from petty worries of middle school squabbles to university visits and thoughts of a major theme of study which, if our daughter, our savings and the university performed as expected, would lead to future gainful employment for our little girl.

And so it was that Dad’s Day arrived her freshman year, and we walked the campus to see the marching band before the football game, and eat at the sorority she had worked so hard to be accepted within. And then another Dad’s Day the following year, and another … until the final one became so routine that there was never a thought to actually attending the game, so we watched it on the TV in her rental house – the long sought-after sorority house already in the past – eating homemade pasta with her house mates and napping through halftime.

Even the study abroad, a topic of mutual insistence since her middle school days, already relegated to an iPhoto folder and sweatshirts with Dublin pub logos emblazened upon. Internships applied for now complete, work applications now proofed, and her final Spring break, as I write, flowing from present into past. The process of maneuvering work travel around collegiate graduation activities has begun, and soon enough the formal acknowledgement of honors and adulation will transpire again, complete with gowns and tassels.

It is well and good to marvel at the passage of time, so quickly for me as it is so slow for her, just as it is important to relish these milestones of hers and celebrate them before they too become shelved tomes in the library of my mind, to be opened again and again until the binders fray from use. Because, let’s face it, as far as fatherly concerns go, these years were the easy ones!

 

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Dad’s Weekend

Posted in Family with tags , , , on October 14, 2012 by David McInerny

Every fall the fraternities and sororities at the University of Kansas sponsor Dad’s Weekends. They typically include a Friday dinner and a Saturday home football game. My freshman at the Beta Theta Pi house had me over yesterday before the game, where we all enjoyed great BBQ. Come game time though, the weather looked worse than ominous, so we gave our tickets away and headed for Cabela’s for necessary hunting gear instead.

Today was a scheduled event at Powder Creek Shooting Range in Lenexa. Forty-four sons and dads competed in trap shooting, which was a fun three hours. We took our hunting dog, who thoroughly enjoyed an afternoon in the woods. I didn’t shoot well, as expected, but my son did, which was equally expected. He clearly loved showing off his hound to his new friends, almost as much as I enjoyed showing my son off to mine.

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My Progeny

Posted in Family with tags on August 21, 2012 by David McInerny

When you bring your first child home from the hospital, among myriad thoughts and concerns is, what will become of this child, what kind of world will they grow up in, and how will they make their way through life? These pensive thoughts are quickly lost, of course, in the immediacy of other issues like, say, nine diaper changes a day, ear infections, three hours of sleep a night, the bully next door, tots falling out of trees, finding the strength to actually send your flesh and blood to kindergarten, still peeing in bed at night, that crazy teacher, wanting mac & cheese at every meal, nose-picking, that awful haircut, the friend from hell, a piercing where!?, no you can’t date him, look what I found in your closet, how dare you talk to me that way, show me your report card, can you please lock the front door when you come home?, we need to start seeing colleges, have you packed everything? … see you at Thanksgiving, baby – I love you!

Two decades of water have passed under the bridge since my babies enjoyed a premium pacifier after a gourmet Gerber dinner. Our eldest is a senior at the University of Kansas, and she is feeling her oats after a summer in Dublin and while she looks forward to a future in journalism. Our middle child is our artiste, working a job by day while he contemplates a life of music production at night. The baby moved into a fraternity at Kansas last week, and is a budding engineer. Could we have guessed or guided any of these career paths twenty years ago? Of course not. But we could nurture, shove, cajole, hug, holler, and love them to a successful life, and we’ve done the best we could. Now wish me luck as potential spouses come courting.

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Innocents Abroad

Posted in Family, Travel with tags , , , , , on June 26, 2012 by David McInerny

In the summer of 1980 I left for Austria to start my sophomore year at Notre Dame as an exchange student at the University of Innsbruck. I was gone for ten months. Communication back home was very simple … twenty pre-paid air mail letters that folded to make their own envelopes. I was pretty good at writing two letters a month to my parents. My mom saved them and gave them to me when I returned. I read them a few years ago and winced at how worldly and wise I thought I was at the sage old age of eighteen.

Through the mail we also coordinated two phone calls – I remember one was on my birthday. I walked to the post office where there were a half-dozen long distance phone booths. I’d tell the operator I wanted to make a collect call to the United States and gave the number. When an international line opened up – that required a ten or fifteen minute wait – the operator would call back and dial home for me. I’d talk to my parents for five minutes and let them know I was doing well, and they’d give me family news. I think my dad said those five minute calls cost about $25 each.

My daughter left for Dublin a few weeks ago for an eight week journalism internship arranged through the University of Kansas. She’s been to Europe five times previously, but always with the family and never to Ireland. She left her passport at a public place twice on those previous trips. She drove halfway to Omaha trying to get to the Kansas City airport not too long ago. There was plenty of reason to fret about her flying off to Dublin for a few months. I often wondered, in the weeks prior to her departure, what sort of emergency could transpire, and if I would need to fly over there.

Well, I have been in closer communication with my daughter the last two weeks than at any other point in the past year! I talk to her as I eat my morning cereal while she Skype’s with my wife. Texts flow continuously via WhatsApp. I see the pictures of her daily exploits as she posts them on Facebook. We read each other’s blogs on the internet. I arrived in Las Vegas for a convention on Sunday, and while eating lunch watched the European soccer tournament “with her” while she sipped a Guinness in a pub.

I don’t think any of this real-time contact, which has provided me with incredible peace of mind, is costing a single cent. I love technology.

 

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