August going into September is always something special in higher ed.
There is no calm before the storm. There’s just the electric excitement before a school year begins in earnest, with move-ins and first impressions. Clean slates all round. As college life begins, high school, or whatever came before, is officially over.
Here comes that fresh start to a brand new day.
I confess to feeling the joy of it all as I drop off my daughter to her new home—a smallish room she’ll share with two others in her college dorm.
But it’s hard too for me not to think of Michael Brown.
Take your pick. There’s the Facebook photo with his headphones planted firmly, listening to the soundtrack of his dreams. Or maybe he was just trying to shut out the world that he knew so that he could be transported through the bass line to a better place.
That’s the image we see on the news.
