Lauren Grover
George Roche III has a firm handshake—one he’s likely mastered—and he grips your hand longer than you are accustomed, pulling you slightly toward him as he speaks in warm and even tones with unwavering eye contact.
He’s taller and feebler than I expected, like a powerful war horse now lame and nostalgic. My hand gave up its impatience and rested in his during our introduction prior to his tribute dinner, and I couldn’t think of one thing to say—I believe we chatted about the weather.
Writer David Brooks talked about objectivity in his CCA speech, that although it can’t be fully attained it should always be sought after by good journalists.
Within a day of taking the assignment to cover Roche’s return to Michigan, I did not believe I was going to be objective.
It occurred to me first while walking back to my dorm after my second faculty interview, holding an empty pad of paper and a pen. The professor I had talked to did not want to comment on the story. The professor was disturbed by the return of Roche to Michigan and was clearly still emotionally hurt by what went on in fall of 1999 and in the difficult months following. The professor asked that I put nothing on the record, we talked briefly, and I left with something like a softball in my throat.
The problem with my objectivity was that I, like that professor, love my school. Why would I want to take part in digging up the skeleton that has just now been laid to rest? Why should I introduce bright-eyed freshmen to an ugly blot in Hillsdale’s history and remind faculty and administration of a time when their fortress of education was seemingly breached by its own general?
What I didn’t know then that I do now, is that after three weeks of over 20 interviews, at least six of those off the record completely, and after sitting down face-to-face with George Roche III as he shakily answered my questions, I would come away not with a more disappointing view of an unfortunate event, but with a greater appreciation for our institution.
I had discovered that the overflow of material I found on Roche and the events surrounding his resignation wasn’t dirt on Hillsdale—it was dirt on a family, specifically on two people in a family who had lost sight of Hillsdale.
It was an unfortunate event. It was unfortunate that at some point along the road, the good of the college wasn’t at the forefront for Roche, either directly or indirectly. It was unfortunate that because of this he wasn’t able to stay and finish his time here in proper dignity.
For liberals in the media, the incident in 1999 was intoxicating. From Vanity Fair to the untalented writer of “Hillsdale: Greek Tragedy in America’s Heartland,” left-wing journalists ate it up. Ah, the conservative bulwark brutally assaulted by its own Washington. I’m surprised the New York Times didn’t run a series.
What they—and sadly enough, the spineless conservative Hillsdale supporters who quickly changed allegiances that year—failed to acknowledge is that Hillsdale and its principles do not claim perfection.
Integrity isn’t infallibility—it is what you do when the challenge emerges, when the unthinkable happens, it is how you carry on when your president abruptly resigns following his daughter-in-law’s suicide.
Integrity is finding a new president. One who devotedly campaigns and promotes our school, who doesn’t censor our school newspaper, who eats lunch at SAGA, who is spotted at dances and sporting events, who jokes with students and picks on professors. A president who doesn’t run our campus like a dictator. A president who does his best to live the values he and our school represent.
I don’t hold Dr. Arnn to an expectation of perfection. I believe he is highly fallible, as are each of us. It is not his job to shine in a false light of impeccability, to take on a god-like form in order to lure donors and prospects to Hillsdale.
I believe it is his job to surround us with an administration and faculty who have their eyes on this college. He has done that. And it is his job, and I believe he is very capable of this, to not let their focus or his own waver from this institution, putting into practice the virtue and integrity on which it stands.
May Arnn’s pursuit of integrity persevere, so that we may someday give him a tribute right here on this campus, with the proper dignity each Hillsdale president deserves.
Grover is a Hillsdale College junior majoring in English.