I won’t tell you that it’s gonna be OK. I can’t see the sun through the all dark I won’t tell you that it’s gon’ be ok. And I can’t see the sun through all the darkened rays.
I don’t claim to have the answer, it’s more than some can say
I won’t tell you that it’s gon’ be ok. It might not be ok

Might not be OK – Kenneth Whalum featuring Big K.R.I.T.

I wept in my office today. It has been a week since George Floyd was killed and the country is on fire. I have friends across the country who live in fear for the color of their skin. And COVID. Gone – Cheering at my daughter’s volleyball tournaments. Gone – seeing my son walk across the graduation stage with the rest his high school class. Living a bit vicariously through the eyes of my oldest as she navigated her sophomore year in college – Nope. I sit in my office alone every day, giving emergency grant money to students who are concerned about having a place to live and food to eat; lost was their spring semesters as well. I manage the current list of sexual assault reports and I am responsible for helping to reflect the pain they have endured through charts, graphs, and annual reports that will likely gather digital dust. Box checked? Check. Funding? Yes, right.

I read how other colleges are planning, hoping, dreaming of having students back on campus this fall and try to offer my thoughts as we try to do the same, in a way where we don’t kill someone for the sake of revenue and institutional survival. Most of my staff are not getting paid for much of the summer and I will have some of the same. How do I care for my family? How do I help care for theirs? Where and when I can, I have tried to take tasks from my staff and give all the grace I can muster as we try to work amid a global crisis. I haven’t seen them since March; you know what I mean. There are more than a few things overdue and I keep hearing, ‘Take care of yourself’ and ‘Be sure to unplug.’ I listen to the book ‘How to be an anti-racist.’ on the way to work and can’t stand FB and Twitter for all of the pain, and loss, and hopelessness, and darkness, and willful disdain for other humans, and. Bobby Dylan plays and I hear, ‘How many roads must a man walk down before he is called a man?’ and ‘I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping.’ It’s a hard rain gonna fall. It might not be ok.