Earlier in my career, one of my Vice Presidents was a nurse by training, and she had a particular way of expressing frustration in meetings. Our main interaction was in deans' meetings which were typically a place of much discussion and debate, but relatively little action. When our VP could no longer take the swirl and inaction, she would announce "Well, the patient is dead..." meaning that if we were this indecisive in health care, the point of the discussion would have expired. She was 25 years older than me at that time in my career, and I found this mostly funny, but as I get a little more veteran myself, I understand her more every day. There is so much to be done, and so often we choose inaction disguised as planning and deliberation. Make no mistake, it is a choice, and a choice with serious consequences.
The same idea resonates with me as we seem to grant ourselves endless opportunities to learn when in reality we need to act. I think in stories, and I am reminded of a story from my first year as a dean about 13 years ago. A former student had asked me if I could help him host an event on campus. Dewayne was one of the first students I met when I started in higher education, and I wanted to support him, so I opened up campus on a Saturday evening and attended his event. He showed a movie called Color of Fear and interspersed it with guided discussion and reflection. It was a transformative moment for me in my own work with equity and inclusion, but not in just the obvious ways. It was one of the first times I truly considered my identities as white, as male, as cisgender, and all my other identities. I was having what felt like a revelation about my place in the world not being fully earned by my talents. As we went into the group discussion, I started sharing my insights about myself and my learning. It was truly a powerful moment for me, but I could feel the irritation from at least one other man in the room. He was older than me and had been working in the equity and inclusion space for a long time. He was also black, which I think matters in the story. At some point in the conversation when I was sharing my personal revelations, he let out a big sigh. Everyone looked at him, and he said "I am glad you are learning, but I am too old to keep waiting for all of you..." I felt defensive and embarrassed, but I have never forgotten. He was tired of my need to celebrate my own learning and was reminding me I should do the work myself, and he was reminding me people needed me to act. He was right, and I have tried to be more action oriented since, with mixed results.
We work in an industry that is uncomfortable with a bias toward action. Our structures are designed to be deliberative and slow. Perhaps this was appropriate at one time, but it simply is not anymore. In a world where post-secondary training is pretty much a necessity, we don't get to make people wait to get what they need. It makes me think of every time I reach into my wallet to give my son $20. It happens a lot, and I rarely think much of it. I contrast it with the single parent who was $10 short for a PTK membership and the multiple emails to see if we had "a program" to help her. We did help her, but we ran a fairly serious risk of the patient metaphorically dying before we solved the issue. And in contrast to my son, I will always remember what she said to her advisor, "I know $10 isn't much, but when you don't have it, it's a lot." How many opportunities are lost when we make help needlessly complex? How many times could direct action make a difference?
These issues are particularly crucial for students and people in the crisis of poverty. Our notions of planning and delayed gratification simply aren't applicable. Let me tell you a story I often tell in speaking engagements but with an additional couple of crucial details. In the fall of 2018, I attended the Real College conference in Philadelphia. The whole conference was great, but I was really pleased to make a connection with Mark Horvath from Invisible People. The city I live in has a growing population of people who are homeless, and a number of them were staying in a park across from the college I worked for at the time. I have never been homeless, but I am super defensive about being dismissed for being poor, so I was bothered by the tone around town and campus. There was lots of discussion about solving the "problem", but I didn't hear much about how to help the actual people sleeping in the park and using the bathrooms in our buildings. I wanted to do something, but I wasn't sure where to start. Mark told me simply to get some clean socks and go out and offer them to the people and start a conversation about what else they might need. So I did that and I have written about it before (Theory to action), but I don't always share a lesson about urgency. The first person I met who would really talk with me was a young man named Brandon, who as it turned out was a student in my division at my college. After giving him one of my care packages with socks and snacks, I asked what else could help. Brandon told me he really needed a bicycle lock to protect his bike. I made a mental note, and a few days later I stopped at the local bike store and bought a high-end lock, feeling proud of myself for helping. When I went to see Brandon again he was in his sleeping bag in front of the storefront church he stayed by, and I tapped him on the shoulder and told him I had the bike lock. He was very gracious and grateful and seemed almost embarrassed when he told me his bike had been stolen a couple days earlier. My timeline was not his timeline. He didn't need a bike lock someday, he needed one the moment I asked him what he needed. Poverty steals the privilege of long-range planning. I work hard to not forget this crisis is urgent, and what seems like a short delay to us can be a disaster for someone in crisis.
I am asked to present around the country on a pretty regular basis these days (please feel free to inquire, it's my favorite thing). The presentations are evolving and of course are targeted to each audience, but I always finish with a call to action. The first thing I ask for (I would demand if I could) is to develop a bias for action. I ask my audience to move from "if you see something, say something" to "if you see something DO something." People avoid direct action for many reasons. They may be unsure what to do or have a fear of doing the wrong thing. I hope the inaction generally comes from good places and not just from indifference. Regardless, I have two pieces of advice as you try to move from paralysis to action. First, look at the outcomes your current inaction is leading to, is what you want to do likely to make it worse? I doubt it, and if you try something and it doesn't work, stop, and try something else. Second, simply follow the advice I was given from Mark Horvath and is echoed by poverty advocates like Dr. Donna Beegle; ask people what they need. People know what is preventing them from getting where they want to go. Ask them what the barriers are and commit to removing them as fast as possible. Move faster than I did with my friend Brandon. Move fast enough and decisively enough so no one ever has to tell you the patient has died waiting for you to act.
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