Common Good
November 23, 2011
During the first week of July in 1995, I read an editorial by Judith A. Ramaley, president of Portland State University in Oregon, that seems as appropriate for today’s events and public policy environment as it was then. Perhaps even more so. Ms. Ramaley wrote:
“I used to think that character is how you behave when no one is looking. For most of us that may still be true. For public figures, however, character is how you behave when everybody is looking . . .
“. . . Nearly a century ago when President Woodrow Wilson was still a college professor, he said: ‘A great nation is not led by a man who simply repeats the talk of the street corners or the opinions of the newspaper. A nation is led by a man who, rather, hearing those things, understands them better, unites them, puts them into common meaning; speaks not the rumors of the street but a new principle for a new age; a man for whom the voices of the nation . . . unite in a single meaning and reveal to him a single vision, so that he can speak what no man else knows, the common meaning of the common voice.’”
As our “modern” nation heads into the heart of yet another election season, with earlier and earlier primaries leaving little separation from the last acrimonious campaigns, it is this quality above all others that I’m seeking to find in the candidates for public office: the uncommon heart and mind to unite us for the common good.
Making the Game Safer
October 6, 2015
I’ve recently overheard two insightful perspectives about football.
From an attorney for the National Federation of State High School Associations (I’m paraphrasing): “We need to remind people that we didn’t invent football. We are the ones making it safer.”
From a professor at Michigan State University (again I’m paraphrasing): “In the 1950s when automobile injuries disturbed the national conscience, we didn’t abolish cars; we made it safer to drive them. That’s where we are with football today – recognizing dangers and making the game safer.”
What this means to me is that there’s little need to be on the defensive or apologetic, but much need to be on the offensive and to be optimistic about football’s future.
Never has the equipment been better than it is today. Never have coaches been better educated about player safety. Never have there been more safety rules, and never have officials had more authority and encouragement to enforce those rules. This is true for all school sports, but most obviously so for school-sponsored football.
We are on offense, have been for years, making a game that was very good to me as a player even better, every year, for participants at the secondary school level today.