The news that Siena Heights University was closing next year after 105 years of existence hit me like a punch to the stomach.
It made me think back to the fall of 2005, when my wife and I drove to Adrian dropped off our son Cameron – a fresh-faced graduate of Fowlerville High School who had been recruited as a pole vaulter on the Siena Heights track team. We moved him into his dorm room and met his three roommates, fellow track team members who were just as excited and nervous as he was.
The following spring, I drove down to Siena Heights to move him out for the summer, and it was evident that Cameron and his roommates had consumed a whole lot of pizza and Mountain Dew that year, but one thing they hadn’t done was clean. At all. The room was literally filled with eight months’ worth of college garbage.
And I remembered thinking, “Damn, it looks like they had fun here.”
Four years later (he did a redshirt year), Cameron graduated with a business degree from Siena Heights and a whole bunch of memories. He had a great career as a pole vaulter, qualifying for nationals twice. He still ranks among the 15 or so best pole vaulters they’ve ever had there – and they’ve had some great ones.
I was thinking about all that last week when the news came out that his school was closing. The place where he got an education, met friends, went to parties, competed in track and trashed a dorm room. The place where he collected a million great memories. It was closing.
As a Siena Heights dad, this just plain sucks.
And my pain is nothing. The pain I’m feeling is zilch compared to what the current students, professors and employees must be feeling. When I talked to Cameron about it, the first thing he said was, “I feel so bad for the professors. They had some great teachers there.”
I know that’s right.
In terms of why they’re closing, all I know is what they’re saying. They don’t have enough money to survive and it didn’t look like things would get any better. Plain and simple.
I’m sure that’s true, but it still sucks. It sucks for the Siena Heights students and staff. It sucks for the Siena Heights alumni. And it sucks for the Siena Heights dads.
Siena Heights isn’t the first Michigan college to close its doors (Marygrove College closed in 2019 after 92 years of operation, for instance), and it probably won’t be the last. We’re living in a changing world, where fewer kids are seeing college as a necessity and the competition for college-bound kids is getting tougher and tougher. We’re likely to see more colleges and even universities following suit.
But that doesn’t lessen the pain any. It still sucks. The dorm room that Cameron and his roommates trashed back in 2005 (assuming it wasn’t condemned) will no longer be housing another set of scared and excited college kids. It’s going to be sitting empty, just like every other building and room on campus.
In my office at home, I have a tradition. I hang a small pennant on the wall for each of the colleges my kids graduate from. My daughter Chelsie graduated from a university in Australia that doesn’t do pennants, but there’s a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire pennant for my daughter Amelia. When my daughter Lottie graduates from Michigan State next year, I’m going to suck it up and hang a green-and-white MSU pennant on the wall.
And there’s a Siena Heights pennant for Cameron. They can close his school, but that little pennant will always have a home.
Saints forever.
