A Happy Occasion and A Consequential Choice

This weekend, my undergraduate alma mater celebrated the opening of its new Student Center (actually, a major expansion and renovation of the building that first opened in the late 1960s). It was a joyous occasion, capping off years of planning, fundraising, designing, and constructing the impressive and highly functional new space. The building serves as a home for the students, giving them a beautiful facility where they can gather informally, hold meetings, dine, relax, study, and just hang, alone or with friends.

The celebration resembled celebrations from the completions of past campus building projects. It included a private dinner for the board of trustees with recognition of and remarks from major donors, and a public ribbon cutting ceremony, complete with balloons in the school’s colors and a bagpipe and drum performance in honor of the college’s Scottish tradition.

I am very proud of the college and the dedication of its administration, staff, faculty, students, trustees, and alumni, many of whom consistently contribute to such major building projects that create vibrant and welcoming spaces for all who enter. I also am very happy to see all the efforts that it takes to complete a project like this one come together and reach a successful conclusion with a new space that is expected to benefit students for decades to come. And yet, this happy occasion and the accomplishments that gave rise to it also can serve as vivid reminders of events across the globe that are not happy at all. By that, I mean the war in Ukraine. I don’t want to be a downer, but I do think it’s worth taking a minute to reflect on the contrast between these two types of events and what that means for the people involved.

We’ve all seen the images coming from the horrific destruction occurring overseas. Those that most stand out for me are the pictures of the severely damaged and destroyed buildings in Ukraine’s cities and countryside. Russian bombs have devastated countless apartment buildings, office buildings, schools, hospitals, shops – places where a peaceful population used to work, learn, heal, and play. The sights displayed on the nightly news remind me of the movie sets in the film “Saving Private Ryan,” depicting American soldiers and others making their way through streets in France littered with rubble amidst similarly devastated buildings. Such images are a bleak reminder of the sad truth that what takes years to build takes only moments to destroy.  

Here's another truth: Destroying a building nullifies the work, hopes, and dreams of all the people who built it. When I see the bombed-out buildings of Ukraine, I think not only of their dead and displaced occupants, but also of every architect, developer, carpenter, mason, electrician, plumber, builder, inspector, interior designer, laborer, maintenance worker, and others whose time, hard work, and resources made the buildings reality. Like the people my college celebrated this weekend, those people were the creators. Russia, sadly, has chosen the path of destroyer.

Extreme elements in America’s political right and the media that own them are calling for America to stop supporting Ukraine. They want us to accept an alternate reality, one that overlooks or seeks to justify the death and destruction being dealt to innocent civilians and their country by an unprovoked behemoth. To anyone who doubts America’s moral position, the choice seems clear. We are on the side either of those who would build or those who would destroy. Given the unequal power of the two regimes, not to take a side is to side with the destroyer, and to lay all the rest of Europe, and all of Europe’s people, land, and buildings, at its feet.

Today, Ukrainians can only defend the territory they hold, fight to retake the territory they’ve lost, and dream of a day when the destruction ends and the rebuilding begins. When that day comes, I wish for them ten thousand times the excitement and joy my board friends and I experienced this week with the official opening of the single, wonderful, newly renovated place that the architects, builders, and so many others lovingly created for our community.