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April 21, 2006

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Students Need Luck

The sound of screeching brakes is pretty scary. There is the squeal and then usually nothing. A quick bump of the heart rate quickly gives way to the realization that everything’s okay.

On Holy Saturday the silence between the braking and the crash never happened. The lone student driver hit the wall near the Prassel parking garage and the car flipped over onto its roof.

The response was instant. Students from Ledge Lane were there in seconds and Sergeant Mack was right behind them, having been in the Prassel Physical Plant area while on his early morning rounds.

After being pulled from the car by a student who actually knew her, everyone was relieved that the accident victim was alive, and remarkably unharmed.

She was lucky. Though the car appeared to be totaled, she had only a scrape: Lucky too, that the car landed on Trinity private property rather than the city property 15 feet away. No citations and no reports, except Mack’s.

It is the harsh reality for staff members and parents that no matter what you do, in either role, that the difference between our students living and dying can sometimes simply be luck. It’s what we can’t control that scares the most. When my own kids make their way to college, with all the lessons I have seen first hand, this will be the harshest reality I will face. I will lose sleep hoping they are lucky.

There is no lack of parental lectures on drinking and driving, on traveling in groups, or not staying out past 2:00 a.m., when nothing good happens. There are plenty of University programs and messages on drugs, hazing, sexual assault, and spring break safety. You do what you can. The urge to protect and the value to let go are in a constant tussle. And then you get a call one night about a student who has fallen off of a balcony. Lucky: It was just from the second floor.

What’s worse is that adults know that they are here partly by luck – or divine intervention. Ask them. Many are astonished that they didn’t end up with more serious injuries, in jail, in fights, or even dead.

Consider the case of another student. Robbed in the neighborhood with a gun pointed at his face he got a second chance when the attackers ran off. The following semester he drove head-on into a tree and ended up in the hospital. He’s the luckiest or unluckiest student at Trinity, depending on one’s perspective.

So we can only cringe when a pick-up full of guys heads off campus on bid day. We can only hope that students traveling to the coast remember everything their parents ever taught them about water safety, drinking and driving, and about trusting their instincts around strangers.

And on the rare occasions when we are around to hear it, we just hold our breath between the sound of the brakes and what comes next. In a split second, we can only think please – be lucky.

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