Stayed busy enough today that I didn’t even have the chance to enjoy my afternoon oranges.
Philip Poole, the director of Samford’s office of marketing and communication stopped by our class today. He’s a very nice guy, helpful with students, always ready for a friendly chat.
He told the students about “Phantom Week” of 2008. In May of that year a campus safety officer reported he saw a gunman on campus. They locked everything down, searched for the guy for hours. After a while they opened the campus, declared it safe and started asking the campus safety guy a few more questions.
Turns out he made the entire story up.
Eight days later, Poole says, was graduation. A woman fell and hit her head and was going to miss graduation. Her family was naturally upset because she was also supposed to be the student speaker. As Poole heard more and more of the story less and less of it made sense.
Turns out she wasn’t even a student at Samford, but her brother had been sending her tuition money for years. So everyone figures out pretty quickly where that story goes.
He talks about working for the university, dealing out public relations here and journalism there. He’s a good person to know on campus, and he has a great rapport with students and I’m always happy to have him visit.
Elsewhere, graded papers all morning. Read the paper, critiqued the paper. Graded more papers.
It is remarkable I don’t get paper cuts, he said, dooming himself to a horrible series of them in the near future.
I was finally able to eat my banana on the drive home. That kind of day. But a good day, a beautiful day. The thermometer said 59, but the sun made it warmer, the cheer in the air made it brighter and the feeling of the coming spring just intensified everything.
Except the oranges.
