One of the things I love most about being president of Fort Hays State University is that I get to hear a lot of stories from our alumni about the life-changing power of a college education and the caring, hard-working people of this amazing institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week, I want to share alumnus Michael Durall\u2019s personal story of transformation. It is a story that begins in the 1960s with a \u201cshy, uncertain young man\u201d who credits the people of our university with encouraging him to persist and discover the person he was meant to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fort Hays Kansas State\nCollege changed my life forever<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n By\nMichael Durall, B.A. \u201970<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nenrolled at Fort Hays Kansas State College in the fall of 1964. At that time,\ntuition was $125 per semester, and many students paid in cash. I remember\nstanding in line at the Registrar\u2019s Office in the Coliseum to pay. I could hear\nthe basketball team practicing on the nearby court, where the Beach\/Schmidt Performing\nArts Center is today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nworked various jobs that paid $1.25 per hour. At first, I lived at home to save\nmoney. When I eventually shared an apartment, the going rate was about $30 per\nguy, per month. We shared one landline phone and divvied up the cost. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was a na\u00efve, shy and uncertain young man. I hadn\u2019t studied much in high school and shouldn\u2019t have gone to college, but I just didn\u2019t know what else to do. I flunked out my freshman year. I worked construction for about 18 months, and when I returned, most of my beer-drinking and poker-playing buddies had moved on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nstill didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do. I changed majors a number of times,\ntrying to find a path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But\nby then, the Vietnam War was heating up, with body counts increasing daily. The\ncivil rights and the women\u2019s liberation movements were also gaining momentum.\nNo one realized that the \u201960s would be one of the most tumultuous eras in\nAmerican history. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nremember a silent anti-war vigil on the corner of 12th and Main on a Saturday\nmorning, led by a number of local clergy. They stood silently for an hour while\npolice with sniper rifles were on the roof of the bank building across the\nstreet. Things like that weren\u2019t supposed to happen in Hays, Kansas. A poll revealed that about\n60 percent of Americans believed the National Guard did the right thing by\nkilling four unarmed students at Kent State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nonce peaceful world I knew evaporated forever, lost in an alarming,\nunpredictable, and surrealistic turn of events. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amidst\nthis turbulence, one seemingly innocuous event at Fort Hays State remains\netched in my memory. It falls into the category of late-night conversations\nthat many college students remember as life altering, more than anything they\nlearned academically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nwas a student in the late Bob Lowen\u2019s journalism class. I was seated next to a\nmarried female student who was a few years older than I. By any imaginable\ncalculation, she was out of my league. She told me she had gotten straight A\u2019s,\nthen added, \u201cIt\u2019s not so much my grades that are important. Rather, I\u2019m\nbecoming a person who is increasingly interested in the world and the people\nwho inhabit it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nfelt like I had been struck by lightning. This was the person I wanted to be. I\nbegan to take my education more seriously. I looked at my professors in a new\nlight, and realized how much time, effort and skill was required to teach\neffectively at the college level. Being an English major, I was exposed to the\nworld\u2019s great literature. In art history classes, the late John Thorns opened a\nvisual world of art and sculpture that I hadn\u2019t known even existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nalso realized that if I wanted to become more knowledgeable about the world and\nits people, there were certain requirements. These included not making snap\njudgments about people based on their appearance; being a reliable friend;\nbecoming strong enough to stand against prejudice when I encountered it; and\nbeing slow to criticize and quick to forgive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fortunately,\nin the years since I was a student, I\u2019ve been able to travel. In gratefulness,\nI funded a travel fellowship at Fort Hays for about five years that allowed\nstudents from small Kansas towns to travel anywhere in the world. Since I had\nbeen given much, I felt an obligation to give in return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back to the days I was a student, I don\u2019t even remember my classmate\u2019s name. But I am eternally grateful for Fort Hays Kansas State College giving me the opportunity to be in that particular place and time. Becoming curious about the world and the people in it helped me become who I am today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tisa Mason is president of Fort Hays State University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the things I love most about being president of Fort Hays State University is that I get to hear a lot of stories… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12323,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Mason-Tisa-040A6662.jpg?fit=750%2C1050","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46398"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46470,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46398\/revisions\/46470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}