Autumn wind blows in the new New Year on college campuses

Friday, Aug. 31, 2007 | 10 p.m.

Washington

My dad had the bad judgment to graduate from high school in 1929, so many decades later, with the Great Depression, World War II and assorted family obligations out of the way, he took early retirement from his job as a corporate executive and rented a studio on the second floor of a Chinese laundry overlooking the streetcar loop to resume his career as a painter.

He could have gotten up anytime he wanted, but on days that were especially nasty, preferably with a combination of snow, rain and gusty wind, he would vault out of bed and race uptown to his studio so he could stand in his window with a mug of coffee and gaze benignly at the commuters huddled miserably at the streetcar stop below.

Asked why this ritual brightened his spirits so, he said, “Because I don't have to go in with them.”

One of my favorite times of year is back-to-school, especially college campuses in the weeks right around Labor Day weekend. This corner led a laughably futile effort to have Labor Day replace New Year's because it really is the end of summer and the official start of the American year -- schools, colleges, football, the pennant drive, autumn, shopping.

My drive to work takes me through one campus and we have a vacation home next to another. There is something poignant about watching families unload and unpack their newly anointed freshmen. The beds in the dorm room are made, the clothes neatly packed away in the drawers and hung in the closet, the books are shelved in a precise row over the desk, the wall decorations are neatly aligned, the electronics set up with the wires safely out of the way and the mini-fridge is shiny and new.

The families certainly know -- and the freshmen probably -- that the room will never look like this again, at least not with its new occupants -- and not until a doting family moves the next freshman in. The unpacking and ritual neatness is a communal sign of hope for the future. This is a new beginning, it says, and the future is bright and whole.

Awkward goodbyes are said -- “We'll see you at Thanksgiving” -- and the parents depart with a mixture of anxiety and relief and the sense that from the vantage point of Labor Day weekend, Thanksgiving is forever.

A couple of weeks ago, my No. 2 son and I drove through the Antioch College campus. The college plans to close after this academic year, and it's unclear whether it will reopen. It's unclear how a school with a cutting-edge reputation can fail in the midst of a demographic boom for small liberal-arts colleges. It's a handsome campus but shabby and unkempt, and even when the students are there it seems unoccupied. “Renewal” is not a word that comes to mind here as the school year begins.

My daily commute goes around a traffic circle that divides the American University campus. The students, in the universal uniform of jeans, T-shirt and backpack, have returned to campus, and they are lively and cheerful as they wait on the curb until their numbers reach critical mass and they can push into the street on their way to classes.

And it makes me feel good to watch them lugging their textbooks and laptops, and it makes me feel good for this reason: I don't have to go in with them.

Dale McFeatters is a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service.