Jacob Jardel
Sports Editor
@JJardel_Writing
Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.
Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced the above stages of grief in her seminal 1969 book “On Death and Dying.” She developed the model after working with terminally ill patients, but individuals could apply it to any sort of grief – from death to divorce to substance abuse.
When you think about it, though, we could potentially apply it to reactions to Cameron’s recent budget cuts.
It may not be as grave a problem as mortality, nor is it a death sentence for the university. But it’s still something we all need to be aware of because it affects us as students and us as a school.
We’re facing a budget reduction of over $4 million for our next fiscal year. Departments are merging, dissolving and otherwise downsizing. Changes are on the horizon.
Almost everybody is feeling it in some way – even if they don’t know it yet.
During his talk with faculty and staff, Cameron President Dr. John McArthur stood at the podium as the ultimate bearer of bad news for Cameron. He told a crowd of colleagues and employees the gasp-inducing news. He had to tell people he hired that the university would not invite them back next year.
Later in a press conference, he mentioned the loss of sleep and gain of stress associated with having to make preemptive decisions to compensate for what the legislature might do in May. And he tried to do it all without changing the primary things students, faculty and staff wanted to remain the same.
A popular idiom states that heavy is the head that wears the crown.
The situation is reminiscent of the “death penalty” the NCCA Infractions Committee handed down to the Southern Methodist University football team in 1987 after years of recruiting violations. Big news that takes something away from a program delivered in the form of one man speaking to a large crowd.
Thankfully, unlike NCAA Enforcement Director David Berst, President McArthur didn’t faint from the gravity and pressure of the announcement. Also unlike the SMU case, the Cameron community didn’t bring any of this upon itself. That reasoning may make this situation even heavier.
But the shock is still there.
This brings us back to the Kubler-Ross model of grief. The stages theoretically don’t go in any particular order, though the most common pattern is the DABDA order listed above: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
We’re far beyond the Denial stage at this point. The proposed cuts plan ahead for the university’s best-case scenario in anticipation of legislative action giving us the true story for our new normal. It’s nothing we can avoid or deny now.
The next three stages are really the ones that seem the most fluid – or at least varied – among the Cameron community.
Though it’s civil, there is some Anger involved with losing departments, programs and jobs in some. Thankfully, nothing rash has happened thus far. But that’s not to say some people aren’t angry that it appears their voices weren’t heard in the midst of this fracas.
Bargaining seems a bit of a stretch on the surface, since it involves the want to trade something to stop or even delay our budgetary fates. But don’t doubt that there are people who would be willing to give something so Cameron can keep something dear to their person.
However, at least from current perception, the most prevalent emotion has been Depression. Employees losing their jobs have expressed their sadness in social media. Directors of offices have slowly and morosely broken the news of dissolutions.
Everyone from President McArthur to the most innocuous of us on campus has at least some sliver of budget-related melancholy.
But the trickiest of these stages is Acceptance. We accept the fact that the cuts are here and inevitable. We accept that we’re sad, angry and otherwise disconcerted about it. So in our case, the problem isn’t whether or not we come to terms with these things.
The problem is what we do once we get to that place of Acceptance.
We can place blame, find a place we can point fingers or look for a singular cause for a problem. We can wallow in a feeling of learned helplessness. There are a number of things we could do that could perpetuate the negative feedback loop.
It’s easy to fall into this cycle not only as individuals but also as a society in general with how people treat younger generations and others who urge for change. 2Pac said it well in his song “Keep Ya Head Up.”
“[They] say there ain’t no hope for the youth and the truth is \ it ain’t no hope for the future \ and they wonder why we crazy.”
Amid everything, there is – and has always been – a sort of eschewing the thoughts of youth as head in the clouds idealism. Meanwhile, there is money for everything but those of us who need it.
Much like a lot of what 2Pac rapped about toward the end of his career and his life, these issues permeate through our current zeitgeist as much as they did in the early 1990s. And it’s almost surreal how much the learned helplessness loops. It’s gotten to the point where we as people – knowingly or otherwise – can easily keep the cycle going.
Or we can try to find out how to introduce some change into it.
Even if people can downplay how much we can change, how much our voice matters, we still have a say. The Cameron community may not be able to make big budgetary decisions, but we can vote in the people who can talk for us. We can continue our conversations with President McArthur so he doesn’t have to do it alone.
The Cameron community can do a lot, even if it doesn’t seem like it. The thing we need to remember is that the civility we’ve shown so far is a sign of just how strong our bond as a group is. If we keep that unity as we try to work to fix things, Cameron can and will make it through this tough time.
We share in this grief together, so we can use it to come together en route to a brighter future.