| Abstract: |
Crises and emergencies are a common occurrence in higher education. In 2024 alone, college and university communities faced increased bomb threats and school shootings, protests and police violence, climate disasters, and more. These incidents, and countless others, have changed the fabric of higher education, including the very people and communities involved. One such way to honor those impacted is through spontaneous shrines, permanent memorialization, and temporal memorialization. Institutions juggle remembrance, grief, and healing as part of the crisis recovery process. Up close, the authors know this from their own campus context at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), where multiple tragedies led to discourse around how and when to memorialize history and loss from events that took place on campus. What does it mean to hold this (type of) space on a campus or in a community? How and where does this belong in student affairs and higher education graduation preparation programs? Is there room to grieve? Is it ever not complicated? And how does a campus or community move on, yet still engage in the necessary acts of remembrance to honor such painful pasts? The authors ask these questions as a way to make sense of crises and emergencies, and to consider their own role(s) in response, as scholars, practitioners, and students of the academy. Given the power and possibility held in memorials, the authors write this piece about the role of memorialization in education, specifically through the lens of a memorialization assignment found in a course in UT Austin's Higher Education Leadership and Policy graduate program. |