The President’s Blog

It only took a casual remark in my office to set off several reminders of how old I am. Passing by a candy dish (why do we do this to ourselves) I made the comment “Do you have any Squirrel Nut Zippers?”. It was as if I had asked if there were poodles in the puddles or some other nonsensical thing.

Only 50 years ago, in my hometown, that would have been a very sensible question to ask, as Squirrel Nut Zippers, BB Bats, and Zagnuts were popular candies that would have been a welcome addition to any candy dish. Apparently, not anymore. Time has moved on and so have the candy choices. It is hard for me to get excited about Chocolate Pop Rocks, Bratz Candy Star Dust, Sour Patch Xploderz, and Chewy Atomic Fireballs.
In the end though, as good as the banana BB Bats are, the Squirrel Nut Zipper has to be my favorite. Chewy caramel, nuts, and that little wrapper that always seemed to be a little oily–yum yum.

Mast General Store still carries the great old traditional candies in case you are looking for some special treats.

Ron Kesterson was part of a visiting SACS team to a college in northern Kentucky last month. He reports that they have a very interesting approach to security on their campus. They use no security guards at all. The security of the campus is monitored by a team of faculty and staff who meet periodically to review and update emergency plans. Parking on the campus is all “open” so no parking tickets are ever necessary.
In case of emergency, every faculty, staff, and student knows to dial “911″.
Ron tells me that each SACS team member was instructed by the chairperson to ask faculty, staff, and students at the college how they felt about the security arrangements. They all reported that security was good and they felt no need for security guards to patrol the buildings.
It seems that this is an idea worth pursuing. Rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to provide security and parking enforcers, we might be better off to open our parking and to spend that money on something more important. I’ll be taking a look at that college and getting feedback from the president there about how it all works. We may have an opportunity to try it in the future.

Last weekend’s balloon festival was a tremendous success for Pellissippi State. I don’t think that I could have asked for a better event for our college and community than the one that Pat Myers and her team produced last week. The weather cooperated just enough for the pilots to stage the “glow” around the pond on both nights which means that people went away happy each night.

This event is successful because of the tremendous support we get from volunteers–both community volunteers and college volunteers. Without them, this festival would not be possible. We tried to make it easier on volunteers this year by doing away with the children’s area “inflatables” and I believe that this was a good decision. It took an incredible number of volunteers to staff that area, and it was a very stressful job. This year, we used fewer volunteers, and they had easier jobs for the most part. I think everyone left tired but happy with their contributions to the success of the event.

The event has been good for my family as well. This year I had family drive over from Charleston SC and from St. Simons Island GA to enjoy the festival. We all had a grand time reacquainting ourselves and talking about the relatives who were not here. I hope everyone had a great time. We can continue as long as our pilots and our volunteers stay with us.