SOTU in Kaneko, or Bob Hawkinson’s Last Student

On the evening of January 25, 2011, I sat with Bob as the Kaneko Atrium filled with students coming to watch President Obama’s second State of the Union Address on the Commons’ projection screen.  Bob and I shot the breeze about the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and we each offered bets on which Supreme Court justices would stay home and sit out this State of the Union.  President Obama, in an unusual remark for a president to make in that forum, had chastised the Court for its Citizens United decision during his first State of the Union Address to Congress in 2010.  After the President’s comment, many people predicted that not all nine justices would attend in 2011.  (Indeed, one of the Bush appointees flew to Hawaii and only six justices ended up attending.) 

I had tried to get other faculty members to join students for the showing of the President’s Address, but every faculty member I asked was tied up for one reason or another.   Each faculty member I invited apologetically told me to be certain to give Bob his or her regards. 

That evening, my conversation with Bob was constantly interrupted as he greeted just about every student filing in by his or her first name – everyone seemed happy to see him and he was definitely happy to see each and every one of his students.  Someone came by and asked Bob if he was teaching any courses the Spring semester. 

“I’m Hawk’s only student right now,” I interjected, somewhat inappropriately. 

Bob confirmed: “Yes, right now I’m doing this independent study project with Josh,” he continued, “and of course, I’m always here in Kaneko.”  The latter comment was especially on point; Bob was always in Kaneko, at the Bistro, or somewhere else around Willamette.  The University was his life, and the students were like his children.

People were filling the Kaneko Atrium at a more respectable pace than the Congressmen and Senators were filling up the House Gallery, but some notable faces had already arrived for CSPAN to show on our screen. 

“There’s Ms. Slaughter of New York,” I pointed to the Democratic Ranking Member of the Rules Committee, whose work as Rules Chairwoman with Nancy Pelosi during the 111^th Congress was key to passing health care reform legislation, in March 2010.

“There’s Henry Waxman,” Bob gestured enthusiastically toward the Southern California lawmaker who’d employed me on his Committee the previous summer.  Bob, as the Dean Emeritus of Campus Life and Politics professor, had sponsored my 2010 summer internship with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce when other American Politics professors were disinclined to sponsor a summer internship.  If Bob hadn’t gone to bat for me and gotten permission from the Politics department Chair, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn the names of many of the members of Congress showing up on the screen:

“Mr. Dingell of Michigan, Dean of the House,” I said.

“Yes,” Bob said, “and there’s John Conyers.”  Hawkinson pointed to the second-longest serving member of the House.

“We have Blumenauer with his bowtie.  You can’t miss him,” I said.  “Oh, and there’s Ron Wyden.”  The other member of Congress I’d worked for, also under Bob’s sponsorship and guidance  was Oregon’s Senior Senator. 

In early May 2010, I had met Bob for lunch in the Kaneko Atrium (where else!) to discuss our final arrangements for my internship credit the day before I flew to Washington, D.C. for six months.

“The last time I did this,” he said, referring to sponsoring somebody for a Capitol Hill internship, “we had students send us their journal entries back to us at Willamette through the postal mail.  It was so slow!  With you, this is going to be easy using computers.”  Bob had served as the Dean of Campus Life 10 years from 1999-2009, and he clearly missed the period when the rest of us were converting our worlds into formats compatible with e-mail, iPods, and BlackBerry cell phones.

After an extended set of internships totaling more than six months on Capitol Hill, I returned to Willamette in January 2011 to write my senior thesis.  Bob was there to ensure that I got Politics credit for the work I’d done in Washington (we ate lunch in the Atrium twice more in August 2010, when briefly returned to Oregon, then once more in December 2010 to plan the internship endgame).  On Sunday, May 22, 2011, I sat down at my computer to check whether Bob had replied to an e-mail I sent him about one final piece of Capitol Hill internship related work I sent him a two days earlier.  It was silly to check my e-mail for a response on a Sunday, because I’d only e-mailed him that previous Friday night and I knew Bob doesn’t have a computer at his house.  He drives to work to check his e-mail (sometimes).  He never got a chance to respond.

I will miss Bob, as I’m sure the other Willamette students, faculty and staff whose lives he touched with his witty intellect, his stories and his humor, and his kindness as Dean, Professor, and mentor.

Josh Schultz, Class of 2011 (Dec.)