Honored and privileged

I certainly felt both the emotions in the headline of today's column when I was asked to be the keynote speaker at the Phi Theta Kappa honor society's induction ceremony Tuesday past. The society was inducting 33 of our best and brightest students who will make a difference and create their own mark on society as they go forward in life.

In my talk, I remembered my relationship with Phi Theta Kappa when I was a community college student just like they are. I had left the University of Arkansas without graduating and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma to be a police officer. My grades had been OK at the UofA but I didn't finish what I started. That stuck in my craw so much I promised myself that if I ever had another chance to go to college, I would give it my best shot and stick it out until the end.

That chance came a couple of years later when Congress created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration -- LEAA -- and a sub agency under LEAA called the Law Enforcement Education Program -- LEEP.

LEEP was significant because it allowed police officers anywhere in the country to go to college and the government through LEEP would pick up the tab. The goal was to have a majority of all police officers in the United States with college degrees. Unfortunately, that never happened.

As they usually do, colleges across the country responded immediately to a need that had not existed before by creating departments of Criminal Justice.

The first one started in Oklahoma was at Connors State College in Warner, Oklahoma, about 60 miles southeast of Tulsa. The first semester officers were allowed to attend and be compensated by the government, 60 of us did. Connors put together a program that allowed us to take 12 credit hours in one day, starting at 8 a.m. and finishing at 10 p.m. so that we could still have one day off before working a five-day shift with the police department. The guys I attended with were all my friends because other police officers are the only true friends that police officers have. At least that was our perception.

The police officers went to college for a variety of reasons, just like regular students do. Some, like me, went to finish what they had started earlier. Others were starting college for the very first time. Others just went for the free education which not only paid for our tuition and books but several hundred dollars was left over each semester for us to spend as we wished. An economic windfall if you will, and a loathsome practice by the government that endures today. The agreement between police officers and the government was that one year of debt would be forgiven for every year you remained a police officer.

That meant you could get a free four-year college education by remaining on the police department for four years and that's what many officers did. In fact, a few stayed through graduate school and law school with everything being paid for by the government. LEAA and LEEP were only in existence for a few years before a new administration ended the agency but it sure came along at the right time for many of us.

I was bound and determined to excel academically at Connors State, and did. I knew it was going to be tough to get my grades high enough the first semester back to make the honor society but that was my goal.

My best friend on the police department and I went over to check the list of those who made it and those who didn't and I was terribly disappointed to see I had missed it by four hundredths of a point. You had to have a 3.5 overall GPA to be admitted and mine was 3.46.

I uttered some expletive when I saw I hadn't made it and my friend looked at me and jokingly said "Poor baby."

I shot back at him that whether it was important to him or not, it was very important to me as we walked out of the building.

The following semester I made all A's and was inducted into Phi Theta Kappa, just like the 33 were this past Tuesday.

I told them in my talk that it was one of the more important events in my life because we always remember our firsts and that was my first honor society. Even though I would gain admittance into several others during my undergraduate and graduate career, that one still carries the most significance in my heart and my mind because of the discipline it took to make good grades while I worked full time and was a husband to boot.

Ninety-five percent of all college students won't ever be a Phi Theta Kappan because their heads are in the wrong place when they come to college to begin with. They come to play sports, or party, or to find a spouse and not to learn and that will follow them the rest of their days, just like excelling will.

I give a speech at the beginning of every semester, telling my students that, but I can tell by the expressions in their eyes and on their faces that I'm not getting through to most of them.

So I only hope to get through to a few. About half of the new inductees have either taken or are taking my Intro to Sociology class and the five officers who sat behind me not only took it, but were in the very same class with each other.

But the credit does not belong to me. They were obviously motivated to achieve and excel when they came here so that tribute goes to their parents, their grandparents and their siblings who made them who they are.

We are what we learn.