A community college that sits on the edge of Appalachia recently received national attention after a scrawled message threatened the lives of the school’s black students.
It wasn’t so much the racial threat — all too common across America — that got Nelsonville, Ohio’s Hocking College on the map. It was the proactive response of Hocking’s president and first lady.
That president just happens to be Loman native son Ron Erickson, who is not only an alumnus of Rainy River Community College — but also served as its dean of instruction. Erickson is married to Nancy (Matson) Erickson, who is also an RRCC alumnus, and a native of International Falls.
The Jan. 22 threat, which said Hocking’s black students would be killed on Feb. 2, was written inside a dormitory bathroom on campus. How Erickson chose to respond to that threat ultimately served to unite the students with the campus and the college with the larger community.
What did the Ericksons do?
The first couple and their dog “Molly,” packed up and moved into the same dormitory hall where the threat was issued.
“Theoretically, it made a lot of sense,” Erickson told The Journal via phone from Hocking College. “Moms and dads were extremely worried. ... It was such an ominous act of graffiti, but what made it so heinous is that they named a date.”
Erickson’s campaign, “We Are One Hocking,” garnered newspaper and television inquiries from all over, including from CNN and Soledad O’Brien — anchor woman who is the host of the "In America" documentaries.
Living right among the students was intended to calm the minds of parents, Erickson said. The threat hit the couple close to home for within their own immediate family are three adopted children of color. But foremost, the move was to unite with students and to send a message everywhere that solidarity, not hate, binds the college of 6,300 students.
Pushing back
In addition to added surveillance and security, Erickson and other faculty staged a candlelight ceremony at Hocking’s now-named Healing Pond where a peace monument was erected. A $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator was issued, and an FBI investigation continues.
“We got the attention of the student body that this is a hate crime.” Erickson said, noting that although actual threats are rare at the school, its Diversity Council was already in motion for ways to heal ongoing issues within and outside the campus. About 400 of Hocking’s student population are international and American people of color.
Erickson said he found the college already fractured when he arrived there less than a year ago. So the moment was ripe for the gesture of living side-by-side with students, he said.
CNN issued a mid-afternoon report on the action, but the phones continued ringing. “It took on a wild life of its own,” Erickson said. With the advice of Hocking’s public relations firm, Erickson let the coverage recede after the CNN interview and many other regional stories. “You can quickly lose control on a national stage,” he explained. “So we said, ‘thank you — but no thanks.’”
An editorial praised Erickson as “Hocking’s Hero.” He was credited for a noble action which demonstrated that had Hocking College “only been concerned with image, it would have tried to hide the situation.”
Dreaming big
Considering that both he and Nancy were raised in nearly all-white Borderland, The Journal asked Erickson how two northern Minnesota kids grew to be such trailblazers for racial harmony.
“You’re right, I had never even met a black person in high school,” Erickson replied. But he readily credited his and Nancy’s creative response during Hocking’s crisis to their college years at RRCC in International Falls.
“We would have to say that (RRCC) was the transformative factor,” Erickson said. “Those years made us think differently about the world and our future in it.” He cited RRCC instructors Art Pryzbilla and Dick Hill among others, who he said stretched their boundaries as individuals in ways that had never been stretched before.
“That is not just smoke and mirrors, it’s really the truth,” Erickson said. “Our education there transformed our thinking. And it’s a wonderful thing to think experiences at one community college can bear fruit at another.”
Situated in southeastern Ohio’s coal-mine and natural-gas country within the margins of Appalachia, Nelsonville in Athens County has endured increasingly depressed economic conditions. The living environment has been a tough one throughout much of the area’s history.
“It is also a beautiful region — the Hocking Hills,” Erickson said. “It’s another of those paradoxes, where you have the wonder of so much natural beauty in a small town yet there’s also a lack of economic opportunity.
“But there’s really no better place for a community college. It represents hope for younger people who would be looking at a life with limited resources. We let them dream big dreams.”
“Peacing” ignorance
Things have now calmed on the Hocking campus, and the Ericksons are back in their home. The couple fell in love with the students with whom they lived, and the students fell in love with “Molly,” says Erickson.
He said he couldn’t work on a campus which wasn’t safe for his own four children: Reier, Noah and Anne, now all in their 20s, as well as Grace, 18, who is the couple’s only biological child.
While the threat fed into the stereotype of a racist Appalachian America, Erickson said just the opposite is true. “Ironic as it sounds, it was a very good thing,” he said. “It woke us up to issues that needed responding. It became a legacy — we’re a better campus because of it.”
He said he hopes that the new peace monument, which was dedicated following a candle-lit peace walk on the very date of the projected threat, will be just one reminder that the legacy continues.
“Peace has to become a verb,” Erickson said to those who had gathered around the Healing Pond for the dedication. In eight different languages, the message which recycles on the eight-foot post is, “May peace prevail on earth.”
That same night, Erickson also told the gathering, “Ignorance is well-known to those of us in higher education. It is well-known because it is our primary target.”
Erickson’s educational venues include New York state as well as several posts in Minnesota, including 12 years at the University of Minnesota as a research associate in the College of Education and Human Development; Dakota College in Rosemount, south of St. Paul; and RRCC from 1999-2002.
Falls native Nancy Erickson told an Athens newspaper in a related interview that she was enjoying a warmer winter than the kind in which the couple was raised. “Today it was 17 below in our old hometown,” she told the reporter. “We’re from the top of Minnesota, and it’s very cold there. ...”
In tribute to Erickson’s actions, one newspaper quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
It was that same civil rights leader who also said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Asked if he could draw a conclusion from his own experiences, Erickson told The Journal: “I’ve learned that (nurturing) diversity is simply never done. The pursuit of creating a welcoming community for all colors and creeds is a daily responsibility. You never complete it ... you have to work at it in the long run.”
Both Ron and Nancy Erickson have close family members who remain in this area.
