Why Do So Many College Presidents Call Their Campuses a ‘Family’?
In one of his first messages to the campus after taking over as interim president of Baylor University, a campus whose record on sexual assault made it the object of national outrage, David E. Garland began with three simple words: "Dear Baylor Family." Family. On its face, the metaphor is an odd one. Families aren’t made up of tens of thousands of people — a large percentage of whom leave the family every year — linked to each other by little more than a common location.