Assistant to the President Mike Harner ’82 received a lot more than an education when he chose to attend Hillsdale College because of what he described as a “fortuitous accident.”
Harner said he had been planning on attending the Air Force Academy, but after a visit to campus, decided to attend Hillsdale instead. Now Harner looks back fondly on Hillsdale as the place that gave him his wife, his education, his career, and his friends.
“I trace every good thing in my life from that point forward to my education here,” he said.
An English major and history minor, Harner said he thought the academics were just as hard then, though he said the demands of the core requirements have increased.
“As an English major, I could spend a lot of time taking English courses without having to take Bio 201,” he said.
Harner pointed to two of his professors at Hillsdale that took an interest in him and pushed him to be the best he could be.
“You should go into the Navy,” one said to Harner. “You’re cut out for that.”
And Harner was in the Navy for 20 years after that.
“[Those professors] gave me a love for the written word, and a love for this country’s history,” he said.
Harner also met his wife at Hillsdale. Harner said he noticed her the second or third week of school and from then on was always aware of her presence.
“Nancy, who’s that?” he asked one of his friends.
About a year-and-a-half later, Harner said they were in a class together when he formed a plan.
Harner was injured at the time and on crutches, so he went down to Olds Dormitory to borrow notes. When he asked if he could stay in Olds and copy them — hoping to buy more time with her — she said she would come back for them later.
“The plan didn’t go well,” he said. “I wasn’t able to work my magic.”
The following fall, Harner asked her to a Halloween party. Although she couldn’t attend then, she suggested they try to get together another time.
“That was all the encouragement I needed,” Harner said.
Harner said the way people date on campus was different than it is now — there was no courting going on.
“We actually went on dates back then,” he said. “I’m of the opinion that most guys in Hillsdale [now] are idiots and the girls are just slightly smarter in this regard.”
Harner said he has Hillsdale to thank not only for his wife, but also for some of the best friends and the best men he knows.
It was with some of those men that he reestablished the fraternity Sigma Chi on campus. With a group of 11 men, Harner went to the administration and presented why they thought there should be another fraternity on campus.
“The idea was we could do this a little better or a little differently,” he said.
So, they began the process of deciding which fraternity they wanted to establish on campus. They reached out to friends at other schools in different fraternities. When they traveled to Evansville, Ill., to talk to the Sigma Chi chapter there, they brought out Hillsdale’s original charter. Harner said that Sigma Chi also seemed to match up with the ideals that they had discussed.
“That kind of made it a kismet,” he said.
The Hillsdale chapter was chartered in September of Harner’s junior year and welcomed 33 members. The house they lived in was not the current house but one across campus. They lived there one year and then bought the current house when the resident living in it passed away and the house became available through the estate. In order to buy the house, the members sold bonds to friends and family.
Harner said the social scene really revolved around fraternities when he went to school, though he said what students do for fun has really not changed that much.
“The alums that say, ‘They don’t have fun anymore,’ I’m not seeing that,” he said. “I’m just not seeing that.”
Some changes that Harner said he has seen on campus are the Greek system becoming less prominent — shrinking from about 50 percent of campus to 25 percent — and the music program expanding from only 50 students. Faith, he said, has also taken a much larger role on campus. When he attended school, he said the Catholic student group was about 30 kids, and InterVarsity had probably nine members.
Harner said one thing that hasn’t changed is the thrill of exploring “forbidden” areas on campus. One building in particular, Worthing Hall, provided a temptation for students, he said. The building stood between where Central Hall and the Dow Science building are today. The school was planning on knocking it down and had removed the staircases.
“They thought that was the solution,” he said. “But what it became was, ‘Can you get to the roof of Worthing Hall?’ Some industrious students actually got a couch up there.”
Harner was also involved in several other areas of campus during his time as a student. He was on the football team for two years and the golf team for three, he worked at Saga, wrote for the Collegian, and also worked as a student driver and bartender for the Dow Center.
Harner said his total football experience consisted of three plays and he quit after getting injured. The team was not very good when he played, he said, but it got consistently better.
“We had good talent,” he said. “It was very young, and as it grew up it turned into a pretty good program.”
Harner said his experience working with the Collegian was also something he enjoyed. At that time, the staff had to go to Hudson, Mich., on Wednesday nights to set the typeface.
“I can’t remember it ever not being an early morning endeavor,” he said. “The paper is so much better now, but Collegian reporters are the exact same people that I worked with on the Collegian. The people who want to write for papers and do journalism — I believe that’s a type.”
Harner said all of the activities he was involved in on campus as well as the people he met and the classes he took really defined his college experience and made him love Hillsdale.
“College is such a great experience for most people that when you look back on it, you tend to revel in those things,” he said. “I’m sure bad things happened to me in college, but I can’t recall what they were.”
sleitner@hillsdale.edu
