Home

From personal to local to national, SCCC embodies the U.S. Constitution

SAINTS PERSPECTIVE, Dennis Sander Interim SCCC President

This past week we celebrated Constitution Day, which in turn started Constitution Week in the United States.  While this is an annual event, it doesn’t seem to get its due.   Constitution day is normally observed on September 17, because on Sept. 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document that became the cornerstone of the greatest “experiment” in the history of governance in the world.   

The Constitution was a framework created for a set of States with their unique autonomies to be able to act as one when needed to benefit the whole, as defined in its preamble.  The hallowed document was not intended to make the states, the counties, the cities and towns homogeneously and singularly subservient to the federal government.  Had it done so, it would have lost the main ingredient that allowed this republic to evolve into the most enduring beacon of freedom and independence.      

That observation leads me to the point I want to make about the importance of the public trust that Seward County Community College has with the electorate of Seward County.  As national politics clamor with sounds of greater federal influence on its citizens, I believe it is vital that we understand and appreciate our local autonomies, and the power of the local self-determination that we currently possess. As noted in the July 4, 2021 editorial in the Leader-Times, by Dr. Walter Wendler of West Texas A&M University, “as the distance to the seat of government increases, that potential of having cogent, meaningful impact decreases.  Local influence and decision-making empower a free society’s work and worth, and likewise, for a local university.”   Dr. Wendler is obviously referring to the role West Texas A&M plays in the Texas Panhandle, but I would extend the same sentiment to Seward County Community College, as the local college within our region.