Covenant College on The Lack of a Post Honoring Professor Halverson & His Passing

I don't know but I would tend to think it would be a GOOD thing to honor a man who served the college for many years. It might actually show potential students and parents that Covenant indeed has a heart...o wait... it doesn't.

We wouldn't want to sadden the cute girls sledding that hill now, would we?

That's a crying shame! I had Mr. Halvorsen all four years, and I've never met known someone with such a combination of godliness, eccentricity, and loveliness. He was so dear. He was one of two professors who impacted my life the most on campus (Dr. Steele being the other one).

One thing he used to say--a friend just reminded me of this--is that "everything in life is a gift."

I too thought it strange that nothing was said in honor of Mr. Halverson. He was an important man in the life and history of Covenant. They posted information regarding Mr. Schmidt when he died as they should have. I recognize that Uncle Rudy has a building named after him and was a "founder" of the college, but ultimately that should make little to no difference in whether or not folks are honored by the college. It's a shame that they have to "wrestle" with honoring a professor. And I would beg to differ with Marshall that the alumni who knew and loved him was a small group. I never once had him as a professor, but I have fond memories of him playing piano in chapel and his presence on campus.

http://www.covenant.edu/news/archive/2005/11.09.05a.php

Austina

The fact that he was actively involved enough on campus to "transcend" his position as music professor is clearly demonstrated by the number of anecdotes told by people who had/have no relation to the music department at all. In other words, Mr. Halverson was not just a music prof. He was a visible part of the entire campus.

I agree with everything said here. I think that it is a sad commentary on the focus of our alma madre that they would not post anything on the passing of a great modern saint. Mr. Halvorsen was one of the two most Christ-like men I knew at studied with at Covenant, the other being Dr. Krabbendam. I took lessons with Ira for 4 years and lived with him for a short time. Here was a man who knew how to love passionately in a world too often devoid of love. He loved his Jesus. He loved the two wives that the Lord gave and took away. He loved his students and taught them to love. He loved God and everything about his creation.
How can we properly honor this man in a few short paragraphs? We can't. But I take great comfort in knowing that he entered the gates of heaven, looked on our most beautiful Savior, and heard those words: "Well done, my good and faithful servant! Come and join in your Lord's happiness." I know that Jesus embraced him and this broken little man was made whole again--that everything he ever hoped for in eternity was found to pale in comparison to the reality of God and heaven. I'm ready to join him.
Let us honor him by praising God that our lives were forever changed by being touched by Ira David Halvorson. Let us honor him by living our lives as he did--In all things Christ preeminent. Let us honor Christ who has taken dear Ira home forever.

how many other professors, when they pass, would the college have to wrestle over whether they're worth mentioning? this is very disturbing and makes me glad i went to king college. not only can you smoke at ol' kc and drink off campus after age 21, but they even honor those who have passed on.

I want to take a moment to apologize on behalf of the alumni office for the recent lack of a story on Mr Halvorsen. We struggled with the way to handle this best and in a nutshell, we botched it. When we got the news of his passing, we did not have all the information on his funeral, visitation, etc. We decided to wait until we had all of the information before we posted something. We got the information very late and realized that by the time we would post it, the funeral would have passed and thus decided to not put up a notice about it. The logic was that he had not been a full time prof for almost 20 years at the college and that among the people who read the Covenant Website, only a few would actually know him. In my gut, I felt like we still should have posted something but I failed to stand up on the issue as the logic seemed to make sense. Even though I did not have Mr. Halvorsen for a class or lessons, I still felt that there was something about this eccentric man that was fun that everyone really loved about him. That was the gut instinct that I should have followed but I did not.
I do not want the following to sound like excuses but there were some other circumstances surrounding this story. As many of you know, our Webmaster Tad just had a baby and was out last week and returned to the middle of the board of trustee meetings. As usual his plate was overflowing with preparations for the board. Tad is an incredible guy with a great balance of brains and patience so I want to make sure that none of this reflects badly on him. It is just a reality that he needed to be home and we did not have a good back up plan in his absence.

We spent about 2 hours today working on how we handled this situation, how we should have handled it and how we need to handle it differently. In a perfect world, we would have gotten the TWAC (This week at Covenant email) out earlier so that everyone would have known about it but we had some coding problems that slowed it down. We have now put the announcement about it on the alumni site under the TWAC section.

We are now working on a "News" page for the alumni site. Obviously, this is a story that is going to be of interest to alumni so it should naturally go on that page. This site will also be edited by several people so that we are not dependent upon Tad in a situation like this. Finally, it will be a fairly simple page for any of us to edit so that we can add details such as funeral times as they come in. It is not our intention for this to just be an obituary page but plan to use it for any newsworthy stories that alumni would be interested in.

Once again, I apologize for the way this was handled and hope that you will see that we have tried to rectify this situation as best as possible through the latest TWAC and by posting it to the site. We hope that the addition of this future site will enable us to keep alumni informed in a more timely manner on such issues. Once again, I apologize and I welcome any comments or suggestions. Thanks

Despite having just graduated from Covenant and being pretty intentional about getting to know faculty (I even was on a committee with the elusive Professor Wright), I had never heard of Dr. Halverson until I read about his passing on this blog. And seeing pictures of him didn't ring any bells. I guess Covenant isn't quite as small as we thought. But it sounds like he was amazing and I regret that I never came across him. Josiah I appreciate you bringing him to our attention, and I'm glad that Marshall and crew have admitted that they didn't get it right. The fact that some alumni, such as I, didn't know of Dr. Halverson is a very good argument for why he should have been mentioned on the Covenant website.

What percentage of students at Covenant live on campus? AND are snow days ever really necessary?