The road trip was more than 3,000 miles long and brought me to 12 campuses, taking me through the Rust Belt region—to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Syracuse and Cincinnati—to Plains cities like St. Louis, Oklahoma City and Tulsa and finally back home to the West Coast, with stops in Santa Fe and Albuquerque along the way. During my tour, no one was waiting for me at campus welcome centers. I did see my share of tattered signs welcoming newcomers. They were no longer welcoming students, but rather construction crews clearing out buildings. In physically walking through these spaces, I felt the immensity of their history. Campuses were often sprawling and in the middle of nowhere, even more so now that the somewhere had closed.
