A Brief Tribute from Niagara At Large reporter/publisher and former Brock student Doug Draper
Posted July 31st. 2024 on Niagara At Large
Alan Earp, how many would remember him when he was President of Brock University
Once upon a time, before universities and colleges across the country became big businesses, and before students were more commonly regarded as BIUs (‘Basic Income Units) who saw tuition fees soar and ridiculously high user fees imposed on them for almost ever campus service, including parking their cars, Alan Earp was president of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Alan Earp, a Second World War veteran who became president of Brock in 1973 and who remains the longest serving president in the university’s history, serving in the job for 15 years, died this past July 7th at age 99.
The president of Brock before it became the mega-institution that it is today, Alan Earp presided over a university still small enough in size and student population to give students, myself among them, a good deal of direct access to well-qualified professors in a host of fields that their counterparts could only dream of having at larger universities at the time.
That enriching, hands-on experience was one of the reasons, we were so often told by higher ups in the academic world, why post-graduate schools in other universities, looked so favourably upon applications from students with undergraduate degrees at Brock.
It was something, I’m sure, that Alan Earp was proud of as I remember him always sharing a smile and a friendly hello with students as he passed them through the university’s halls.
The Tower, above the Niagara Escarpment, at Brock University. file photo by Doug Draper
My fondest memory was of Alan Earp occurred during student protests that unfolded shortly after he became president. The protests were aimed at senior levels of government that were moving to cut funding for post-secondary education.
A number of the student protesters, this one included, hoped to bring more public attention to the issue by occupying the highest floor, day and night, of the Brock Tower where Alan Earp’s office happened to be located.
A well-known, right-wing host of an open-line radio show in St. Catharines at the time went on a rant about these errant students occupying space reserved for the upper echelons and repeatedly called for them to be forcibly removed.
Alan Earp, to his credit, called the program and informed the radio show host that the students were simply being passionate about an issue that potentially impacted everyone working and studying at universities across the country, and that the students in the tower were doing no harm. It was enough to cool the host of the radio show right down.
For that alone, I will always have respect this man who, I believe, knew what was coming around tuition and other fees students would face if provincial and federal governments continued to cut funding for post-secondary education, as they have.
R.I.P. Alan Earp
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I came to know Dr. Earp well in my time as a reporter at CHSC Radio and regarded him as a great man. Brock was very lucky to have him. I knew him later on as Honorary Colonel of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, with whom he fought as a lieutenant during WW2. RIP to a warrior who served his nation in combat and later as a distinguished academecian in peace time. A guiding light for his students and a type of person very rare today.
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