Around midnight most days, Sam Carr walks.
He’ll slip on his AirPods, play Coldplay or Christian music, hit the brick pathways of the Kester International Promenade and head toward “Olympic Strength.” That’s the 35-foot statue in front of Roberts Hall that depicts Atlas holding the world on his shoulders.
Carr feels a lot like that.
He’s a senior at High Point University, the president of its Student Government Association, and he’s helping HPU navigate the unimaginable –– a global pandemic that has changed the way the world lives.
He gets as many as 75 emails every day. So, at night, he sits beneath Atlas. There, at one on the quietest places on campus, Carr prays.
“God, I really need your wisdom.”
Carr is one of HPU’s two Extraordinary Leaders for the month of August. A year ago, Carr received the award when he was HPU’s junior class president. He’s now a repeat winner. It’s easy to understand why.
Because of COVID-19, Carr is living history every day.
Carr’s Leadership Gene
In March, HPU President Nido Qubein commissioned a Health and Safety Task Force to help the campus open safely for students, faculty and staff in the fall. Carr became the student voice on the task force that includes top faculty, staff and Qubein.
Carr assisted with research and helped task force members understand what students would want –– and need. He became, in the words of one task force member, the “student voice of reason.”
Carr is no stranger to stepping up.
At HPU, he helped create a club on campus, he sits on a student advisory board, and he was named the Brother of the Year three times by Alpha Kappa Psi, HPU’s business fraternity.
For the past three years, he has volunteered with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Central Piedmont –– he tutors a local Palestinian boy named Sharbi –– and he has served as a Student Justice on HPU’s Student Conduct Court. He’s now the court’s hearing chair.
Last fall, he helped High Point Mayor Jay Wagner with his re-election campaign. This fall, he’s volunteering as a deputy campaign manager for Sebastian King, a Republican running for the District 27 N.C. Senate seat.
After his graduation next spring with a degree in political science, Carr will enroll in HPU’s new master’s program in communication and business leadership. Then, he’ll think about what’s next. That could include campaigning to become a member of the High Point City Council or a congressman on Capitol Hill.
“I have no idea where my life will go, but I’ve lived by the motto that I’m not the pilot of my life, I’m along for the ride,” says Carr, a High Point native. “God is using me as a vessel, and he uses me where He sees fit.”
HPU: A Place of Mentorship
Dr. Brandon Lenoir, an HPU political communication professor, recruited Carr to help him with Wagner’s campaign last fall. A few months later, Carr approached Lenoir about helping in King’s campaign. Lenoir said yes.
“If I see a spark in a student, I won’t turn them away, and I saw something in Sam,” says Lenoir, who is helping King with his campaign. “Just the passion he had –– he’s the type of student that shows me why I got into academia.”
A former TV political reporter, television anchor and Washington lobbyist, Lenoir leads HPU’s concentration in political communication. He helps prepare students for careers as campaign managers and communication specialists for government agencies.
One of those students is Carr.
Lenoir has taught Carr almost every semester. Carr stays after class, asks questions, writes longer papers than other students and drops by to see Lenoir in his third-floor office in the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication.
Carr drops by often these days. Carr’s SGA office is around the corner from Lenoir, and he’ll stop by to get advice from Lenoir about how to help student organizations cope with college in the year of COVID-19. When Lenoir was in college at Idaho State University, he was its student body president.
“Sam is very resilient,” Lenoir says. “He’s taking it in stride.”
‘I Bleed Purple’
Carr, the youngest of three, comes from a faith-rich family. His mom is a hairstylist, and his dad is an assistant pastor who also owns his own wallpaper company. Ask Carr about being the SGA president during a global pandemic, and he’s quick with an answer.
“Man, it’s crazy,” he says.
Because of COVID-19, students can’t travel to conferences or stage events or fundraisers. So, Carr and members of SGA’s Executive Council have asked student organizations to get creative with the funding they receive from SGA.
They want students to use the money in a way that can impact the campus and the surrounding community, such as buying laptops and iPads to help local students having to go to school online.
Meanwhile, Carr and his Executive Council have had to enact policies that restrict where student organizations can meet, how long they can meet and how many people can come. On Monday, following the approval from HPU’s task force, in-person meetings resumed.
This past summer, Carr wondered about what all he faced. He worried.
“Do I have what it takes?” he asked himself.
Before school started, Carr visited Dr. Qubein in his office. They talked for an hour.
“He told me that anybody can be a leader during good times, but in times of strife and hardship, it takes a very special person to be a leader,” Carr says. “When Dr. Qubein said that, it gave me a sense of peace, and it reassured me I could do it.”
His education and HPU’s mentorship gave Carr that assurance, too.
That’s why he likes to tell everybody, “I bleed purple.”
“HPU has pushed me to the limits more than I ever thought I could go,” Carr says. “It’s like when you get to one level, our professors and HPU will ask, ‘OK, what’s next? Do you want to jump even higher?’ You learn never to be satisfied with where you’re at.”
A Special 15 Minutes
Carr heeds the advice of Lyndsey Clos, who served as HPU’s SGA President from 2018-2019.
“Don’t forget about your friends,” she told him, “and don’t forget about you.”
Carr and his girlfriend, HPU senior Meghan Crowfoot, eat dinner almost every Friday night at their favorite Japanese restaurant near campus. Every Saturday, Carr will catch up on sleep, hang with his friends and shop at a local retail clearance stores. Every Sunday, he does his laundry and cleans his dorm room.
His routine relaxes him. Like going to Atlas at around midnight.
Sometimes, before sitting at Atlas, Carr will sit on a bench in front of the Qubein School of Communication. It’s the bench dedicated to Matt Levine, Carr’s best friend. Levine, an HPU senior, died last year. He was 22.
The bench plaque includes a quote from tennis star Rafael Nadal: “Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you would wish them to be, and then looking ahead, not behind.”
Carr and Levine’s dad picked the quote. That wasn’t the hardest thing Carr had to do. The hardest was speaking in February at Levine’s memorial service in the Hayworth Chapel.
Carr dreaded it. He sat at a table near the Starbucks in the Slane Student Center, listening to Christian music through his AirPods, and he tried to find the right words for Levine’s eulogy. The words didn’t come. Carr looked up and saw Dr. Qubein looking at him.
“I saw a picture of you on Facebook,” said Qubein, standing at the top of the stairs in Slane.
Carr understood. He had written a tribute to Levine, posted it on Facebook and included a photo of them together.
“Matt is my best friend,” Carr responded.
Carr and Qubein talked for 15 minutes. The next day, Carr spoke in Hayworth Chapel. The words came.
“Fly fast and high to the moon, play hard among those stars you wanted to go too, please let me know what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars,” Carr said at the end of his eulogy. “Love you, brother.”
Those 15 minutes helped. Carr isn’t surprised.
“It was one of those moments that makes HPU really special,” Carr says. “When you’re going through stuff, the administrators and faculty and staff here at High Point will rally around you when you need it the most, and I needed it at that moment. I felt like I was talking to a friend when I was talking to our president.”
After the memorial service for Levine, Qubein stopped Carr in Hayworth Chapel.
“Wow, that was deep,” Qubein told him. “Your words were impactful. You know, you have a gift for public speaking and leadership.”
Carr, still emotional from his eulogy, responded with two words.
“Thank you.”