In mid-December, some Brenau trustees, administrators, employees and faculty members joined with city officials, business leaders and other guests for an informal coffee klatch commemorating the beginning of the university’s long-term lease arrangement with the city.The celebration formally inaugurated a downtown Gainesville location to house the expansion of Brenau’s graduate health care programs. As the “new tenant,” I thought it appropriate to welcome the group — not to the Georgia Mountains Center but to the “new Brenau University Downtown Center.”The audience greeted my thankful and optimistic comments with enough silence to take me by surprise. That gave me time to notice a sort of shock of recognition on some of the faces — the kind of expression classroom teachers occasionally see on faces of their students as scales fall from their eyes and they finally understand.For my audience that morning this no longer was the sometimes abstract proposition that we have discussed for the past two years as “a good idea.”