First Year Convocation 2005

Remarks of President Robert Weisbuch
First Year Convocation
Drew University
Thursday, September 1, 2005

Students of the class of 2009 and parents of those students, Welcome to the amazing community of Drew University . I have something in common with each of you. I am both a freshperson, as an incoming president, and the tuition-paying father of a freshperson, having ventured this past Monday to Connecticut to help my kid Sarah move in at Wesleyan. And then there is something else we have in common. We are so lucky to be here together at Drew. I just spoke of our amazing community and I don't employ that adjective “amazing” for hyperbole. You already know something of what I mean. Would you show by applause whether you were, if not amazed, at least happily surprised by the greeting and attention from our staff and older students since you arrived this morning? Well, we are lucky, still luckier than you yet know, to find ourselves here at Drew. And I want to tell each of these two very different species why. First the students.

Students, since six weeks ago I have been your advance scout and I want to tell you about something to expect. You will have a faculty here nationally known for caring deeply about its students. Though most liberal arts colleges make this kind of claim, it is lived out here in a manner beyond anything I have seen. Each of you will be considered as an individual. We as faculty will help you to locate what is most remarkable in you. We will help you to take your thought further than you ever believed it could go, and we also will encourage you to employ your learning for the world's good. This is a community of learning that does not turn its back on matters of social urgency. This is a community of ideas and ideals. There are many colleges and universities concerned with helping students to fit in. We are more concerned that you stand out.

And the process is not only painless, it is joyful. I often, with all of my parental pretension, tell my own kids that experience can appear a dull road with manhole covers, but lift each cover and there is a wonderworld underneath. There is a world of, let's say, poetry, and a world of physical laws, a world of gemology and another of baseball, a world of public policy and a world of piano tuning. There are countless interests, each its own extraordinarily intricate and thrilling world of wonder. You may lift only a few of those manhole covers and immerse yourself in only a few of those worlds, but that will give you a sense of wonder that you can employ throughout your life toward any number of worlds.

That is one way of thinking of your education here, as a process of discovery, continuing and never-completed discovery. Indeed, you have two absolute requirements to fulfill, and your parents may not approve of my mentioning them. First, fail at something. If you don't, you aren't exploring possibilities fully enough, and we are the kind of place that allows you to fail at something without harm—not at everything, by the way, just something.

But the second requirement may seem even odder. Never fully succeed. If you get to the top of one steep hill, start climbing the mountain. To put it another way, at Drew in your classes, you will find yourself again and again in a forest where things are confusing but then you will reach a clearing; and each clearing will be more spacious and intriguing and beautiful than the last. And yet, having looked around, you will enter the next forest. After a time you will find even the forest, and the confusion, engaging rather than fearsome.

There is yet another way of thinking of your education here. After the terror attack of 9-11, I found heart not in a great work of literature but in a moment on a subsequent episode of the television series The West Wing. During a terrorist siege, a group of young students were touring the White House, and the young presidential assistant said to them, “ Do you really want to confuse fanatics? Believe in more than one idea. In fact, a Drew education requires you to imagine the thought of your enemies, to think empathetically through a whole series of perspectives before you commit to a conclusion. This is the opposite of talk radio, a deliberate capacity to rise beyond the self and the easy gut response. It does not allow you to forego action; it requires action based on the fullest possible perspective.

Now to the other species present, the parents, I know first hand that you are worried about your child's safety and I can reassure you that we take extraordinary care to guard that in every practical way. But I also need to tell you that your child will be in danger here for the very reasons that I stated—they will be in danger in the sense that we will encourage them to be adventuresome in their thoughts and generous risktakers in their lives. We want them to join us in the process of discovery, to share with us the controversies and discoveries of a range of fields, to help our scholar teachers to push back the night of ignorance.

Only four percent of all students who attend a university attend one like Drew. It is a very fortunate choice. We insist upon the liberal arts. We declare that, without them, you literally do not know what you are doing. Any discussion of any issue where there is no one around the table versed in history, the arts, the physical and biological sciences, psychology and religion, will result in a thin-ice decision. We are here to proclaim at Drew a new authority for the liberal arts, the arts and sciences, holding sway, profoundly influencing the life of our nation and world—not just as a critic of someone else's reality but as constructing that reality with generous learning. That is why we want your children who today become our students not to fit in but to bust loose, not to find their little square on a pre-arranged grid but to make an upward spiral, each to create a life in relation to their unique personal capacities and dimension. We're not off the rack here—this is a custom made education.

You parents have brought these kids this far and now you have one last and hardest task, which will take place later today. I had to go through it on Monday at Wesleyan. In the late afternoon I asked my daughter what more I could do and her expression implied all too well her answer. Your new challenge as parents is to get lost! But take comfort, for you will not be lost at all. Your spirit will be informing your child's achievements at every moment. It is you who have been their prime educators. We college mentors just take it further, but the “it” is what you have helped them to create. Even so, come six tonight, and with all my gratitude, do get lost.

Okay, students, now that we are rid of them…welcome to a community bristling with ideas and charged with the cherishing of difference. Welcome to this extraordinary place of benevolence and challenge, where we breathe in learning and exhale the benefits of learning in service to humanity. In the perspective of a world where there is terrible hunger and disease, we are the very fortunate few. May you and we all be worthy of Drew and of our great good luck.