University Seal

First Year Convocation 2006

Remarks of President Robert Weisbuch
First Year Convocation
Drew University
Thursday, August 31, 2006

With these words we initiate the Drew University class of 2010. Students and parents of those students, Welcome to the amazing community of Drew University . Now we have to strike a bargain—a three-way deal between we Druids, and you, our new students, and your parents.

On our side, we pledge an education that is not off the rack but custom-fit. You will work with 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.

Drew had more applicants this year than ever before in our history, and we had difficult choices to make. We thought carefully about each one of you and we believe that each of you will succeed mightily, here at Drew and in life generally. On our side, then, we don't just have faith in you, we will enact it.

All of which will do no good unless you fulfill your part of this exalted liberal arts bargain. I was struggling to find a way to speak with you about the kind of education you will pursue here, and somehow the word “pursue” made me think of a comic character. (Oh great, the parents are saying. We spent all this money to send junior to Drew and the president talks about comic books.) When I was a kid, my friends were into Superman or Wonder Woman or Batman—Superman for the student government types, Batman for the freaks. I guess I was even fringier, because my idol was Plasticman. Now I know plastic has come to stand for the artificial and vulgar aspects of society, but this superhero was plastic in the sense that he could stretch himself into all sorts of shapes. That is what you have to do at Drew, make yourself more elastic, stretch beyond your limited self to the realities of other people and other times, connect what is really the small life of any of us to that gigantic time-and-space spectrum of humankind.

You need to stretch in a few different ways. First, Drew may look like a few hundred lovely acres, but in fact it hides whole worlds, a universe of wonderworlds. 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. We can point toward those hidden worlds, but you are the one who has to explore them for yourself. You have to become an explorer of what you don't know yet—-refuse that, and you may as well stay at home. You may immerse yourself in only a few of those worlds, but that will provide you a sense of wonder that you can employ throughout your life toward any number of worlds. This good place is all about intellectual passion.

But there is a more difficult kind of stretching we require as well. As a character said on the West Wing television series shortly after 9-11 to a group of visiting students, “You want to know how to confound the terrorists? Believe in more than one idea.” We are going to challenge you to entertain actively all sorts of viewpoints, to explore how it feels to be all sorts of different people; and if you have the courage to think empathetically through a whole range of perspectives, even with those who oppose you, before you come to a conclusion, then you will become not indecisive but vast. That will happen in your reading, in the classroom and laboratory, and perhaps most in your residence halls as you get to know each other in this wonderfully diverse class. Get to really know those far different from you and something more astonishing than science fiction has ever dreamed will happen to you every day here at Drew.

There was another aspect of Plasticman I liked, that whoever wrote him gave him complex feelings, not the predictable ones of other heroes—“I like Lois,” “To the batcave, Robin.” I mean, Plasticman was a petty criminal who became repentant, a wiseacre who was yet vulnerable—a very full-spectrum fellow. Very, well, human. And that is the other basic challenge at Drew and the basis for the kind of liberal arts education you will receive here, a kind of education initiated in the earliest moments of all great civilizations. It is meant to make you more fully and profoundly human, which is our job as individuals beyond any more mediate career.

We're not going to scorn the world of work as some colleges do; indeed, we hope to prepare you to practice the liberal arts in the practical life of the various social sectors. But a disproportionate number of the great scientists and most successful CEOs, as well as leaders in all social sectors from the arts to government, got their start at liberal arts schools like Drew. They became successful in something in particular because they made themselves general. They kept their eyes on the prize, which is the total perspective of our multidimensional lives. And so we insist on the impractical but deeply practical education of the arts and sciences, the only real education. In fact, we are here at Drew to proclaim a new authority for the liberal arts, holding sway, enacting knowledge, profoundly influencing the life of our nation and our world; for we maintain that, without them, you literally do not know what you are doing. And so finally we will challenge you as students to stretch and extend your learning beyond the theoretical, to become not just a critic of someone else's reality but to become someone constructing that reality—not a critic but a constituent. It's going to be great to watch you grow and for us to grow with you, you plasticwomen and plasticmen.

Now, as for you parents, your job is nearly the opposite. Considering your new role, I found myself thinking about a different fictional character, one from Austin Powers: That character is Mini-me. You need to get small. Now I say this in all respect, say it in total empathy, for last year I left one of my children as a freshperson at Wesleyan. Getting smaller in our kids' lives is a real challenge, and I am asking you to minimize yourself in a few different ways.

First, minimize your understandable wish for your daughter or son always to succeed. Give them permission to fail. I tell students, “If you don't fail at something, you aren't exploring possibilities fully enough,” and Drew is the kind of institution that allows you to fail at something without harm—-not at everything, by the way, just something. This is a wonderfully warm place, but we don't make it warm in order to be fuzzy—we make it user-friendly because we have learned that people will risk more when they feel safe.

In fact, urge your kids, our new students, not just to fail on occasion but please never to succeed so fully that they stop striving. If you get to the top of one hill, it will let you see a mountain: keep climbing.

But parents, you have a more concrete minimizing to do, as in the smaller and smaller look of your vehicle as you drive off. You have brought these young people this far and now you have this last and hardest task. I had to go through it a year ago at Wesleyan. In the late afternoon I asked my daughter what more I could do for her and her expression implied all too well her answer—she wanted me to get lost! Now, this was a challenge for me as it will be for you. 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 the person you have helped them to become. Even so, come six tonight, and with all my gratitude, do let go. Give them the space they need to grow.

Okay, students, now that you're all mine, back to your part of the bargain. Welcome to a community bristling with ideas and charged with the cherishing of difference. Welcome to this extraordinary campus of benevolence and challenge. But really it is not as if this is a completed place that will just enfold you. As a student-centered university, Drew will take the shape of its character from the character of each and all of you. This is the most spectacularly diverse class in our history for one reason and one reason only: We selfishly chose the most remarkable of our applicants to join us and this is how it turned out, perhaps because talent and character know no color or ethnicity. But how do we realize this great diversifying of the American intellect? By creating a model community, you will teach others and you will teach us.

Now, not only does the president of this university recall comic books, but he also watches stupid television programs. I have asked the faculty and staff and the incoming students and their parents to accept all of these challenges and to agree to this bargain, and now I will ask all of you in the words of that famed intellectual Howie Mandel: Deal or no deal?

I accept that as your affirmation of a compact whereby you and we will be worthy of Drew and of a better human future.