Remarks of Welcome to New Students and Parents
Matriculation Ceremony
Daniel F. Sullivan – Monday,
August 25, 2003
Members of the Class of 2007, other new students, and your
parents and families—a warm welcome to St. Lawrence University.
We have been looking forward to this for months. We are ready
for you and anxious to get to know you. You new students are
a remarkable group—expansive of mind, serious of purpose,
generous in spirit, curious, creative, and warm-hearted. What
fun we will have together in your time at St. Lawrence.
This matriculation ceremony marks the formal beginning of the
Class of 2007’s St. Lawrence experience. In our program,
Teresa Cowdrey, Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial
Aid and the person who leads the group who selected you from
the largest applicant pool in the history of the University,
presents the new class to the faculty and staff. Dean Cornwell
will accept you on behalf of the University and introduce and
recognize two key colleagues: Prof. Steven Horwitz, Associate
Dean of the First Year, and Dr. Marcia Petty, Vice President
and Dean, who with her staff is responsible for student life.
At the conclusion of this ceremony, you will be in their hands.
They will teach you, learn with you, and help you discover how
to live together in a learning community. Travis Babcock, President
of the Thelmothesian Society, St. Lawrence’s student government,
will also give words of greeting.
You know, as I look out at you all—parents worrying about
how it’s all going to go, students anxious to show their
stuff, maybe even a little bit cocky—I’m reminded
of a poem I read my six-year-old granddaughter this summer. It’s
by Shel Silverstein, one of the great educational philosophers.
You can find it in Where the Sidewalk Ends, and it’s
entitled “Smart:”
My dad gave me one dollar bill
‘Cause I’m his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
‘Cause two is more than one!
And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes—I guess he don’t know
That three is more than two!
Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just ‘cause he can’t see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!
And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!
And then I went and showed my dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head—
Too proud of me to speak!
I’ve been there. Have you?
Three Points
I have just three things I want to say to you members of our
new class as you begin your undergraduate study at St. Lawrence:
- First, the world is an increasingly complex and difficult
place, and the pace of change itself is increasing. One might
be led to conclude from this that the challenges your generation
faces outstrip the challenges of my generation and the challenges
of our predecessor generations to an extent that our experience,
and that of our elders, may not be relevant to the issues you
face and will face. Why be an apprentice, this logic goes,
to an elder who hasn’t had to face the complexity you
will face?
I believe, however, that as the complexity of the issues we
face and the pace of change have increased, so have our means
for dealing with complexity and change improved. With technology
and high-speed communication, we can literally get our arms around
far more and keep track of it than could our predecessors. If
the “challenge” of an age can be thought of as some
combination of the complexity of the issues and our facility
for handling complexity, I believe that today’s world is
actually no more challenging than that faced by our predecessors
in previous generations.
Let me give you a simple example. Like over a million other
Americans I have read and greatly enjoyed David McCullough’s
biography of John Adams. A fascinating part of the story involves
Adams ’ diplomatic efforts, with Benjamin Franklin and
Thomas Jefferson, in France and elsewhere during the Revolution.
Can you imagine what it would be like to conduct international
diplomacy in a time of national and world crisis using the means
of communication available then? American leaders want to send
instructions to their emissaries in London or Paris in response
to a new development—new in the sense that they have learned
of an important happening in a letter that took three months
to get to them—so they write a letter in return and pack
it off on a ship bound for Europe . The ship may not depart for
six weeks and then maybe the ship makes it, and maybe it doesn’t;
or maybe it lands in a different port than the one intended,
and the letter must wend its way to its destination in a roundabout
fashion. Perhaps it arrives in 2 months, perhaps 6 months, perhaps
not at all. Meanwhile, the circumstances prompting the letter
change and the instructions conveyed in the letter become moot
or, worse, totally inappropriate. Yet they are instructions—perhaps
even orders—and so must be implemented. Think of striking
a bell with a hammer and not hearing the “gong” for
several months.
Maybe today’s world is much more complex and difficult,
but the “challenge” faced by our predecessors was
surely no less than we face today. We cannot use the complexity
of the issues we face as an excuse to deal less successfully
with our challenges than did leaders and citizens of the past.
And we cannot dismiss out of hand the lessons history can teach
us because we believe that the challenges of today have no parallels
in the past. We at St. Lawrence believe we have much to teach
you. That is my first point.
- A liberal arts education was critical to leadership in generations
past. My second point is that it is at least as important today
if not more important. But what is it? The faculty of the University
has spent a great deal of time making clear the aims and objectives
of a liberal education that we think are central. At some point
in your exploration of St. Lawrence you may have seen these
words in our catalog. They describe what we will be about together
in the next four years:
A liberal education requires breadth, depth and integration
in learning. It also requires the cultivation of those habits
of intellectual and moral self-discipline that distinguish a
mature individual. To these ends, St. Lawrence seeks to provide
an education that fosters in students an open, inquiring and
disciplined mind, well informed through broad exposure to basic
areas of knowledge; an enthusiasm for life-long learning; self-confidence
and self-knowledge; a respect for differing opinions and for
free discussion of those opinions; and an ability to use information
logically and to evaluate alternative points of view.
A liberal education frees students from the confines of limited
personal experiences and limited knowledge of the physical, historical,
social and cultural world. In return, this liberation gives an
enlightened understanding of that which is singular, immediate
and limited. Thus, a liberal education is always relevant to
the world in which students must live at the same time that it
attempts to maintain a certain detachment from that world.
The kind of education we’re describing in these aims
and objectives is the kind of education I want those who are
tackling the tough issues on my behalf to have: the diplomat
who seeks to contribute to peace in the Middle East, the physician
who is going to diagnose my illness, the mother and father who
are going to bring children into the world and help them grow,
the lawyer who is an advocate but also knows and pursues justice,
the novelist whose insight will help me understand the human
condition better, the manufacturer who is not just good at making
things but who also cares about the lives of his or her workers
and the environmental impact of his or her manufacturing processes.
The kind of education we’re about at St. Lawrence is not
just important—it is absolutely essential and totally practical:
it is a means to the end of making a powerful and positive difference
in the world.
- My last point is that I am here to tell you we are ready
to do our very best for you. Getting the kind of education
I’ve described is hard work—on our part and on
your part. We’re going to be academically demanding and
provide you with a rich array of academic opportunities, but
we’re also going to give you hundreds of opportunities
to develop yourselves in ways other than just the intellectual.
In the end, it is my deepest hope that you will leave St. Lawrence
having been challenged powerfully, and that you will have met
the challenge. If this works the way we intend it, you will
also leave St. Lawrence loving this place in a way that will
last a lifetime. You will have been affected profoundly, and
your attachment to St. Lawrence will be permanent and deeply
meaningful.
So we welcome you, the Class of 2007, with the greatest enthusiasm.
You are well prepared. We know you can do what is necessary to
succeed here, and of course we know that you have chosen a marvelous
university. The campus where you will spend your next four years
is a beautiful monument to the aspirations you and we have for
your education—quite unlike the one my son and I came across
in Ireland a few summers ago. While we were reading on a bench
next to a rural highway in Connemara , we looked across the road
and saw a large monument of green marble. We got up and walked
over to look at it. Inscribed on it were these words: "On
this spot in 1897, exactly nothing happened!" I assure you
that, if you do your part, the time you spend here will be very,
very different. Thank you!
Dean Cowdrey, you may now present the class to the faculty!
Once again, let me say how great it is to have you here on
this spectacular North Country day. Before we adjourn, I have
a few announcements:
- The Family Orientation Program is now concluded. Thank you
for attending. Parents can and should go home!
- First-year students should meet by their college sign after
the recessional and then report to the Quad (Newell if raining)
at 5:00 p.m. for Playfair. Parents can meet their sons or daughters
there also to say “goodbye.”
- Parents, please remain in your seats until after the recessional.
- First-year students: at the conclusion of the alma mater,
I will ask you to stand and move toward the center aisle. As
Dean Petty and Associate Dean Horwitz recess up the aisle,
please fall in behind them to march out.
And now I’m going to join the St. Lawrence Singing Saints [and
Sinners?] and together we will sing the alma mater,
which is printed in the program. We will sing it through once
so you can learn the tune. The second time, everyone is encouraged
to sing. Please stand for the singing of the alma mater.
Shel Silverstein, “Smart,” in Where
the Sidewalk Ends (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 35.
