The Non-Event of Convocation
By A.S. Erickson | Sunday, October 14, 2007
Convocation at Dartmouth should be viewed as one of a handful of pinnacles in any given academic career. After all, the matriculated freshman probably went to great lengths to get into a school of Dartmouth’s caliber—whether it was endless prepping for SATs, slogging through charity events they probably wanted no part of, or crafting the perfect college application (expertly cloaking their variegated achievements and general greatness in Christ-like modesty). For many freshmen, it was no easy feat getting into Dartmouth. The culmination of all those hours is their ceremonial acceptance into the Dartmouth community. The event should, ideally, be memorable.
This year’s convocation can best be described as a non-event. Like an awkward high school ceremony replete with note-passing, yawning, and rolling of eyes, Convocation 2007 was at best amusing, at worst uninspired. The event started off predictably enough with throngs of freshman filling up seats on the green matted floor of Leede Arena. As the new students made their way into the arena one could see their sense of expectation; or rather, one could see them trying to figure out what to expect. Should they be expecting something special, or will they soon be wishing that they were working through their hangovers in the comfort of their own beds?
The ceremony began appropriately enough with the entrance of the various trustees, provosts, deans, and selected professors. The professors entered behind the administrators, all of them arrayed in their hard earned but seldom used garb. Many had a certain smile on their faces, rather like the smile of a schoolgirl who finally gets to wear her prom dress.
Provost Barry Scherr opened the ceremony. It was a long hour for Scherr, as he stumbled over the names of divers people, places, and tribes. College Chaplain Richard Crocker then took to the lectern to deliver a prayer. There was however unintended humor in his opening line, “God of Truth we are all smart, but we are not all wise.” Apparently unbeknownst to Crocker, President Wright’s convocation address to the class of 2010 had focused on the “reality” that there is no absolute truth. Crocker should, however, be praised for having the gumption to use the g-word as his predecessor, Dean Lord, was fond of invoking prayer in the “name of the Spirit of community,” whatever that is.
Everyone then joined in the singing of “America the Beautiful,” which was led by the (nearly inaudible) Glee Club. After the song a short break was taken to allow the latecomers into the arena. Included in this group were photographers from a daily campus rag, nostalgic upperclassmen, and nearly one third of the 2011 class.
The three scheduled addresses followed this lengthy interlude. The first to speak was Student Assembly President (SAP) Travis Green. In recent history the student speeches at Convocation have provided the most entertainment. Convocation 2005 was witness to, at that time, SAP Noah Riner’s infamous meditation on Christ. In truth, it was an address on character, but the only thing anyone talked about afterward was his seemingly innocuous claim that, “Jesus is a good example of character, but He’s also much more than that. He is the solution to flawed people like corrupt Dartmouth alums, looters, and me.” The statement caused quite the hubbub, including the resignation of the SA Vice President Kaelin Goulet who reportedly told Riner, “I consider [your] choice of topic for the Convocation speech reprehensible and an abuse of power. You embarrass the organization; you embarrass yourself.”
Convocation 2006 gave witness to an odd little speech by Riner’s successor at the SA helm, Timothy Andreadis. Andreadis, a Women and Gender Studies major, used the opportunity to helpfully point out the obvious: “I would argue that having an entering class with the highest percentage of women ever does not necessarily mean that all women on this campus will feel welcomed or comfortable in every space at all times.” From this point of departure Andreadis meandered through a history of sex relations at Dartmouth and ended by directing the members of the 2010 class to “report incidents of sexual violence.” As a starry-eyed freshman I remember thinking that this wasn’t the most ideal introduction to Dartmouth—retrospect showed it to be the ideal introduction to Timothy Andreadis.
This year’s SAP Travis Green did not disappoint. His address to the gathering was dismal. The speech meandered through sundry pompous platitudes (e.g. “you have many potential friends from all walks of life”; “answers…will come from each of your cumulative actions”; “the seed of your future self lies in the little bit of the Dartmouth spirit that’s already inside of you”) while finally settling on the hackneyed “define yourself” as his message: “I challenge you to define yourself. I challenge you to define excellence. I challenge you to define Dartmouth.” Quite inspirational, but Dartmouth already is defined. The College is defined by its traditions; traditions that the 2011 class will no doubt help to carry on. To distance oneself from tradition, from “white, male, preaching New Englanders” as Mr. Green so eloquently put it, is to fall short of the true Dartmouth experience.
While Green’s speech was pretty standard fare for an event like this, his ability as an orator was truly a surprise. His pattern of speech was stilted, wooden, and labored. His delivery is best described as a continuous string of single words, slowly ticked off in a metronomical cadence. At the end of this display of rhetorical prowess, the on-looking freshmen and professors were unsure what to do, pausing three of four seconds before finally gracing him with applause.
The keynote speaker, Bruce Duthu ’80, followed Green. Duthu served as the director of the Native American Program in the late 1980s before he left for the University of Vermont Law School in 1991. He has continued to teach his class, “Native Americans and the Law,” at Dartmouth. He followed Green with a welcome address on humility. In years past speakers have taken pains to remind the many students in front of them just how special they are: most foreign students ever, most diverse class ever, highest SAT scores ever, etc. Duthu signaled his break with the past was intentional, “The subject of humility may seem an odd choice for an occasion like this.” He went on to defend humility against those who associate it with weakness, saying that, in truth, humility “means the absence of arrogance, a posture of openness, a spirit of deference.” Perhaps taking a lesson from Mr. Riner, Duthu tactfully omitted any allusion to Mathew 5:5.
The bulk of his address consisted of two long anecdotes. One concerned a speech given by Learned Hand, the renowned jurist who, for many years, sat on the second circuit. The other was about a performance by Ignace Paderewski, a famed Polish pianist. Neither was particularly profound, but given the disaster he was following Duthu sounded like Demosthenes reborn to those in attendance. In an aside, partway through Duthu’s speech, two young photographers covering the event began to flash their respective cameras at one another, hoping to temporarily blind their counterpart, as well as the onlookers seated behind them.
President Wright followed Duthu, and he, unsurprisingly, felt the need to include what the previous two speakers had so promisingly decided to leave out of their remarks: “You are also more diverse in background, race, and economic circumstance than any previous Dartmouth class has been, and there are more international students than we have ever heretofore matriculated.” He went on to note that this was not just some “accident of history—it is also the result of a sense of purpose deeply embedded in the history of Dartmouth.”
Wright’s remarks quickly spiraled downward from a racial history of Dartmouth into an apologia for affirmative action. He defends it, however, in a most unusual way. Here is an excerpt of his address:
The political scientist Robert Putnam has developed the concept of “social capital,” to describe a society marked by trust, collaboration, and civic responsibility. In the 1990s, he worried about an erosion of social capital in modern society. In subsequent research, he focused on the relationship of diversity to social capital. And in a paper he published earlier this summer, he reported that, in fact, diverse communities have less social capital than do homogeneous communities. These findings have provided opportunities for critics of diversity and affirmative action to point out the fallacy of the principle that a diverse community is a stronger community and, also, to question whether actively moving toward diversity is a valued social and legal objective.
So, it is essential that we ask ourselves on this September morning whether all of this-the legal, constitutional, political, and cultural challenges of our time; the pessimism suggested by the Putnam research-whether all of this means that Dartmouth should back away from its historic principles and assumptions?
Having raised the question, I shall take the opportunity to provide an answer: No, to me it surely does not….
…. The Putnam research makes more, rather than less, urgent our historic purpose. The appropriate response to these new findings cannot be to strive for homogeneous communities, which may, in the short term, have more social capital, but will surely not, in the long term, provide the intellectual excitement, the general stimulation, and the preparation for a lifetime of learning that Dartmouth seeks-as it has always sought to engender.
What was Wright’s purpose in bringing up a groundbreaking new study by Harvard Professor Robert Putnam, and then declining to bring up any counter arguments? Putnam’s findings can be found in the June issue of Scandinavian Political Studies. In it he reports the following:
[I]nhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.
Putnam, clearly disturbed by his findings, goes on to make several attempts at poking holes in his own research. Why President Wright refrained from doing so is curious. Even more peculiar, however, is why he would deliver an address on affirmative action at convocation in the first place. President Wright has clearly come to view his involvement in race relations at Dartmouth as the central component of his legacy. Perhaps, though, there is a better venue for the burnishing of one’s tenure. Gone, it seems, are the days when the College President would offer the matriculating class some timeworn advice and send them on their way. n
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