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Academics

Redeeming Education

Remarks by Jeanne Matthews Sommer
First Year Student Academic Convocation

Students of Warren Wilson College, new and returning, you are the reason why we are here. Isn't this amazing? Here we all are. Relative strangers to one another, bound together by our common humanity and now by this community of Warren Wilson College. On behalf of my colleagues in the faculty, I wish for you to know how eager we are to become your professors.

To prepare for this address, I travelled to the place where, nearly 30 years ago, I began my own undergraduate experience. Once there, I went to the library and walked among the stacks of books. I went down to its basement, what we affectionately called "The Zoo," since it was the place we went when we needed to study but not necessarily concentrate too hard. It was a "hook up" spot for the horniest among us. From there I tried to visit the underground tunnels for the ventilation systems that we used to lovingly graffiti, but they're now sealed away from public access. Then I concluded my visit by going to the space where I once sat and experienced my first-ever academic convocation, and I tried to remember what it had been like for me long ago and to imagine what might be happening for many of you today.

As I sat there, I realized that, like many of us, I had gone to college largely because it was presumed in my community that this is just what one does after High School. I also contemplated how, at that point in time, though I thought I knew what I was getting into, I didn't have much of a clue. My bubbles were only just beginning to be burst: about college, about myself, about the world in which I lived.

So here, within the first few minutes of my remarks to you: I seek to burst your first bubble, if it's not already happened. I seek to mark as "questionable" a first truth you've been told about our particular college, probably on your tour here as a high school student, or from reading the covers of our marketing literature. You've seen it, the bi-line under our logo: "Warren Wilson College…We're not for everyone. But then, maybe you're not everyone."

I think we are everyone.

The poet Maya Angelou once asked a group of first year students: "Will you remember that there are thousands, tens of thousands of people that are homeless and that they look just like you? Will you, really, remember that there are tens of thousands of people who are hungry and that they look just like you?"

How different are we, really?

I think we are everyone. For, when you cry, your tears are salty, just like mine. When we bleed, our blood, like all other mammals, runs red. Birth, death, fear and fascination find us all here in these mountains, as it finds Life everywhere. Despite whatever outrageous sense of humor or tattoo we might possess, we are at last, only human. There is, in a very real sense, nothing special about you, nothing important about me. My great grandchildren, should I have them, will likely know little about me after I'm gone and our birth certificates, although they contain our names and unique lineages, do not label us as Republican or Democrat, Christian or Jew, American or Chinese. As my Palestinian friend once reminded me, we were all born, simply: Baby! We are just human, with all the complexity this entails.

And here we are: filled with anticipation and conviction, self-doubt and conceit, planning to make something more of ourselves as individuals, something more of our societies, hoping to live out another of the college's marketing bi-lines whose bubble I hope never to burst: "Making a difference."

I have been waiting for this day for nearly thirty years. Yes, I have been waiting, just for you. Because, years ago, I sat in a large, non-descript room at what is now my Alma Mater, surrounded by strangers, filled with anticipation and dread, hoping for much more than I could even reveal to myself at the time. Somehow, in the words of those who led the academic convocation, a peace settled upon me and I knew that I was home. I was in a place where I'd be able, perhaps more than I'd been able to do in my own family home, to begin defining my identity, for myself. I found myself in a safe place, where my teachers, my peers, were asking me to speak up and out, to share my truths, and to subject them to the critical scrutiny of others, not to demean me or humiliate me, but to help me become stronger, something more.

And, unbeknownst to me at that moment, that something more would include becoming a scholar, becoming a person who dedicates herself to a life, not only of teaching, but also of learning. I do not remember who spoke at that first academic convocation, or what was said; all I recall was that I was changed and I know that the same is true for many of my colleagues who share this stage with me today. We found ourselves so at home in the world of academia that we've never wanted to leave.

You may be correct to accuse us, whether we be male or female, of being a kind of "lost boy," never wishing to grow up and leave the comfort of these hallowed halls of higher education; but if you were to come to know us well you'd likely forgive us this one sin after you hear us talking about what we love as if it were our own child: the text of a Dante or a Proust; the texture of a Van Gogh or a Matisse; the fossil footprint of an African primate or the chemical compound of an amino acid. Our loves are many and diverse, and we bring them to you in these next four years, not only for a paycheck but for a livelihood: a LIFE, capital L-I-F-E that allows us to thrive, not simply to exist.

I suspect, were you to ask each us what motivates us, you'd find in us, despite our varied disciplines and skills, a kindred spirit: a person who seeks, first and foremost, not simply to be a passerby or tourist in this world, but a pilgrim, whose quest for knowledge has taken her on a journey that is, in many ways, redeeming her, saving him: redeeming her from the abyss of meaninglessness, redeeming him from the tomb of mindless consumerism, and the fevers of hatred and discrimination.

We all, I think, whether we label ourselves as religious or not, seek to be redeemed, to be purchased again, paid for; for this is the meaning of redemption: to be bought back, snatched away. Purchased from the disillusionment that comes from a life lived for nothing more than Self. Many of us find that redemption, at least partially, through our engagement with our teaching and research. Scientists, artists, technicians, philosophers, and priests, we greet you and invite you today to walk a path marked by engagement, by discipline, by wonder, and by hope. This is college.

This is Warren Wilson College, and I think it may be fair to say that those of us who teach here do so because of the Triad of Academics, Work, and Service and because here, as professors, we are able to continue what began for us in college: becoming more fully, more surprisingly, ourselves. We want to teach in a place where we can continue to learn and be challenged. And we don't simply want to talk to each other to get this kind of challenge. We need you.

In my own undergraduate experience, I had fully surprised myself by the time I graduated. I began college as a Republican who voted for Ronald Reagan and who wanted to be an attorney for Reynolds Tobacco Company. I graduated as a Social Democrat who was going to seminary to be a professor, perhaps a minister, after having had only two women professors in college, and having had no opportunity to hear about, let alone meet, such a person as a "woman minister." I was marching off of my map into the barbaric terrain of my future, dashing in the process the dreams of a father who'd supported my education and who was expecting an attorney in return, all because, somehow--from that first day in a non-descript lecture hall, sitting next to a relative stranger, until the day I submitted my Senior Thesis on political philosophy--I had learned how to think more critically about myself and about the world in which I was living.

The irony, however, is that college teaches us so much more than we will ever be able fully to recall. Thankfully, a good college education is about more than just amassing data and memorizing facts, though there is a place for this as well. If our educations, like our own spirits, do not become something more, something surprising, then we run the risk of proving Father Guido Sarducci, the comic persona of Saturday Night Live fame, correct when he says that all we really need is a five (5) minute college education. Here's how he put it in his Saturday Night Life skit from the 1970's.

Why are we here, really? If Father Guido is correct and all we can recall five years after graduation is five minutes worth of knowledge, what's the use? If we can only talk for five minutes about academics but, by contrast, we can name every lover we ever had in college-which may or may not tell you much-can remember some of the best parties we've ever attended, and can only vaguely see the faces of the professors who meant the most to us, let alone the ones we didn't like too well, did our college educations actually pay for anything substantive?

I think so. For most of us, it was in college that we learned to think for ourselves. We learned how to subject our most cherished beliefs to critical examination by people whose views and life experiences were quite different from our own. We learned how to discipline ourselves. With no one waking us up in the mornings for classes and without understanding or appreciating many of the assignments we had: the sometimes boring lecture, the weeks spent writing a single research paper, all of these experiences were, unbeknownst to us, dancing across newly created synapses in our brains and within the cockles of our hearts: to change us. And, unlike the Marine Corp billboard that depicts the face of a nondescript soldier with a blank, indoctrinated stare and with the words: "Changed forever" beneath, many of us found our faces transforming from the dull bright of a high school student who tolerated learning as a means only to an end, to that of a shining and energetic person who lives to learn, who craves being challenged, and who'd come to understand the deeper meanings of education. Education--from the Latin edu-care, meaning "to draw out," like water from a well. The folks who sit upon this stage and who will be your teachers these next years know how education can retrieve the potential that lay dormant in our souls.

In my case, instead of graduating with the illusion that I knew it all, I graduated wanting more: more learning, more Life. I craved understanding as much as sex, salivated over the chance to be critiqued so I could get better, could be broken down only to be built up again; and, yes, I'd be lying if I suggested this process was not painful. To fail; to have papers returned to me with so many red marks that I thought the professor pierced herself cutting bagels while grading; to be told in clear and not so clear ways that more was wanted, that I was capable of more, despite thinking I'd already been spent completely, was a painful challenge. But I'd also be lying if I told you that this process of education has not also been Joy.

I'd also be telling you a partial truth if I said that your professors think that your college experience should only be about academic content. College is about it all: about the data and the skills, about process, about friendships and experimentation with values and identities. College is the closest thing our society still has to those Rites of Passage common within so many religious traditions. In such Rites of Passage, we are moved from childhood to adulthood, with the responsibilities and privileges this entails and it's not meant to be easy. It's designed to be an ordeal. Rites of Passage are not designed to be excuses from responsibility or vacations from Life but as ways to intensify our connection to ordinary days of living during the ordeal and afterwards.

Although this will be your home for only four years or so, for most of us, it's our home, period. And what you do affects us, affects our families and the quality of the world in which we live. Ours is a great work ahead of us and we need each other and your utmost care and attention during your four years here if we are to undertake the transformation of our society from one in which the answer to the question posed by the robber to his prey: "Your money or your life?" is no longer a no-brainer. It is safe to say that the question of whether or not our species, our civilization, really wants to continue is now up for debate. Common sense still eludes us: that love is more powerful than hatred. But our ignorance is now coupled with technology, and a population mass, and a disproportionate distribution of power and weaponry in ways unseen prior to our generations. To change this world we need communities of a depth and quality we've likely never experienced before and you've got to work with us to create them.

We need communities that enable us to seek out, not just tolerate difference. If we are to go beyond the sound-bite thinking of our media-driven society that pits Republican against Democrat, gay against straight, and Christian against Muslim, we need to redeem the meaning of hospitality to strangers, because kindness is dying in our society and friendship's truest meanings are being swindled away. We need collaboration across lines of difference. Religion professors need scientists and artists need technicians; we cannot afford to remain fragmented in our labors. That brings you here, to Warren Wilson College and most specifically to the Triad, where we are, at one and the same time, nobody special and something wonderful.

The Triad: Academics, Work, and Service. Dr. Michael Matin, in the English Department, needs Mr. James Damien, the locksmith. I'm not sure how in the hell postcolonial literature and a locksmith go together, but I know they both need to be here, today, on this campus, working side by side, though with different tools. It's not always clear what this Triad thing means, but it's a foundation to which no other school in this country can claim such longstanding commitment. I suspect that if you asked every professor why he or she is teaching here and not somewhere else, most of us would suggest it's because of this unique, Triad approach to education that we still don't do well enough, but we're trying. We have your best interest in mind and we ask that you work with us, as a fellow human animal, with our best interests in mind as well. . We are your faculty: we are gay and straight, older and younger, more or less boring and traditionally academic; with babies and grown children, but one thing unites us all: we have a hunger for learning and a hope to inspire. We cannot do it all for you, however. Even the most engaging lecturer amongst us cannot keep a toe tapping solo going for long, just for you. You've got to meet us at least halfway. This means studying and playing. This means being willing to fail and to try out new areas that may or may not be of interest. This means asking for help when you need it. This means, as one of my colleagues puts it, "Staying sober, showing up, and giving a damn." This means your willingness to critique another bi-line that is common at this college and in our world: "We don't have enough time."

We have, I'd like to tell you, all the time we need. "Time," as I learned from a bumper sticker in the parking lot on campus last year, "is a stripper, dancing just for you." Think about it.

You, I am confident, will rise to the occasions to which you will be challenged in the coming weeks and years. I conclude now with the words of Maya Angelou, again to a group of first year students in their week of orientation:

"I encourage you: men and women, young men and women: set your sights high: very high, beyond your family, beyond your friends, and even beyond your professors. Set your heights so high that you have to stand on tiptoe and stretch yourself and still not be able to reach them. And don't be afraid to say ‘I have set my sights much higher than that'. If you say that to your peers, if your peers ask you ‘O come on, what is this? Come on, I mean, really, I mean, hey!...', don't be afraid. Be courageous….and say ‘I have set my sights higher than that. I may not achieve it but I will at least be reaching toward it. You will be anxious these first weeks and months. It is given, and so don't be surprised at that. I'd like to see you use your excitement and your anxiety to claim a foothold in this particular effort, [known as college] so that you will draw me up to you and everyone will be drawn up to you."

New students at Warren Wilson College, please stand up now and prepare to sing the college's alma mater. Stretch your arms and hands above your heads. Colleagues, quite possibly, these are the hands that will change our world.

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