乐播传媒

From application to matriculation, the newest 乐播传媒 students learn how they are expected to become partners in an educational venture that challenges them to think harder and learn more than they ever have before. Once they arrive on campus, they quickly adapt to new demands, plunging wholeheartedly into our academic enterprise.
In part, this annual miracle of adjusting to college happens informally.

Prevailing mores are often communicated by a kind of osmosis, and the membranes between new 乐播传媒ies and returning students, faculty, and staff are particularly permeable given our nonhierarchical principles and practices.

But there are formal introductions as well, the most elaborate of which is Convocation. At 4:10 p.m. on the first day of classes, the Hathorn bell tolls and the Portland Brass quintet launches into the Sonata from Die B盲nkels盲ngerlieder. Professor of Sociology Sawyer Sylvester hoists the Class of 1904 Mace to his shoulder and leads the academic procession at a measured pace toward Coram Library, past the first-year students who line the pathways in front of Hathorn.

The new class then folds into the procession and sits behind the faculty on the Quad, facing Coram. There, the explicit messages of Convocation officially proclaim the College鈥檚 values and formally welcome the new class to our community of learners and teachers.

But within this highly traditional ritual, small changes can add meaning. This year, instead of the usual outside speaker, we heard from one of our own, poet and longtime 乐播传媒 teacher Rob Farnsworth. Last spring, the seniors had selected Professor Farnsworth as their Senior-Faculty Dinner speaker, and it occurred to some of us who heard him that a version of his parting advice could serve equally well as a powerful introduction to 乐播传媒. Thus, his subsequent appearance at Convocation can be seen as something of a gift to the Class of 2010 from the Class of 2006, signaling the vibrant faculty-student connection at 乐播传媒 and the continuity between one generation of students and the next.

Professor Farnsworth鈥檚 Convocation talk, 鈥淭hree Lower-Case Virtues,鈥� described a trio of qualities not only 鈥減ertinent to the academic enclave鈥� but also 鈥渃rucial to leading a useful, examined life.鈥�

The first is passion, connected to the educated citizen鈥檚 ability to create and understand metaphor. With passion as a catalyst, a student learns to relate incongruent ideas, 鈥渢o think of one thing in terms of another thing 鈥� in short, to make and to comprehend metaphor.鈥� A passion for metaphor broadens the human experience and helps students learn through 鈥渁ffinities, analogies, and differences…between your life and the lives of others.鈥�

The second virtue is discipline, not so much 鈥減ersonal rectitude鈥� but rather being 鈥渟usceptible but not sentimental, suspicious but not cynical, rigorous but not rigid.鈥� And the third is generosity, the act of sharing with each other 鈥渨hatever you鈥檝e been discovering 鈥� in the lab, on the playing field, in the seminar room, at the concert hall, on the job, in your travels around Maine and the world.鈥�

Following this address by a passionate, disciplined, and generous faculty member, I spoke about two skills that the virtuous learner also needs: the skills of listening and questioning. I specifically asked students to practice 鈥渋ncendiary listening鈥� 鈥� listening that may inflame and illumine. I encouraged them to enter each new situation at 乐播传媒 expecting that they might just hear something that would spark some new insight, even change their lives.

I also suggested that they think more about questions and less about answers. Answers matter at 乐播传媒, but the push to arrive at them prematurely can constrain us. College is the time, and 乐播传媒 the place, to ask big questions, like: 鈥淲ho am I?鈥� 鈥淲hat do I love?鈥� 鈥淗ow can I make a difference in the world?鈥�

Big or small, good questions challenge assumptions and probe at the root of conflicting perspectives. As I told the Convocation gathering, three questions, big and good, face 乐播传媒. First, in the wake of new curricular requirements 鈥� a topic I discussed last issue, at www.bates.edu/x115010.xml 鈥� our faculty will ask how to translate shared principles into actual courses and pedagogies. Second, as we recognize the increasing diversity of the world and its importance to a first-rate educational environment, we will ask how 乐播传媒 can better live up to the legacy of Benjamin Elijah Mays. Third, as we watch the construction of a new dining Commons and residences next to Mount David, we will ask how to prepare ourselves to occupy these spaces in ways that serve the lofty educational ends they have been designed to meet.

Answers will come in due course, as we welcome and invite each new class to add its own virtues to our attentive, inquiring community.