chancellor@ku.edu
It is my privilege, as chancellor, to welcome all of you, but especially the freshman class, to the 138th opening convocation of the University of Kansas.
Your presence here tonight keeps intact a KU tradition that has been repeated every year for the past 138 years.
On September 12, 1866, the University opened its doors to its first freshman class of 40 students. They had many of the same questions you have. Why am I here? What will college be like? Will my professors be mean? Do you think Wayne Simien might be in my history class?
On that first convocation day, as hot in 1866 as it was today, there were devotions, the chancellor spoke, and then the students broke up into small groups so faculty could test how well prepared they were for university study.
Let me put you at ease. We don't plan to do that tonight.
We have confidence that you are prepared, that this freshman class is quite different than those first Jayhawks.
KU's official historian, Dr. Clifford Griffin, in his history of KU, makes clear how different it was.
"When the University of Kansas opened on September 12, 1866," Griffin writes, "the only things it had in common with the genuine universities of the time were a name, a charter, and a quarrelsome faculty. . . In all the ways that mattered the so-called University of 1866 was merely a preparatory school. It had no college students, for no high school graduates or students with equivalent preparation had applied for admission. It had no research scholars on the faculty, no library worthy of the name, and only one building."
As the entering class of 2003, you are the living proof of how much progress we have made. We gather here tonight in a multi-million dollar, air-conditioned auditorium, representing a university with over 200,000 living graduates, with a faculty that would never think of quarreling, especially with the trustworthy, loyal, and kind administrators you have been introduced to this evening.
KU today is a university with a freshman class filled with students who are bright, vivacious, enthusiastic, intelligent, and handsome. You are clearly genetically coded for future intellectual achievement, loving relationships, happy children and (we hope) immense wealth. You have been so well prepared by your high schools that it is unthinkable that anyone should harbor anxiety about tomorrow's classes, and the beginning of your college career. Everybody's cool, right? No fear?
Dr. Griffin seemed to prophesy this kind of happy outcome, because he goes on to say that, "During the next 100 years, the University of Kansas rose above the poverty of its beginnings to become a university in fact."
That is what you encounter as you enter KU. A university in fact rather than fiction, an educational institution known for the quality of its undergraduate education, the strength of its graduate programs, the dedication of its staff, and the international reputation of its faculty. You made a good choice to come here.
That one wind-swept building has become 900 buildings in 4 different locations -- Lawrence, Kansas City, Johnson County, and Wichita. Those initial 40 students have become a freshman class of 4,000 in a student body of almost 29,000 students.
The simplistic preparatory curriculum that had to be offered in 1866 because faculty found students so unprepared has become over 200 different majors, enough so that you can change majors 10, 12, 15 times, the only constraint on your desire for a new major being how many decades you want to live in Lawrence, the limits of your curiosity, and the size of your pocketbook. The university offers you a smorgasbord of intellectual offerings, with thousands of courses ranging from the "Biology of Spiders" to the "Potential Ecological Effects of Thermonuclear War."
But none of this history or the university's progress answers the essential question that you should be asking yourself today, just as those students of 1866 had to ask it of themselves.
Why are you here? Why have you enrolled? What does this mean for your future? We faculty know why we are here. We believe strongly in what we do. We believe that a college education will enrich your life and make you a more informed person. We are probably not objective about this. Many of us believe that the intense study of our particular academic discipline, whether it is microbiology or speech therapy, will be good for you. For example, I am an English teacher. I have a personal conviction that the study of American literature can create health, strength, and wisdom. It can also improve your love life. It may not be the total answer to your inability to get dates, but trust me, it will help.
The staff knows why they are here. They care about making your life outside the classroom a success. They make sure that you are well fed, well housed, supplied with basketball and football tickets, and above all, make sure you are prohibited from parking in all the really convenient spots on campus.
The trustworthy, loyal, and kind administration knows why it is here, too. We must ensure that every classroom is prepared, every computer lab up and running, every air conditioner functioning, every Web site accessible, every false I.D. confiscated, and every wayward soul inclined to swap a music file scheduled to be burned at the stake.
So, I repeat, why are you here? Why have you gone through this complicated process of applying for admission, the worry about your test scores and high school grades, the inconvenience of dumping a boyfriend back home, the fights with your parents about the size of the wardrobe you will bring to campus?
Why are you here? I know that for some of you this is not a complicated question.
But let's be serious for a moment. All of these reasons have to do with your choice of a university. You made a decision prior to your choice of school, and that was to seek this experience called a college education. And most of you, when faced with the basic question "Why am I here?" will answer with some variation on "I am here to get a college education." That is a conscious decision. You could have studied at a technical school, joined the armed forces, or found a full-time job. Learning would be part of all of these, but you chose to pursue and capture a "college education."
What does that mean? What is a college education? How does it differ from a high school education? A college education seems to mean something special, something above the basics, something that one approaches with a certain awe and ambition.
I suppose you could throw the question back at me. Why should a college freshman have to explain what a college education is? We will know when we have one, four years from now. It should be your job, Chancellor, to tell us what a college education is.
And you would have a point. All of the bald heads and gray hair up here should be able to explain why a college education is a noble goal, important for the quality of your life, and for your ability to be a productive and informed citizen of one of the greatest democracies on earth.
The problem is, I can't tell you what your college education will be. It is different for every individual. And, it defies easy definition. A college education is not something that occurs just over a four-year period. It stays with you. It becomes a way of thinking and learning for a lifetime. College is not a single initiation ritual in a life-long adventure. It is certainly not a sanctuary of green lawns and ivy covered buildings designed to provide a safe haven for 18- to 25-year-old people. Too often people think of college as a benign prelude to the real serious stuff of paying taxes, acting as adults and working 9 to 5. I have always rejected the notion that college is something different than the "real world," as in, "Well, when you enter the real world you will get rid of that idealism," or "When you enter the real world you won't be able to sleep till noon." The real world is here and now. Reality doesn't wait.
So, what is a college education? The simple answer is, you will find that out for yourself. It will mean different things to each of you, and no one will have exactly the same experience, or even have the same feelings about the experience.
College education becomes a personal mix of technical knowledge, moral example, personal assistance, and private revelation. People graduate with an individualized legacy of spiritual experience, intellectual stimulation, personal friendship, and faculty stewardship. But those abstractions don't quite get to the real meaning of what awaits you.
Maybe I can say it best by ending with five experiences that whatever your college education becomes, I am pretty sure these five will be part of your KU experience.
First, there is the ethical crisis. Most of you will be faced relatively soon with an ethical decision about cheating. The temptation will come just as surely as the serpent presented Eve with a piece of fruit. Þ To plagiarize or not to plagiarize? Þ A fellow student seems willing to sneak answers under the desk. Should I copy? Þ A roommate offers you a finished paper after you blew the weekend and failed to finish yours. In some form you will be invited to cheat. Don't take the easy road. True, maybe you won't even be caught. But, the risk is that you will, and the cost is too high. You will leave a part of your integrity on the floor and it won't be easy to find it again.
Second, there will come a moment for each of you when you have to make a decision about drugs and alcohol. It probably won't be a decision about whether to drink or not, because many of you have already made that decision, despite the fact you are underage and thus illegal. Some of you have said yes, some no to alcohol. Both are honorable decisions. Doing drugs is not an honorable decision, and it is illegal. My advice is don't go there. It is truly not worth it.
For many of you, your decision about alcohol will become, are you are going to make an informed decision about its use. Is it really necessary to be drunk to have a good time? There is a difference between having a beer and having a binge. Is it worth it to decimate those brain cells forever? Honestly, does anyone else think you are as funny as you think you are, when drunk? How can you justify driving and endangering others solely because you don't care enough about yourself? Adults learn how to use alcohol responsibly. You are an adult. Don't act like someone less than you are.
Third, if you are a white student, sometime during your KU education you will have the opportunity to become acquainted with a person of color. Similarly, if you are a person of color, you will have the opportunity to know a person deprived of color. Don't let color, or the lack of it, stand in the way of friendship. This is a diverse university, and we believe in the value of diversity. We'll be a better university, and you will be a better person, the more you understand people different than yourself, including a person, no matter what their color, who has a different life style or a different heritage.
Fourth, sometime during your college career, you will have a "light bulb intellectual experience." Just like in the cartoons, a light will illuminate your brain, and you will understand something in a way you've never been able to understand it before. Treasure that moment. Remember it, learn from it, and seek a repetition. It may come with the solution to a calculus problem, completion of a hydraulics experiment, or viewing a slide of a Rococco painting. It may be Kurt Vonnegut writing, "We are what we pretend to be. Consequently, we should be careful what we pretend to be." It may be the revelation that comes from analyzing Harry Truman's thoughts as he considered whether to drop the atomic bomb in WWII. Whatever it is, store that moment, and be open to the next opportunity to repeat it.
Finally, every single one of you will come to ask yourself, what does it mean to be a Jayhawk? What experiences have made me feel so close to these friends who have shared my life at this university on a hill? How did the beauty of the campus come to be a videotape stored inside my head so that wherever I go in this world, I can always return to Mount Oread? If a Jayhawk is supposed to be a mythical bird, why does my imagination seem to soar and my chest fill with pride when I explain to others what KU meant to me?
That is the Jayhawk effect, the power of the myth and the beauty of the identity. Don't fear it. Embrace it. It will mark you for life, which is the one thing, and maybe the only thing, that I can guarantee everyone of you will experience.
Why are you here? Because it was meant to be. Rock Chalk, Jayhawks!
