Office of the President

New Student Convocation — September 5, 2004

Forever Young, Always Learning

Members of the Class of 2008! Transfer students in the Classes of 2005, 2006, and 2007!

This New Student Convocation may seem an extravagant use of time. Impractical, unnecessary, disruptive. Having just arrived on campus for your first day as a Carthage student, you have many things to do - moving in, setting up rooms, buying books, saying family good-byes, meeting new classmates. Instead of letting you concentrate on those chores, we schedule this academic assembly and then tell you it is all in your honor.

Yes, this is an old Carthage tradition, but so what? Why organize an event like this on a day like this? My answer is that all of us are participating in an act of conscious living. Some people die before they ever live. Safe, dull routine carries them through their years. In contrast, everyone here is pausing to affirm that this day does have special importance in your lives. We are daring to look directly at truth.

The vast majority of you soon will come truly to like this place, even to love it. But, just now, along with the excitement, questions and apprehensions are floating among you. Can I tolerate living with that roommate? Will I find new friends I really like? What is going to happen with that boyfriend or girlfriend back home? Will I make decent grades in my courses? Will the professors be approachable or intimidating? Will I get any playing time on the team? Can I pass a successful audition for the choir or the theatre? How am I going to do in saying good-bye to my family? Is my mother going to cry? Well, the list goes on and on.

It is precisely such questions that make this day so marvelous. Does that sound strange? Why should it? By going off to college, you are doing something significant. You are accepting a challenge, and not settling for the easiest course. By silently acknowledging your doubts or fears, and then moving on, you are showing yourselves just how strong you can be. Everything depends on the state of mind with which you approach these events.

So, today you are practicing life.

Here on campus, you will encounter many approaches to life across the next few years. Some you will see, some you will read about; some are contemporary, some happened centuries ago. By evaluating them all, you will define your own view of what works best. That sort of conscious living ideally will characterize you all your days. You may even remain forever young.

^LLiterature and history are replete with musings about eternal youth. Not everyone has thought it such a great idea. One perspective comes from Oscar Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which some of you may have read in high school. The protagonist is a quick-witted, handsome young man. A friend paints a portrait of him that captures all the beauty of his youth. Dorian wishes he could always look like the portrait, that the portrait could age instead of him. Wondrously he gets his wish, but sadly Dorian possesses no moral compass and commits one terrible act after another across his lifetime. In physical appearance, he never ages, he remains just as fresh and vital as when he was young. Yet, the portrait constantly grows older in appearance and becomes more hideous with every evil act he commits. Dorian cannot stand to look at it, nor does he want anyone else to see it. He hides it away, yet he is drawn to the portrait like a moth to a flame. When he secretly gazes upon it, the portrait becomes his conscience and shows him what he truly has become. Only when he is driven to death, does the portrait revert to its original beauty, even as Dorian's twisted corpse suddenly displays his age and degeneracy.

The punishment of being frozen in time characterizes folklore as well as formal literature. An old sailors' tale was set to music by the young Richard Wagner in his opera, The Flying Dutchman. It was the legend of a ship captain, condemned by his blasphemous life to roam the seas forever. His redemption could come only when he found a woman willing to love him and to remain true and faithful to him until death. Just once every seven years was he allowed to put into port in search of such a woman. He had been roaming the seas for a long, long time, and his prospects were bleak. In Wagner's opera, the captain does find a young woman who knows his story and has loved him since before she ever saw him. He rejoices that his salvation is near, but soon becomes disenchanted as he mistakenly concludes she has been unfaithful to him. As he sails out of port to resume his wandering, she proclaims her eternal love and throws herself from a precipice into the sea. Immediately his ship sinks, and his redemption is at hand. The audience witnesses the spirits of them both rising from the sea toward Heaven. Well, that story may sound like a lot of operatic melodrama. Upon reflection, however, we readily can understand why young sailors out to sea for long periods of time would make up that kind of story.

In one of this summer's major films, many of you have witnessed a quest for immortality, if not for eternal youth. Actually, for the hero, both amounted to the same thing. Hollywood rediscovered Homer and adapted The Iliad into the film Troy. Let me ask those of you who saw the film, or have read Homer's epic, why did the Greeks and the Trojans do all that fighting and killing? For Achilles, the greatest warrior-hero of the Greeks, the answer came very early in the story. As he debated whether to go to Troy, his mother, Thetis, appeared to him and laid out his alternatives. She told him that if he did go off to war, he would never return, but she added that his glory would live forever. Inasmuch as we are still making movies about him three thousand years later, she apparently knew what she was talking about, but, after all, she did have the advantage of being a goddess.

Achilles did accept the bargain. He opted for eternal fame and an early death. He remains forever a young Brad Pitt. I ask you: do you think Achilles was happy with that sacrifice? Did his battles with the Trojans teach him anything? Did he ever grow beyond a thirst for warrior glory?

The moral climax of The Iliad, the epic, and Troy, the film, comes in the encounter between Achilles and King Priam of Troy. Hector's mutilated corpse lies outside Achilles' tent. An old man whom Achilles effortlessly could kill, Priam shows the courage and passion of a loving father, and steals away at night into the Greek camp in order to beg the man who slew his son to give the body back. In Homer's poem, Achilles and Priam mourn through the night, Achilles for his friend Patrocles whom Hector slew, Priam for his son Hector whom Achilles slew. Finally, Achilles relents and permits Priam to take Hector's body away for proper burial. In the film, Achilles shows more personal respect for Priam than for any of the Greek leaders, then excuses himself, goes outside the tent, and meditates by the body of Hector, calling him "brother."

Continuing beyond The Iliad, the film depicts the Trojan horse, the sack of Troy, and Paris shooting those arrows into Achilles' heel. (There is even an implicit connection with Carthage, as we witness the Trojan Aeneas fleeing through the flames in order eventually to take refuge in that ancient city from which this college derives its name.) As Achilles dies in the film, arrows sticking out from his heel, he seems to have had enough of fighting and killing. He had witnessed courage and cowardice, wisdom and folly among both Greeks and Trojans, and the sheer glory of great feats of slaughter had become a little hollow. He may have grown older and wiser, yet, for us, his image remains forever young.

The stories of Dorian Gray, the Flying Dutchman, and Achilles may lessen our enthusiasm for eternal youth. We all are mortals, and we all participate in the natural cycle of life. Our limitations, our flaws are an inherent part of our humanity. The very legend of Achilles underlines that truth. Hoping to make him invulnerable from attack, Achilles' mother dipped the newborn baby in the River Styx, where flowed the mythical underworld waters by which the gods swore their oaths. Only his heel, by which she held him, remained above the water and therefore vulnerable to mortal attack. Paris's arrows found their way to the one spot that was his weakness. Through that story, the ancient Greeks reminded themselves and us of our human imperfections. It is pointless to wish for things that cannot be.

Given that obvious truth, then, why would the College adopt "Forever Young" as its theme for the 2004-2005 year? The answer lies in the subtitle: "Always Learning."

Most of you also have seen a great film of this past year, the concluding installment of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. For the past few years, across three films, we have followed the adventures of Frodo and Sam in their quest to destroy the evil ring of invisibility. Despite all the hardships and battles they endured, Frodo's greatest challenge lay within himself. As the ring bearer, could he resist its offer of absolute power, or would he, like so many others, fall to its evil allure? The freedom, tranquility, and happiness of thousands depended on his moral strength.

With the advantage of a classical education, Tolkien probably drew his inspiration directly from Plato's Republic. As you watched the films, I'll bet many of you did not realize you were witnessing the unfolding of an idea emanating from Plato, but you were. Plato asked the question: If you were to possess a magical ring that would make you invisible whenever you put it on, how would you use it? If you had the power to do anything you please, with no worry of ever getting caught, what would you do? Plato's answer was that if you understand your own best interests, if you understand your own needs and nature as a human being, you will act in an ethical manner, ring or no ring.

Tolkien learned from Plato, and probably from an eminent nineteenth-century British historian. Lord Acton wrote: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." With its power, the ring itself became absolutely evil for Tolkien. To resist its poison, Frodo had to avoid using the ring no matter how tempted he was. In short, Frodo's greatest adventure lay within himself. He needed to define himself more and more, he needed to be always learning, if the enticements of the ring were not to overwhelm him.

I cannot resist a personal story, and that is why I did not ask my wife to read and to critique the text of this speech. She usually does. The Lord of the Rings is one of her favorite pieces of literature. At bedtime across many months, she read the whole trilogy to our youngest son when he was small. She has named our dogs for Tolkien characters - Pippin, Arwen, and Maia.

Earlier this summer, we had uninvited guests at the President's home. A mother raccoon found her way into the attic and started raising four babies. The mother and two youngsters eventually were trapped and released in the woods, but it was two or three more days before Barbara and I caught the other two. Realizing that those two young ones probably never could reconnect with their mother, Barbara decided to raise them herself. Knowing little about raccoons, she decided to learn. Along with our housekeeper and our oldest son, she has spent much of the summer tending to raccoons. Now almost grown, feisty, tearing up the garage whenever they can get out their cage, they still love to eat honeynut cheerios out of her hand. Barbara has kept them safe, but, after today's picnic on our lawn, she plans to release them along the lakeshore in the next couple days. I'm confident there will be a lot of family photos before that happens.

Early the first morning after we caught them, Barbara woke me and said: "Come, Frodo and Sam need your help." Groggy, hardly able to think, I needed only a second or two to realize whom she was talking about. Of course, those baby raccoons already would have names, and, of course, they would honor two of her favorite characters in one of her favorite books.

To me, that story illustrates our theme "always learning." It is the questing, the spirit of adventure, that can keep us youthful whatever our age. But that quest does need to be guided by moral purpose. It needs to be just; it needs to be kind.

Your education at Carthage will encourage the building of your vocabulary as you read works by Homer and Plato, by Oscar Wilde and J. R. R. Tolkien, or by a host of other stimulating thinkers. In the laboratories, in the practice rooms, on the playing fields, also, you will learn many new ideas. You will receive encouragement to put them together in your own way - in other words, to think for yourselves.

As you build your knowledge, as you become independent thinkers - not just at Carthage but across your lives - you will understand meanings more and more. Increasingly, you will realize how very little you truly can understand. Yes, you will grow in wisdom. Gloriously, if you are exploring with upright intent, you will remain very much as you are right now.

Whatever your age, your youthfulness will flourish as you keep learning, even if that be through the nurturing of raccoons.

Welcome to Carthage!