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From application to matriculation, the newest Bates 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.
\nIn part, this annual miracle of adjusting to college happens informally.<\/p>\n
Prevailing mores are often communicated by a kind of osmosis, and the membranes between new Batesies and returning students, faculty, and staff are particularly permeable given our nonhierarchical principles and practices.<\/p>\n
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\u00e4nkels\u00e4ngerlieder. 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s values and formally welcome the new class to our community of learners and teachers.<\/p>\n
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 Bates 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 Bates. 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 Bates and the continuity between one generation of students and the next.<\/p>\n
Professor Farnsworth\u2019s Convocation talk, \u201cThree Lower-Case Virtues,\u201d described a trio of qualities not only \u201cpertinent to the academic enclave\u201d but also \u201ccrucial to leading a useful, examined life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first is passion, connected to the educated citizen\u2019s ability to create and understand metaphor. With passion as a catalyst, a student learns to relate incongruent ideas, \u201cto think of one thing in terms of another thing \u2014 in short, to make and to comprehend metaphor.\u201d A passion for metaphor broadens the human experience and helps students learn through \u201caffinities, analogies, and differences…between your life and the lives of others.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second virtue is discipline, not so much \u201cpersonal rectitude\u201d but rather being \u201csusceptible but not sentimental, suspicious but not cynical, rigorous but not rigid.\u201d And the third is generosity, the act of sharing with each other \u201cwhatever you\u2019ve been discovering \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cincendiary listening\u201d \u2014 listening that may inflame and illumine. I encouraged them to enter each new situation at Bates expecting that they might just hear something that would spark some new insight, even change their lives.<\/p>\n
I also suggested that they think more about questions and less about answers. Answers matter at Bates, but the push to arrive at them prematurely can constrain us. College is the time, and Bates the place, to ask big questions, like: \u201cWho am I?\u201d \u201cWhat do I love?\u201d \u201cHow can I make a difference in the world?\u201d<\/p>\n