{"id":165018,"date":"2024-09-06T10:52:56","date_gmt":"2024-09-06T14:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=165018"},"modified":"2025-04-17T16:23:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T20:23:28","slug":"opening-convocation-at-bates-offers-timeless-and-timely-advice-and-insights-to-the-class-of-2028","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2024\/09\/06\/opening-convocation-at-bates-offers-timeless-and-timely-advice-and-insights-to-the-class-of-2028\/","title":{"rendered":"Opening Convocation at Bates offers timeless and timely advice to the Class of 2028"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sitting in the sun in front of Coram Library with their Bates professors, the 491 members of the Class of 2028 who gathered for Convocation on Tuesday heard advice, both timeless and timely, about navigating their new college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his welcome, President Garry W. Jenkins invited the new students to take their place as the newest stewards of Bates\u2019 culture of being open to ideas and beliefs that might differ from one\u2019s own. \u201cIt is the work we do together for the broadening and bettering of ourselves, our community, and our world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Time-tested advice also came from two student speakers, Sivani Arvapalli \u201926 of South Windsor, Conn., and Ethan Chan \u201925 of Westborough, Mass., co-presidents of Bates Student Government, who invited the incoming students to be unhesitant in seeking help from those around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Moments
Sivani Arvapalli \u201926 (left) of South Windsor, Conn., and Ethan Chan \u201925 of Westborough, Mass., co-presidents of Bates Student Government, walk to the Coram Library stage to offer their welcome at Convocation on Sept. 3, 2024. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you find yourself facing a new obstacle, considering a new perspective, or exploring a new path, reach out to those here to support you: Professors, advisors, staff, and peers are all here for you,\u201d said Chan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with the timeless, there was also timely advice and guidance reflecting current events, especially the U.S. presidential election just 62 days away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou begin your college careers in, shall we say, interesting times,\u201d said Jenkins. \u201cWe have a hotly contested emotional presidential election coming our way. As a society, our commitment to openness and civil discourse will be tested as we struggle to meet across lines of discord and difference. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt’s going to be a challenging time in the U.S., but I believe in this community. I believe in Bates and that means I believe in each of you and in your commitment to openness, to engagement, to active listening, and to respect for those around you. This is the Bates I know and love. This is the community into which I’m so proud to welcome you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these challenging times, Jenkins said, it is crucial to “fight the urge to say or to think, ‘How could anyone<\/em> think X or support Y or believe Z?’ I have. I’m not proud of it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Moments
“We need to commit to empathy when it comes to our treatment of others, both in person and online, and learn from our missteps,” said President Garry W. Jenkins during his Convocation remarks on Sept. 3, 2024. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In resisting the urge to automatically nay-say what others believe, “we need to learn both how to listen and how to be heard, how to make an argument and how to really understand the arguments and feelings of others,” Jenkins said. “We need to learn how to relate and connect across differences \u2014 how to thoughtfully consider the ways our approaches and actions may be affecting others and how we use that information to pivot or reframe if necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We need to commit to empathy when it comes to our treatment of others, both in person and online, and learn from our missteps. We need to learn how to see and embrace the complexity rather than simply assert the certainty.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The welcomes and offerings to the Class of 2028 during Opening Convocation \u2014 advice to seek connections, to be open to others, to try new things \u2014 reflect in part the deep history of Bates\u2019 annual back-to-college ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A century ago, the academic ceremony to welcome incoming students was known as \u201cFirst Chapel,\u201d as a bookend to \u201cLast Chapel\u201d exercises for the senior class held each spring prior to graduation. Now known as Opening Convocation, the fall event remains thematically tethered to Commencement, also held on the lawn in front of Coram Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Moments
“Rooted in a powerful sense of place,” the lawn in front of Coram Library, the site of Convovcaton and Commencement, is where “generations of Bates have come to celebrate both the start and the summation of their studies,\u201d said Jenkins. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo it’s here at the heart of this beautiful campus where generations of Bates have come to celebrate both the start and the summation of their studies,\u201d said Jenkins. Gathering together in a meaningful place helps us understand who we are, Jenkins added \u2014 the feeling of being \u201crooted in a powerful sense of place and being part of local, regional, and global ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The timeless power of place was also invoked by the event\u2019s guest speaker, award-winning author Sonja Pieck, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies. Reflecting a Bates tradition, Pieck was chosen by the graduating Class of 2024 to offer this year’s address to the incoming Class of 2028. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pieck urged the new students to roam freely around their new home. \u201cOpen yourself to notice and appreciate what is here now,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are so many quiet, lovely corners waiting to be discovered, like Lake Andrews and its inhabitants, memorials and markers,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFind people from the groundskeepers to the archivists at Muskie Archives from your history and anthropology professors to those in ecology and earth systems to help you explore and understand this landscape more deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Moments
Sonja Pieck, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, talked about the emotion of grief in her remarks, “an unusual topic for Convocation,” she said, but “as individuals, as a society, and as a planet we are awash in loss. So how do we honor grief when it comes, tend to it and grow from it?\u201d (Theophil Syslo \/ Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The search for beauty and joy \u201ccan radiate out into the community, too,\u201d she added. In Lewiston, \u201cappreciate the signs of care and solidarity, the graffiti art and the murals, the children playing in Kennedy Park, the laughter of friends meeting up at the Lewiston Farmers Market, the neighborhood flower boxes, or the Lisbon Street storefronts that someone lovingly tends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pieck\u2019s remarks were titled \u201cMind the Gap,\u201d which refers to the recorded audio warning heard at train or subway stations in the U.K. alerting passengers to heed the space between the train and the platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of a helpful metaphor for life at Bates, \u201cminding the gap\u201d means to mind and tend to those \u201cfeelings, memories, and meanings\u201d that tend to get pushed into the gap as we lead busy lives. New college students, especially, are susceptible to shoving important emotions into the gap as they forge ahead in their new community. Grief, she said, is one of those emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her 2023 book, Mnemonic Ecologies<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Pieck explored the conservation of the once-militarized Iron Curtain borderland between the former East and West Germany. Violence and death, and thus grief, were part of the border\u2019s history and legacy. During her research, Pieck saw how conservation on wounded land must engage with grief and memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know grief is an unusual topic for Convocation, but my field deals with loss and grief all the time,\u201d she told the students. \u201cAs individuals, as a society, and as a planet we are awash in loss. So how do we honor grief when it comes, tend to it and grow from it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, Pieck recalled the mass shootings in Lewiston 11 months ago, and conversations that she had with her students in the course \u201cThe Politics of Wildlife Conservation,\u201d which included studying species extinction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the semester, \u201cgrief had been our constant companion,\u201d she recalled. During a class session after Oct. 25, she asked her students to describe the difference between the two powerful human emotions of grief and despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Etymologically speaking, \u201cgrief\u201d is related to the Latin gravis<\/em>, meaning \u201cweighty,\u201d while the word \u201cdespair\u201d comes from the Latin verb desperare<\/em>, \u201cto be without hope.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the class discussion that day \u201cdidn’t actually dwell on etymology,\u201d she said. Instead, they talked about the dominant emotion \u2014 grief \u2014 that was everywhere in Lewiston after the killings. \u201cGrief was everywhere. Despair, however, was not. A trip through Lewiston neighborhoods showed the living, changing facets of grief \u2014 fear, sadness, confusion, anger \u2014 and also love, connection, community care, courage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those qualities triumphed in the days, weeks, and months after the killings. \u201cPeople throughout Maine declared themselves \u2018Lewiston Strong.\u2019 The governor declared, \u2018We will all help you carry this grief.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hamilton
A Bates football player’s cleats carry word “Lewstrong” during a November 2023 game, in solidarity with Lewiston after the Oct. 25, 2023, mass shootings. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn contrast to despair, grief is alive<\/em>,\u201d said Pieck. \u201cIt breathes, it ebbs and flows and transforms within us, and it changes over time. Grief is born from the loss of something we love. Many have said that grief is a hallmark of care and the price we pay for the joy of loving. So grief can call forth some of the most noble and powerful human emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the \u201cgift of grief,\u201d she told the new students, offering three ways that grief can offer timeless lessons in how to be better and more effective humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, grief teaches us to slow down, where \u201cwe become sensitive to even the tiniest magnificence: the breath of our own bodies, the rustling of the leaves above our heads today, or the indescribable magic of a new friendship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, grief teaches resilience. \u201cCoping with loss makes us develop the capacity for dealing with change, with setbacks, with frustration \u2014 the uncertainty inherent to living,\u201d she said, adding that \u201cso many of us are eager to support and help you. As you build resilience in the face of challenges, you’re not on your own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And third, grief teaches the power of community, \u201copening us up to our common humanity and bringing us together,\u201d she said. \u201cIn fact, shared grief is the inner core of most social movements, including #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, where people harness shared grief to make change. Their profound love for their families, their communities, for land, for place, fuels a vision of what can be imagined.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Convocation concluded with the traditional tree-planting service, including poetry, music, a watering ritual, that is held in memory of Bates faculty and staff who have died in the past year. The newly planted tree this year was a hop hornbeam, along the path between the Class of 1929 Gate and Hathorn Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Moments
Students water a newly planted hop hornbeam along the path between the Class of 1929 Gate and Hathorn Hall during the annual memorial tree-planting service following Convocation on Sept. 3, 2024. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here, too, the emotion of grief was invoked as a path toward healing. \u201cThis complexity of emotions within grief is a beautiful thing, a truly human thing, a strength,\u201d said the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, the college\u2019s multifaith chaplain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI invite you in this shared moment of remembrance to feel those layers, those tangles of emotions. This is a moment of spaciousness for those complexities, those tangles to settle in. We can breathe into that space, we can name how much we miss our departed colleagues and friends, feel the depth of that sadness \u2014 and also creatively dream of the way they live among us in memory and impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The names of these late Bates faculty and staff were read at the service:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • Albert Fereshetian, Athletics<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Frank Ford, Facility Services<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Normand Gagne, Facility Services<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • David Gaynor, Facility Services<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Sue Houchins, Africana<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Pamela Johnson, Art and Visual Culture<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Frank Lyons, Campus Safety<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Dana Mulholland, Athletics<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Eric Polley, Facility Services<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • William Pope L., Theater and Dance<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Kenneth Smith Sr., Dining, Catering, Conferences, and Events<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Richard Spalding, Facility Services<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The run-up to the presidential election is going to be a “challenging time,” said President Jenkins. “But I believe in this community. I believe in each of you and in your commitment to openness, to engagement, to active listening, and to respect for those around you. This is the Bates I know and love.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":165023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":["sonja-k-pieck"],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":165038,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[12361,2579],"class_list":["post-165018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","tag-class-of-2028","tag-convocation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165018"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165666,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165018\/revisions\/165666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}