{"id":20044,"date":"2006-09-07T00:00:51","date_gmt":"2006-09-07T04:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=20044"},"modified":"2016-01-11T14:48:48","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T19:48:48","slug":"farnsworth-inaugurates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2006\/09\/07\/farnsworth-inaugurates\/","title":{"rendered":"Poet Farnsworth inaugurates new convocation tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2006\/09\/72convocation5560.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"167\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2006\/09\/72convocation5560.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium alignleft\" alt=\"72convocation5560\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Convocation is about the new, and novelty abounded at the 2006 Bates College convocation. Of course, the ceremony always opens a new academic year \u2014 this is the 152nd \u2014 and welcomes new students, some 500 of them this time around.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Yet this year&#8217;s convocation, held Sept. 6, also included the public debut of the College&#8217;s new chaplain, Rev. William Blaine-Wallace, and marked the start of an important tradition. Where Bates for years has invited outside speakers to give the convocation address, that honor this time went to a faculty member, the poet and English professor Rob Farnsworth.<\/p>\n<hr size=\"1\" \/>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/x146688.xml\">A Convocation address from Robert Farnsworth<\/a> <em>(video and audio)<\/em><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/views\/2006\/09\/25\/orientation-slide-show\/\">Orientation Slide Show<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr size=\"1\" \/>Also speaking was Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen, who offered valuable advice about two fundamental skills: listening and asking good questions. &#8220;A Bates education,&#8221; Hansen noted, &#8220;isn&#8217;t just about getting better and better at answering harder and harder questions. Answers matter, but in some ways and at some point they matter far less than you might think.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Asking a faculty member to give the convocation address, explained Dean of the Faculty Jill Reich, re-emphasizes the primacy of the faculty-student relationship at Bates. But it also honors an elemental bond sometimes overlooked: the one between arriving first-years and their forerunners who graduated last May.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2006\/09\/72convocation5686.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"167\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2006\/09\/72convocation5686.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium alignright\" alt=\"72convocation5686\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Chosen by last spring&#8217;s seniors to represent the quality of Bates teaching, Reich explained, <a href=\"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/views\/2006\/08\/28\/convocation\/\">Farnsworth<\/a> was the &#8220;symbolic gift from the departing class of 2006 to those who take their place as members of the class of 2010.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Farnsworth returned to campus after spending July and August as poet-in-residence at The Frost Place, a museum housed in poet Robert Frost&#8217;s former homestead in New Hampshire. Titled <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/x146688.xml\">Three Lower-Case Virtues<\/a><\/em>, his talk considered the importance of passion, discipline and generosity to the college experience.<\/p>\n<p>The best kind of human passion arises when we &#8220;make and comprehend metaphor,&#8221; Farnsworth said. More than a poetic device, metaphor is potentially a way of thinking, even of being \u2014 &#8220;the central passion of the human creature.&#8221; Metaphor, learning and life, he explained, are all about making connections. And that&#8217;s a process best done &#8220;by hand, on foot, by means of your senses, by listening, by your strict, passionate attention to what happens.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He discussed discipline as pertaining to thought, urging his listeners to be &#8220;susceptible, but not sentimental; suspicious, but not cynical; rigorous, but not rigid.&#8221; But it may have been his treatment of generosity that rang most resoundingly across the Quad. &#8220;The world would be a more interesting and livable place were we all to strive to be not fulfilled, but fulfilling, people,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>President Hansen devoted most of her talk to the skills of listening and questioning. &#8220;Like the best and hardest listening,&#8221; she said, &#8220;good questions reflect careful observation of what&#8217;s difficult, what&#8217;s confusing, what&#8217;s strange, what&#8217;s startling. They entail self-questioning, self-doubt, and, like listening to yourself, they can produce self-awareness.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2006\/09\/72convocation5674.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2006\/09\/72convocation5674-200x300.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium alignright\" alt=\"72convocation5674\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Institutions need to listen and ask questions, too,&#8221; Hansen added, noting that Bates itself is in a time of profound asking and listening as it revamps its general-education requirements, undertakes new substantial new construction and explores what kind of campus climate exists for members of underserved minorities.<\/p>\n<p>Blaine-Wallace, an Episcopal priest who joined the Bates community in August as multifaith chaplain, closed the ceremony with a benediction. &#8220;Open us to the gift, and strengthen us for the task, of creating together the next chapter of Bates&#8217; great tradition of imaginative and enlightened care for a fragile Earth, and respectful attention to a hurting world,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Jack &#8217;08, president of the student government, opened the speeches with a brief welcome whose high energy belied his advice to the new students: &#8220;Just relax.&#8221; No one was relaxing as the ceremony began, thanks to an ominous drizzle, but by the end a warm sun was cutting through the clouds and vignetting the Coram Library stage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<hr size=\"1\" \/>\n<h3>Related Stories<\/h3>\n<p>Sep.7:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/views\/2006\/09\/07\/class-of-2010\/\">Class of 2010 at a glance<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Convocation is about the new, and novelty abounded at the 2006 Bates College convocation. Of course, the ceremony always opens a new academic year \u2014 this is the 152nd \u2014 and welcomes new students, some 500 of them this time around. Yet this year&#8217;s convocation, held Sept. 6, also included the public debut of the College&#8217;s new chaplain, Rev. William Blaine-Wallace, and marked the start of an important tradition. Where Bates for years has invited outside speakers to give the convocation address, that honor this time went to a faculty member, the poet and English professor Rob Farnsworth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_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":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[243,14,11009],"tags":[10043,2579,7513],"class_list":["post-20044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annual-events","category-faculty-staff","category-the-college","tag-admission","tag-convocation","tag-rob-farnsworth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20044","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\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20044"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89935,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20044\/revisions\/89935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}