{"id":34410,"date":"2010-08-27T14:00:24","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T18:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=34410"},"modified":"2017-09-05T13:18:12","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T17:18:12","slug":"missionaccomplished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2010\/08\/27\/missionaccomplished\/","title":{"rendered":"Community of voices resonate in new Bates mission statement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of people took part in crafting the new mission statement<\/a> that Bates adopted in May.<\/p>\n

And Benjamin Mays \u201920 was one of them. When the statement declares that Bates has always \u201cbeen dedicated to the emancipating potential of the liberal arts,\u201d it\u2019s a tribute to the great civil rights leader and educator. Mays wrote in his autobiography that Bates \u201cdid not \u2018emancipate\u2019 me; it did the far greater service of making it possible for me to emancipate myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mission statement was produced in conjunction with the College\u2019s process of reaccreditation. While not every contributor owns a word in the final language, its creation was an open, overtly collaborative five-month effort that drew hundreds of suggestions and comments from the College community.<\/p>\n

The result, in turn, will tickle the Bates-sense of nearly any member of that community.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe were trying to get at why<\/em> difference matters.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The mission statement, for instance, affirms that Bates people \u201cengage the transformative power of our differences.\u201d Students on the mission statement committee put forth the concept of \u201ctransformative\u201d early on, says committee chair Rebecca Herzig, professor of women and gender studies. Alums later confirmed the rightness of that word as a Bates descriptor.<\/p>\n

\"Rebecca<\/a>

The Bates mission statement, says Rebecca Herzig, gets at “why difference matters.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

In juxtaposing \u201ctransformative\u201d and \u201cdifferences,\u201d Herzig continues, \u201cwe were trying to get at why<\/em> difference matters. We realized that the transformative effect of the College happens most often when people bump up against people who are quite different from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ending the mission statement is a phrase that, in a sense, began the whole Bates enterprise: \u201cBates is a college for coming times.\u201d<\/p>\n

These words are adapted from founder and first president Oren Cheney\u2019s pitch to Lewiston residents for the proposed school. He proposed establishing an institution for \u201ccoming time\u201d \u2014 no \u201cs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mission statement committee \u201crealized that people would think we just forgot the \u2018s\u2019\u201d if they used Cheney\u2019s exact text, Herzig explains. There was some concern, she adds, that the original reflected a denominational orientation.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we altered it slightly to evoke Cheney \u2014 but to also look more explicitly to the plurality of possible futures that lie ahead.\u201d \u2014 DLH<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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