Contact: Lynn Bretz, University Relations, (785) 864-8866.
KU's 135th school year officially opened with the university's convocation Aug. 23. Following is Chancellor Robert E. Hemenway's address to a Lied Center audience of 1,800:
We want to welcome you, thank you and congratulate you. We welcome you, because this is the 135th year we have welcomed a new class to Mount Oread. If you do something for 135 years, it obviously gets to be a habit. This is our annual way of saying, "Happy you're here. Hawk Week's been fun, now let's get ready for class."
Thank you, because you chose to come here tonight rather than sit glued to the TV set to see who becomes THE SURVIVOR. The world faces momentous questions tonight. Who will it be? I'm betting on Richard the nudist, mostly because I think it would make the network press conference interesting. You made a great sacrifice to trade TV survivorship for an evening that might be titled "Surviving the chancellor's speech." I appreciate it.
Most important of all, I want to congratulate you, because we believe you made an excellent choice in deciding to enroll at KU; you've enjoyed some of the benefits of that decision over the past three to four days.
You've learned a lot about KU in this period:
- How to get around
- Where to buy CDs
- The need to obtain a parking pass early on. Has anybody been towed yet?
- Where your classes are
- The historic traditions of the university, including a new one set
at Traditions Night - the passing of a non-flaming torch from class
to class.
What I hope you've observed is how proud people are of KU. We're proud enough of this university to believe that you made one of the best decisions in your life when you said, "I want to be a Jayhawk."
You've made a good decision, not just this week, but you've made a good decision for the next four years.
During the next four years you will seek the two most precious gifts KU has to offer: the knowledge which can empower you to make a better world, and the KU degree that symbolizes that empowerment.
That's why, just like your parents and family, we are proud of you for being here, for making a good decision, for embarking on that quest for a better world.
We hope four years from now, when you graduate, you will feel prepared to create that better world. It would even be OK if you got started before you graduated.
What do we mean by "a better world"? I don't know. It seems like it wouldn't be a bad idea if the world was a place where children didn't go hungry, where disease is cured, where respect for others is a way of life, where we recognize there are spiritual forces larger than ourselves, and where both the mind and body are developed to their full potential.
I don't know if that would be a better world or not, but it seems like it would be a good start - children who aren't hungry, disease cured, respect shown for others, a recognition of spiritual forces, the mind and body developed ¹ But I'll be honest with you. I didn't think about those things until I sat down to write this speech, and I suspect you haven't been thinking about those kind of things too much the past few days.
You've been checking out KU, and you've asked a lot of questions about academic life, and one of the purposes of convocation is to give you good, useful answers.
For example: Are the faculty as mean as they look?
Answer: Let's face it, this is obviously a myth started at K-State. Look at the faculty sitting here. Have you ever seen a kinder, gentler, more laid-back group? You'd feel even better about them if you saw the casual clothes underneath these robes.
Do KU students study compulsively?
Answer: On Friday nights, absolutely.
Are the staff in the departments helpful?
Answer: Yes, if they are treated with respect, and provided the student with the need for a schedule change is not visibly foaming at the mouth.
Will KU be intellectually challenging? Should I be afraid I won't measure up?
Answer: Why do you think the doctors at Watkins open a trauma center after the first day of class? Just kidding.
Seriously, no matter what your questions, you checked out all of this and made your decision. One reason it was a good decision is the nature of the community you joined. We call it the Jayhawk community.
Let me illustrate. When you came to KU you joined a Jayhawk community. How many of you checked into the residence halls on Saturday? How many of you got some help carrying things in? That was the KU community. I was at Margaret Amini. Were any of you? We all help because we want you to know this is a community that cares, that looks after each other.
I also went to GSP-Corbin, and I especially want to thank the Greek community for helping at GSP-Corbin, especially the Theta Chis, the Fijis, the Lambda Chis, Sigma Chis, Phi Kappa Taus, and Phi Psis. I don't know why it is that the fraternities go to GSP-Corbin to help.
The KU football team helped at McCollum, Ellsworth, Hashinger, Lewis and Templin. If they can lift those huge stereos, they can block Nebraska. Make sure you get to the stadium to support them. That's part of being a Jayhawk.
Twenty-five UPS employees came to help at Oliver, which shows how the KU community extends beyond Mount Oread to Lawrence itself.
You checked all of this out, and you are now a member of the Jayhawk community.
It might interest you to know who else made a similar decision. You join a community of 550 student-athletes, 541 law students, 2,032 fraternity members and 2,116 sorority members, 83 international students studying English at the Applied English Center, 1,398 faculty - six of them in classics, 911 graduate teaching assistants - 60 of them in English, 3,772 student employees, 3,184 staff members, 406 National Merit Scholars, 1,760 freshman with some form of academic scholarships, 81 student senators, 10 full-time doctors and 17 full-time nurses at the Watkins Student Health Center, 301 ROTC cadets in the Army, Navy and Air Force, seven staff members at the Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center, 11 carpenters, eight electricians, eight French professors, four hazardous materials and waste disposal experts, 400 students in the KU Honors Program, 370 Mount Oread Scholars, 10 tutors at the KU Writing Center, 3,700 students in the KU residence halls, and 13 students studying KiSwahili, one of the native languages of Kenya.
We think all of these people made a good decision to study and work at KU. And I might add one other person who made the same decision you all made, the decision to be a Jayhawk, now and forever: the best basketball coach in America, Roy Williams.
I want to finish tonight with some serious thoughts about your mental health as a Jayhawk, your physical health as a Jayhawk, and the unofficial Jayhawk curriculum.
First, your mental health. You begin classes tomorrow. You WILL begin classes tomorrow. Remember that your teacher is a human being just like you. He doesn't know how difficult you are going to find the readings. You don't have any idea how difficult you'll find them. She doesn't know if her syllabus will really work. Neither do you. He doesn't know if you will like him, or consider him well-meaning but bor-ing. You don't know what he'll think of you.
Get to know the human being at the front of the class. It is not sucking up to a professor to talk to her after class. It is not asking for a special favor to ask a professor about his ideas. It is not weird to ask a question about a book that seems really weird to you. If you recognize your professor's humanity, she will recognize yours. And the human bond you form will be the greatest asset to learning you can receive. It will give you a peace of mind that will serve you well.
Second, your physical health. We don't want any molting birds. We don't want anyone with wilting tail feathers. You are 18 years old, and despite every fiber in your body that tells you different, you are not immortal. People die. People get hurt. Please, don't take chances. Don't crawl out on high ledges. Don't play chicken with onrushing traffic. Don't drink and drive, drink and walk by yourself, drink and roller blade, drink and hitchhike, drink and bicycle, drink and then think you'll feel better if you drink some more. Remember 0 to 5. Better yet: 0 to 1. We know you are going to be faced with decisions about alcohol. Make them informed decisions. Decisions which have assessed the risks. Decisions which place your safety and that of others first. Don't let anyone force you to drink, or try to humiliate you in some stupid hazing scheme. Don't place that most sacred thing you own - your body and your mind - at risk. Do I say this because I'm a grandfather? Of course, I am a grandfather. But I also say it because I want you to have the chance to be grandfathers and grandmothers.
Finally, the Jayhawk unofficial curriculum. Don't be afraid to study in this curriculum. For 135 years, KU has had an official curriculum in the classroom, and you are going to encounter a first-rate faculty that will challenge you and push you and give you the greatest possible academic experience you can have.
But there is an unofficial curriculum outside of the classroom. It's the curriculum where you will learn what you don't remember learning.
What's in the unofficial curriculum? It's the novelist Kent Haruf, reading from his novel, "Plainsong," in Kansas City.
It is the French Club meeting at Teller's on Friday afternoon. It's a debate in the union cafeteria over the ethics of Napster. It's writing a story for the UDK, serving as a student senator, or making sure Student Senate understands your point of view.
It's voting for the presidential candidate of your choice this fall, and making sure your decision is an informed decision and your vote an informed vote.
Voting is a part of the unofficial curriculum that is not going too well at present. Only 27% of registered voters voted in this fall's primary in Kansas. How can we have a democracy without voters? What good is a constitution if nobody uses it?
Let's make sure this November that KU goes to the polls and makes an informed decision.
The unofficial curriculum has no schedule of classes and no formally appointed professors. Its lessons can come from basketball games, Watson Library, the bookstore, the hunk who helped you move in, the Lied Center, the Chamber Music series, Hoglund-Maupin Baseball Stadium, or the dazzling blonde who sits in front of you in calculus.
What drives the unofficial curriculum is the same thing that drives the official curriculum: your curiosity, your imagination.
What constrains both the official curriculum and the unofficial currriculum are the limits, the fear and anxiety, the homesickness and loneliness, and sometimes just laziness you impose on the curriculum.
If I can leave you with one thought tonight as you get ready for your first KU class, it would be in the words of Henry Thoreau, who to me is one of the great independent students of the unofficial curriculum in America. Thoreau went to Walden Pond and spent two years learning on his own, without benefit of faculty, from the natural processes and ecosystem of a small Massachusetts lake. It was very unofficial, but Thoreau was very curious. As a matter of fact, he was so curious that one day he spent the whole day just watching a bunch of ants outside his front door.
When he was done living by Walden Pond for two years, done with the unofficial curriculum, he had learned something about imagination. At the end of Walden Pond he tells us that the only way we fail learning is with a lack of imagination.
He said, "I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. ... In proportion as he simplifies his life," - and remember, Thoreau is writing in the 19th century before we thought of saying, "in proportion as she simplifies her life" - "the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
Begin tomorrow putting a foundation under a better world.
Welcome, Jayhawks!