Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.
Convocation for New Students
August 27th, 2004
Though I know that you have been welcomed to Loyola University many
times already, I want to add my own word of welcome. Now I am a philosopher
and I worry about words and what they mean. So, I have been puzzling
about what it is to ‘welcome you to Loyola’. It seems
a bit odd since I myself am so new to this University. I arrived,
at the end of June and became president on the first of July. I know
something of what you are going through at this moment. Like you,
I have also left behind the old, the familiar. I have also been puzzled
by the new: New places, new people, new ways of doing things, and
a new place to live. I too am finding my way.
Soon it will all be familiar to you. I have spent the last seven years
of my life living in a first year residence hall at Georgetown University.
This is something I am doing again here, this year, as I have moved
into Biever Hall. In the last seven years I have been amazed at how,
within a few short weeks, students became familiar with new surroundings,
new settings, people, and demands. I know that this is one of the
most difficult transitions in your life. But I also know that there
are good resources and supports here for you —faculty, staff,
especially in student affairs, as well as your peers— who will
help you make a home here. All of the different programs from orientation
to “Catch The Action” are designed to help you settle
in. There will be different and varied opportunities, from the academic,
such as getting you in class and programs, to the retreat next Saturday,
that are set up to help you feel at home.
I stress this experience of transition and feeling at home for two
reasons. First, it is so much a part of your experience now. Second,
feeling at home is important for the work you are undertaking. This
is a house of intellect and ideas. We wonder, question, debate, and
worry about ideas. In coming to Loyola you are accepting an invitation
to undertake an adventure of sorts. It is an adventure that will call
on you to question some of your mostly deeply held beliefs. But before
any of us can go exploring in the world of ideas we must feel at home.
For any of us to question or challenge our most basic ideas and assumptions
about the world, we need certain virtues – hope, courage, and
trust. The more you feel ‘at home’ at Loyola, the more
you will be emboldened to question, wonder, and explore.
In recent weeks, as I have thought of you, and what I should say to
you, I thought about Marquette Hall where my office is located. Actually,
I thought more about Jacques Marquette for whom the building is named.
Marquette was a 17th century Jesuit (1637-1675). He is known for many
things. But, his best known accomplishment was his exploration of
the Mississippi River –which so defines this city, this region,
and our nation. He was an adventurous explorer who left home, family,
and friends when he joined the Jesuits. A well known geographer and
map maker he set off with others to map out this new world. The boldness,
and importance of his exploration has earned him many honors –
including a statue in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol Building.
As you set out on your exploration of ideas and beliefs –yours
and others– you might keep Marquette in mind. I have had him
in mind because he was a very important explorer and because you will
be on a journey of exploration and discovery while you are here.
This exploration of ideas and beliefs will not happen at any one time.
Indeed, I hope, it will not be completed in four years. Rather, I
hope that your time here will be a special time that will begin an
exploration that will continue for a lifetime. But your time here
at Loyola is a special opportunity. For this is a place where people
are not afraid to ask “why” and to question the things
that we assume in our day to day world. Now this is not something
that people do in the “real” world – the real world
of our families and work, not the real world of MTV. But it is what
we do here. And, I will argue, it is how we make the real world a
better world. In the words of the playwright George Bernard Shaw:
“You see things that are and say “why”? But I dream
things that never were and say why not”
One of the reasons that Jesuits, members of the Society of Jesus,
found themselves drawn to work in universities is that we believe
that God can be discovered in all things. To find God one did not
have to go only to a church, like this one, or read divine revelation.
Rather, God could be found in all areas of our lives and experience.
So, ideas are a way to understand the world, and to discover God.
But Jesuits also understood how important ideas are in shaping the
lives of men and women. For Jesuits, education in the tradition of
the liberal arts, frees people. It forces them to confront their ideas
–good and bad– and education can free people from prejudices
and limits. Education can also lead to a freedom for —for service.
One of our key assumptions, as a Jesuit university, is that ideas
are not isolated museum pieces that people simply go in, look at,
and leave. Rather, ideas shape the way we see the world, understand
it and ourselves, and act in it.
We hope that as you critically examine your ideas, and the ideas of
others, you will look at them in light of the world in which we live.
I need your help. I need to ask you to help me in an exercise. (I
want to give credit where it is due. My friend Dr. John DeGioia, president
of Georgetown University, often does an exercise similar to the one
I am about to do.) There are 850 of you. And I ask you to think of
yourselves as representing the six billion people who populate this
world of ours. Now many of you, on the back of your programs, will
find a colored sticker. I need to ask you to check and pay attention.
Those of you who have a yellow sticker on the back of your program,
please stand. You represent the roughly 3 billion people in our world
(50%) who live on less that $2.00 a day. Please be seated. Now I would
like those with red stickers to please stand. You represent that roughly
1.3 billion people in our world (20%) who live in parts of the world
that are daily torn by war and violence. Twenty percent of the world’s
population lives with the terror of death and harm. Everyday of their
lives war and violence happen around them. Please be seated. Those
who have a blue sticker please stand. You represent the roughly 960,000,000
people in our world (16%) who are unable to read or write. Please
be seated. Finally, as those who have silver sticker please stand.
This is Elise Paradiso. She is a first year student from New Jersey.
She represents the less than one hundredth of one percent of people
in the world who are able to attend comprehensive universities like
Loyola.
What lessons can we draw from this exercise. One lesson is that it
is clear that we live in a troubled world. Fifty years ago the United
States Supreme Court overturned a legal tradition of segregated education
in the United States in it’s decision in Brown vs The Board
of Education. In just over a week Jonathan Kozol will be on campus
to discuss the deep and ongoing problems of education in the United
States. In an age of an “information economy” these issues
are more urgent than ever. The challenges of education are an example
of the link between the academic world and questions of justice in
our world. It is why Loyola is the home of the Lindy Boggs Center
for Adult Illiteracy. In Orleans parish, more than 40% of those people
who are 16 years and older function below the 6th grade level in reading
and math. In the greater New Orleans area, 28% of those older than
16 function below the sixth grade level. The national average is 22%.
Economist believe that in our rapidly changing information economy
a person needs a high school education, plus two years of additional
education, as a minimum requirement for success in today’s economy.
But a second lesson that we can learn is that it is a world of possibilities.
In the last forty years we have significantly reduced the percentage
of the world’s population living below the poverty. Through
work of organizations such as the Boggs Center, Loyola is engaging
the challenges of the real world. Change can happen. People can make
a difference. There is a famous speech by the late Senator Robert
F. Kennedy gave in South Africa in which he pointed out that many
of the great changes in the world began with the conviction and hard
work of a single person. Joan of Arch, Martin Luther, Martin Luther
King, and Nelson Mandella all challenged and changed systems which
seemed immoveable. President Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of
New Orleans, once summed up Senator Kennedy’s point when he
said that “One man with courage makes a majority.”
The third lesson is that you have incomparable opportunities. The
opportunities you have are beyond the imaginations of most people
in our world. You are in a position to imagine a world that is very
different from the one we live in and you are in a position to help
create that world. You have both opportunities and responsibilities.
I invite you, Loyola invites you, to do two things that may seem to
be paradoxical I invite you to dream and envision a world –
your world and our world – that is better than it is. And, I
invite you to engage in the hard work of making those dreams come
true. I leave you with three quotations. The first quote is an invitation
to dream and it comes from the poet Browning: “Man’s reach
must exceed his grasp, or what is heaven for.” In your time
here, your adventure, we challenge you not only to learn about the
world as it is but to dream about how it might be. Ask Shaw’s
question. Dream and ask “Why not?”. The second quotation
is from Henry David Thoreau and it is an invitation to work: “If
you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that
is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” It
is the challenge to make our dreams real. It is the challenge to change
the world. Finally the third quote gets at the motivation. Why would
we seek to understand, dream, and work to make our dreams real? This
motivation is the of the Jesuits: We do all “For the greater
glory of God and the well being of all men and women.”
Welcome to a place of ideas and dreams. Welcome to a place of hard
work. Welcome to an adventure. Welcome to Loyola University New Orleans.
Updated September 24, 2008