Ferrum College - Ceremony of Initiation and Affirmation

Ceremony of Initiation & Affirmation - Fall 2007

Success and Service
Remarks from Dr. Jennifer Braaten,
President of Ferrum College

Welcome to Ferrum College—Class of 2011! We are so glad you are here today and hope to see all of you crossing the stage for Commencement in four years.

We focus on your future—from here on, all that is past has prepared you for today. This is literally a new beginning.

You have now entered adulthood and left your home and family to create your future.

Just as your mother nurtured you during your schooling up to this point, we will now talk about expectations at the college level and then define the word “alma mater” for you.

This is a Ceremony of Initiation where we welcome you into our community of scholars and educators. As scholars and educators, we have formed and forged a special place where we stress the life of the mind and the intellect but also stress the development of body and spirit as well.

Knowledge and wisdom are pursued at this place, and we expect you to be a part of that pursuit.

Values and beliefs are examined, and we expect you to be engaged in that process. We know you will be changed by college life. We hope you will be transformed.

There are four areas of this campus community you will hear several of us mention. These are: civility, respect, responsibility, and success.

We want you to experience success and participate in learning through service, and we are here to accompany you on your journey of self-discovery.

We want you to demonstrate civility, respect, and responsibility, and these qualities will result in your success. You will hear more about these qualities from Dr. Zuschin.

We also know there are several basics to being successful as a new college student:

get up and get to class
get interested in your major or exploring many majors
get involved and get connected
get help if you need it
get out and experience a community service project and co-curricular activity

There are also many other layers and levels of success that are much more complex and that are part of a practical liberal arts education. These include:

understanding the dichotomy and tension between faith and learning
developing critical thinking
exploring and examining old traditions at the same time as creative new ideas
mastering written communication skills
demonstrating core competencies of computation
information and literacy
preparing for a job and career while establishing lifelong learning habits
emphasizing virtues and values
becoming a global citizen

Part of being successful is to understand and experience service.

Our motto, “Not Self, But Others” is critical to Ferrum students--past and present--and part of our mission has always been to be of service to others.
Let me give you a few examples of some dimensions of service that you will also discover in your journey at Ferrum.

You can volunteer for mentoring, tutoring, food delivery, etc. You can study abroad, do a mission trip, or alternative spring break trip.

Through reading and through experience, you can enter the world of service and better understand diversity and inclusivity.

By reading, reflecting, discussion and serving in many, many areas, you can connect the real and the ideal and begin to discern answers to the questions of life. These questions include:

Why am I here?
What is the purpose of life?
Who is my neighbor?
What is truth?
What is justice?
What is the difference between a job and a vocation, a sense of calling?
What if I worked to make a difference and not just to make money?
Why do innocents suffer?
Why is there poverty?
What is the right thing to do when things are difficult?

This summer I read several books and saw several movies that made me reexamine those questions. The first was a large work of historical fiction entitled The Religion by Tim Willocks that recounts the Siege of Malta in the 1500s.

In this profound examination of the brutality of war, Willocks looks at the essential human qualities that make us, on one level, all the same with what we need and require, and yet makes us subjectively kill our neighbor. You’ll hear more from our humanities faculty about these issues.

The second was the book Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire, By Rafe Esquith, a 5th grade teacher in downtown L.A. You’ll see more of this passion from our education faculty.

The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton, a molecular biologist, recounts the new scientific discoveries about the biochemical effects of the brains functioning and shows how our thoughts impact the cellular level.

Dr. Lipton demonstrates how the new science of epigenetics is revolutionizing our understanding of the link between mind and matter and the effects is has on our personal and collection lives. You’ll know more about this from our science faculty.

Another book, When Fish Fly, by Yokohama, uses a Seattle Fish Market as an example of organizational leadership and organizational culture being shaped by a belief that you can be “world famous” by offering customer service and focusing on the positive. I’m sure the business faculty will teach you more about this.

And then, a book you will all read, The Death of Innocents, by Sister Helen Prejean, challenges you to consider the death penalty and examines the moral issues relative to executing anyone and in particular, innocent people.

She says that “every human being is worth more than the worst act of his or her life.”

As she says in her preface, she hopes you become impassioned to devote your life to soul-size work. This is what we hope as well. You will hear more about her book and the theme for our year from Dr. Torimiro and our social science faculty.

And Leonardo diCaprio’s movie, “The 11th Hour,” portrays the reality of a world that is dying and asks us what we are going to do about it.

One small thing we can do is to “think green.” You will see these posters around campus, and they will again serve as reminders of how each of you can make a difference in big and small ways.

Finally, you will next see a candle lit to symbolize commitment to this community of our Alma Mater, and you will later hear the Chaplain lead us in the singing of the Alma Mater.

Alma Mater is Latin for nourishing mother or fostering mother of students and refers to the college you attended as well as the school’s song.

It originated with the motto, “Alma Mater Studiorium” from the University of Bologna, Italy, the oldest European university founded in 1088.

We wish you success and service for this fall semester and for you future.

I will now ask Nicole Young to come forward.

Nicole is majoring in Political Science and minoring in History and International Studies. She is President of the Political Science Club, Secretary for the SGA and the Senate, and is a member of AASA. She is also a member of the National Scholars Honors Society and is involved with Passport.

Nicole will light a candle to symbolize our loyalty to our Alma Mater and especially our commitment to continue to be part of an institution which we can be proud of and one which deserves our loyalty:

An institution which is a community of educators and scholars,
A community that focuses on knowledge and wisdom and mind, body and spirit,
An institution which will help you achieve success and service.

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Beating the Drums of Social and
Economic Justice: A Call to Action

Remarks from Frédéric Belle Torimiro, PhD
Associate Professor
School of Social Sciences

Let me also take this opportunity to welcome each and everyone of you to Ferrum College. So far, one the smartest and most responsible decision you have made is to select Ferrum as your college of choice. You have agreed to join our community of learners at a special time when we seek to ensure that students, faculty and staff understand and manifest their responsibilities as engaged citizens. As we all participate in this ceremony of initiation and affirmation, it is important to remember that it is one way in which we begin officially the celebration of the practical meaning of our motto: “Not Self, but Others.” We recognize it as a badge of identification at Ferrum that invokes a strong sentiment of altruism. It is a badge of identification that feeds into our culture of understanding, tolerance, sharing, learning and living. It is a phrase that reminds us that we must understand our duty and obligation to ourselves and to others.

As an institution of higher learning, we do say that it is an important part of our mission “to educate students [such as yourselves] to be caring and concerned citizens of their community, nation, and world.” If all of us in this gathering accept the idea of citizenship, then we are also embracing this community’s raison d’être. The idea of citizenship suggests almost a symbiotic formal relationship between an individual and a community. The character of that relationship is defined by the scope of the community’s influence on the individual and the impact of the individual on the community. We must believe that the extent to which such a relationship works is measured by how each side attempts to accommodate the interests, priorities, and demands of the other. Understanding the politics of accommodation, expectations, needs and wants is what helps to manage the complexity of such a relationship. As new citizens of Ferrum College, we hope you can work with us as we grapple with the certainty and uncertainty of what it means to demand and give support near and afar.

During this academic year, we have agreed as a community to celebrate our thoughts, reflections and deeds by paying special attention to the theme: Social and Economic Justice: Regional and Global Connections. You have a unique opportunity to share, explore, question and commit yourselves to the challenge of developing an individual and collective sense of social and economic justice. As members of this community of learners and scholars, you will be challenged to use the different lenses through which you view your community, region and the world to give meaning to the importance of justice. As enlightened citizens living in a democratic society, you will be expected to engage each other in reasoned discourse intended to bring to life your individual and collective sense of responsibility. As you pledge on this special afternoon to become responsible, active and productive citizens of this community, we hope it is a promise that encourages you to take giant steps toward the pursuit of social and economic justice. As initiated members of this community, we hope you will not suffer from “civic withdrawal.” We hope you will stand up and be counted as “active stakeholders” in a community seeking to crystallize the virtues of social and economic justice. As learners and potential scholars we are certain that you will be encouraged by faculty and staff to invest your time on ideas, program activities and partnerships that invite rigorous and intentional reflection. We are certain that you will encounter across this campus faculty, staff and fellow students who will help you appreciate and translate your experiences at Ferrum as a search for that ultimate call to action.

By now you have met your gateway instructors and mentors. You have been introduced to this year’s common reader: The Death of Innocents by Sister Helen Prejean. As a community of learners, we hope the book provokes and compel you to reflect on what it means to live, what it means to take for granted, what it means to expect, what it means to have, what it means not to have, what it means to give , and what it means to take. It is a book filled with so many sub-texts that we hope you will develop a more global outlook on the issue of the death penalty. We see it as a book that invites you to examine the racial and socioeconomic composition of our correctional facilities. We see it as a book that opens all of our eyes to issues of economic inequality, human consciousness, professional competency, human devotion and spiritual faith. We hope you see this reader as a reminder that life in a democratic society offers challenges and pose problems that we must seek to address as responsible citizens of this community, our region and the world.

As the late philosopher John Rawls suggests, “a shared conception of justice establishes the bonds of civic friendship.” We hope that your sense of justice will translate to fairness and that the virtues of justice will be pursued without a “veil of ignorance (to quote Rawls). In your classes, you will be invited by your professors to explore issues germane to social and economic justice. You will be encouraged and provided a platform from which to engage, explore, question, examine, analyze, share, converse, reflect, suggest or even recommend. In and outside the classroom, we plan to organize conversations, debates, poetry readings and drama productions. In fact, we look forward to this fall’s production of A Dead Man Walking by Professor Wayne Bowman. We are sure that some of you who are new to this community will be a part of the cast. We will also explore the issue of prison populations, immigration, the causes and crisis of homelessness, hunger in the land of plenty, the exploitation of children around the world, the refugee crisis, the growing concern about access to health care by those who are economically disadvantaged or those who happen to live on the wrong side of the neighborhood, and the essence of restorative justice. As a community, we anticipate the visit of Sister Prejean in the spring semester. We will encourage student clubs and organizations to take a leadership role in bringing to life many of the planned activities. As new citizens of this community, we hope you will help us develop a strong sense of what is “unjust and dehumanizing” especially as we strive to achieve social and economic justice.
Let me end by quoting Paul Rogat Loeb, author of The Soul of A Citizen:

“…social [and political] involvement converts us from detached spectators into active participants. We develop new competencies and strengths…Whatever propels us beyond the merely personal - be it awe at the power and mystery of nature, religious belief, outrage at the sight of another person suffering, or simply a sense that we can do better than we have – we each need to take that all-important step of bringing our private convictions into the larger public arena. Because that’s where we’ll find our common humanity.”

Thank you and Welcome!