Incoming students are welcomed at annual convocation ceremony

By Simeon Moss

During his inaugural address, Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White, told the assembled students: "You are not here to be made, you are here to make yourselves."

During New Student Convocation ceremonies at Schoellkopf Field Aug. 22, President Hunter Rawlings, and the student speakers who preceded him, reinforced White's sentiments for a crowd of new students and their families gathered in the stadium's crescent.

The new Cornellians, many in the Class of 2002, having survived a day of heavy lifting while moving into their residences and having been the beneficiaries of significant guidance from hundreds of student orientation counselors, were attentive and perhaps a bit awed during the early morning ceremony, the university's official welcome.

The commencement platform included the deans of the colleges, top university administrators, some university trustees and the student members of the Orientation Steering Committee (OSC), which organized the week of orientation events that began last Friday.

After the Cornell Chorus and Glee Club sang "O Praise the Lord" and led the audience in the singing of the alma mater, Joseph Kang, president of the Student Assembly, took the microphone to urge incoming students to have "bigger dreams and aspirations" than they'd ever had before. "Challenge yourself to accomplish things that you know will be difficult, to tackle things that others fear," he said.

Student-elected trustee Stephen Rockwell told them their appreciation of Cornell largely rested on their doing one thing ­ getting involved in the life of the university. "Get involved early, and get involved often," he said.

Eric Sullender, co-chair of the OSC, urged students to be spontaneous and take advantage of the many opportunities the university offers. "Don't have everything planned out," he advised.

And his OSC co-chair, Dan Duval, reinforced that view by pointing out that during his own Cornell career, he has changed majors twice and colleges once, beginning as a neurobiology major in the College of Arts and Sciences, "with plans to attend medical school," and is now a senior in the School of Hotel Administration, "concentrating in management operations."

"I arrived as a January freshman," Duval said, "and will graduate in a total of three and a half years with hopes of continuing here at Cornell Law School. A lot has changed in three years."

And in his welcoming address, Rawlings expanded on the opportunities that being open to change offers students at Cornell.

Robert Barker/University Photography From left, freshman Jennifer Zimmer moves into her Founders Hall room on West Campus on Aug. 21 ­ Moving-in Day ­ with the help of her brother, John, her father, Pat, and her mother, Arlene. Cornell alumni, Arlene '75 and Pat Zimmer '73 met while attending Cornell and were married on campus, as well.

The president began by praising "the energy, commitment and volunteer activities" of the orientation counselors (OCs), who have been helping ease their fellow students' transition to their new environment.

"They're smart, they're resourceful and they're friendly," Rawlings said of the OCs, "whether finding space in your room for all your computer equipment or helping you sort out all of those different buildings with the name 'Uris' or 'Olin' in them."

And then the president pointed out that, over the next week and during the next four years, new students would be continuing to learn a great number of new things. "Some of them ­ like speed reading, stress management and how to use the library ­ will be immediately useful," Rawlings said. "Others ­ like the public service projects and cultural activities ­ will help you get to know your community and your fellow Cornellians and to bond together as a class."

As members of the Cornell community, students are "heirs to an intellectual tradition of remarkable power and richness," he told them.

"The late historian Carl Becker," he said, "one of Cornell's

Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography President Hunter Rawlings delivers his address at the New Student Convocation Aug. 22.

great history faculty members, noted: 'The founders [of Cornell], being both in their different ways rebels against convention, wished to establish not merely another university but a novel kind of university. Mr. [Ezra] Cornell desired to found an institution in which any person could study any subject. Mr. [A.D.] White wished to found a center of learning where mature scholars and persons of the world, emancipated from the clerical tradition and inspired by the scientific idea, could pursue their studies uninhibited by cluttered routine or the petty preoccupations of the conventional cloistered academic life.'

"In other words, they threw Cornell open to the world," Rawlings said. "And we have been open to the world since the date of our founding. This is a university that breathes ideas of many kinds from all across this world and makes them available to students on a daily basis."

Echoing the advice of the morning's other speakers, Rawlings urged new students to take their studies beyond their majors, and even beyond their own colleges, and take classes that appeal to them and foster their own "intellectual development."

The writer Studs Terkel, Rawlings recalled, had once been asked by a reporter what had kept him going over the years, and he replied "curiosity."

"I always say, if I have an epitaph [it will be]," Rawlings said, quoting Terkel, "'Curiosity did not kill this cat.'"

"Curiosity won't kill your cat, either," Rawlings told his audience. "And I hope you will pursue it wherever it leads ­ this year and in your next three years."

The president also advised students to approach education as an adventure ­ "the best chance you will have in your entire life to extend your horizons, to play with ideas, to think about thinking." And he commended to them programs such as Cornell in Washington and Cornell Abroad, and other courses that might intrigue them intellectually.

"Serious academic activities are immensely enjoyable at Cornell," Rawlings said. "They're mind expanding, personally fulfilling ­ whether it's reading a poem with new understanding and depth, conducting an experiment that is elegant and telling in its results, mastering another language so you actually begin to speak it regularly ­ and sometimes even have dreams in it."

And he emphasized that students should be flexible in determining their academic focus.

"You heard Dan [Duval] say he has changed majors a couple of times and changed colleges once," Rawlings said. "He is not the exception, he is the rule. We want students here at Cornell to experiment, to try different ideas, to change their minds and to feel free, especially in the first year, that they can pursue different ideas ­ and not just what they expected when they came.

"Let your mind go where your mind wants to go," he advised.

And reminding them of A.D. White's inaugural address, Rawlings said it's important that students realize they have a direct influence on the kind of education they receive while they're here.

"You can make a class work, yourself ­ or you help a class fall flat by not participating, by not preparing, by not involving yourself in that class actively," Rawlings said. "You can seek out opportunities to work with a faculty member on research ­ or you can remain part of the blur of faces in a large lecture class. Please do the former not the latter.

"Cornell is an institution based on the idea of freedom with responsibility. You have almost undreamed-of freedom to do what you choose here, but you also are expected to take responsibility for what you have cho
sen. Those two words are, in fact, the two poles of Cornell ­ freedom, of which we grant a large amount, and responsibility, of which we expect a large amount. And if you can exercise those two principles throughout your four years here, you will have contributed to making this an even better place."

Finally he suggested that students, if they want to make Cornell their real "intellectual home," should avoid, at least in their first year, the temptation to languish in havens of comfort and familiarity.

"Despite the great scale and scope of Cornell, it is possible to insulate yourself (some even would say isolate yourself) among people who are just like you," he said. "If you feel comfortable here ­ if it seems like high school, only with more homework ­ you will not have been exposed to all that Cornell offers ­ new professors, new students, new ideas.

"One purpose of college is, in fact, to make you uncomfortable ­ and I hope you won't worry about feeling a little uncomfortable. Most students do here, for a year or two ­ that's part of adjusting; it's part of experiencing new people and new ideas. And I hope you are going to welcome them, because they're going to welcome you."