Wabash Magazine Columns
From Center Hall: Winter — 2013
William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.” At Wabash we honor traditions built out of cherished memories, communal and individual, and this fall our life together has been especially marked by backward glances. Homecoming 2012 commemorated the 180th year of the College, the 100th anniversary of Homecoming itself, and the 120th year of the Glee Club giving voice to the music of our College. We also celebrated the recent history of the Challenge of Excellence, which surpassed our original goal and raised more than $68 million.
From Center Hall: Spring 2012
The College’s soon-to-be-completed $60 million Challenge of Excellence has transformed the heart of Wabash—teaching and learning—and established the support for as-yet-to-be-imagined greatness among students, alumni, faculty, staff, and all in the Wabash family.
From Center Hall: Winter 2012
What’s Next for Wabash College? The theme of this issue is a good question for this moment in the College’s history. “What’s next?” Say it aloud with two equally stressed beats and we hear the steady insistence of the patter of time. Say it as an iambic foot—what’s NEXT?—and it carries a more frightful tone. We have endured some difficult days, but today Wabash is in a good place, at a good time. Still, the steady drumbeat of “what’s next?” insists on an answer.
Spring 2011: From Center Hall
Make a difference in the world: What a bold promise for a small college in a small town in the heartland of America. But like many bold dreams, Wabash delivers. The students, faculty, staff, and alumni of this great College learn here to expand their vision and their understanding of the world so that they can become actors in a larger world than they have known before.
Winter 2011 — From Center Hall
In a profound way, finding one’s voice is at the heart of what a liberal arts education should be. No liberally educated person springs like Athena full grown from the head of Zeus. Wabash men do not come to college with their voices fully formed. Like babies learning a new language, most Wabash men begin by adopting the voices of others, of their teachers and older students. In residence halls and fraternities, younger men begin to sound like their professors, their pledge fathers, their coaches, or their roommates. When they come home at Thanksgiving, their parents and their high school friends hear that their Wabash man is talking funny and sounds different, older, changed. This taking on of a Wabash voice is taking on a voice of maturity, an adult’s way of speaking about and to the world.
Fall 2010: From Center Hall
Spring 2010 — From Center Hall
Our mutual life is not something we create, not something that is handed down from our leaders, but something that good leaders empower people to see. To say that we need to create community is like living in the Amazon and saying we need to create the forest. As leaders we need to help people see the forest in the trees and to give them time, energy, and the way to know that forest—our mutual life.
Winter 2010: From Center Hall
An Uncommon Dream
We honor the past not by repeating what these men of our history did, but when we attempt to live as they lived, to dream as they dreamed. They were pioneers; they demand that we be pioneers.
From Center Hall: Winter — 2013
William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.” At Wabash we honor traditions built out of cherished memories, communal and individual, and this fall our life together has been especially marked by backward glances. Homecoming 2012 commemorated the 180th year of the College, the 100th anniversary of Homecoming itself, and the 120th year of the Glee Club giving voice to the music of our College. We also celebrated the recent history of the Challenge of Excellence, which surpassed our original goal and raised more than $68 million.
From Center Hall: Spring 2012
The College’s soon-to-be-completed $60 million Challenge of Excellence has transformed the heart of Wabash—teaching and learning—and established the support for as-yet-to-be-imagined greatness among students, alumni, faculty, staff, and all in the Wabash family.
From Center Hall: Winter 2012
What’s Next for Wabash College? The theme of this issue is a good question for this moment in the College’s history. “What’s next?” Say it aloud with two equally stressed beats and we hear the steady insistence of the patter of time. Say it as an iambic foot—what’s NEXT?—and it carries a more frightful tone. We have endured some difficult days, but today Wabash is in a good place, at a good time. Still, the steady drumbeat of “what’s next?” insists on an answer.
Spring 2011: From Center Hall
Make a difference in the world: What a bold promise for a small college in a small town in the heartland of America. But like many bold dreams, Wabash delivers. The students, faculty, staff, and alumni of this great College learn here to expand their vision and their understanding of the world so that they can become actors in a larger world than they have known before.
Winter 2011 — From Center Hall
In a profound way, finding one’s voice is at the heart of what a liberal arts education should be. No liberally educated person springs like Athena full grown from the head of Zeus. Wabash men do not come to college with their voices fully formed. Like babies learning a new language, most Wabash men begin by adopting the voices of others, of their teachers and older students. In residence halls and fraternities, younger men begin to sound like their professors, their pledge fathers, their coaches, or their roommates. When they come home at Thanksgiving, their parents and their high school friends hear that their Wabash man is talking funny and sounds different, older, changed. This taking on of a Wabash voice is taking on a voice of maturity, an adult’s way of speaking about and to the world.
Fall 2010: From Center Hall
On our best days, Wabash does more than choose a path: We design our own road. That’s our work as we embark on the Challenge of Excellence, a $60 million major gifts initiative grounded in our mission and core values but moving boldly and deliberately to set out a path of greatness for the College. Students come first, and money we raise for student scholarships and financial aid will make the great gift of a Wabash education possible for all qualified young men who have the courage to accept our challenge.
Spring 2010 — From Center Hall
Our mutual life is not something we create, not something that is handed down from our leaders, but something that good leaders empower people to see. To say that we need to create community is like living in the Amazon and saying we need to create the forest. As leaders we need to help people see the forest in the trees and to give them time, energy, and the way to know that forest—our mutual life.
Winter 2010: From Center Hall
How do we want our students to treat themselves? What can we do to help them to find that elusive and dynamic balance in life? Long ago in grade school Mrs. Malach taught me to call that last part of a letter before the signature the “complimentary closing” or “valediction.” Few people worry about such things these days, but I think of her lessons as I contemplate the theme of this issue of Wabash Magazine because valediction means “farewell.”
An Uncommon Dream
We honor the past not by repeating what these men of our history did, but when we attempt to live as they lived, to dream as they dreamed. They were pioneers; they demand that we be pioneers.
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