Wabash College opened its doors this weekend to 253 new students, welcoming the Class of 2030 with a day of moving boxes, food trucks, and a ceremony steeped in nearly two centuries of tradition.
The morning began with move-in as freshmen hauled belongings into their new dormitories and fraternities with help from family and returning students. After working up an appetite, families grabbed lunch from food trucks on campus.
Later in the afternoon, the incoming class — representing 18 states and 11 countries — filled Pioneer Chapel together for the first time. Dean of Students Scott Brown took the podium first, urging the freshmen to think beyond their first week on campus.
"We invite you to dream your biggest dreams for your time at Wabash," Brown said. "This is a moment of great possibility, where you will be challenged and supported to reach your highest aspirations, so you believe in yourselves as much as we believe in you."
Brown reminded the class that their four years at Wabash, however distant graduation might feel today, would arrive quickly.
"In four short years, which feels unimaginable now, we will bookend this, your first day," he said. "President Feller will walk with you beneath the senior arch with this very bell ringing you out, and you and the College changed for the absolute better."
Tyler Wade, interim dean for enrollment, put a number on just how quickly that day would come.
"We tell people Wabash isn't four years, it's for life. That's true — I've got the friends to prove it. But the for life part doesn't happen later. It gets built here. In these 1,365 days," Wade said. "Always be thankful for where you are, what you're doing, and who you're doing it with. One thousand, three hundred and sixty-five days. Make every one of them count."
With that number hanging in the air, President Scott Feller stepped forward to ring the Class of 2030 into the Little Giant brotherhood, using the same bell that dates back 194 years, to when the College's first professor, Caleb Mills, welcomed Wabash's original 12 students.
"Gentlemen, on your first real day as Wabash men, I want you to think about all the sacrifices your loved ones made to get you to this point," Feller told the gathered freshmen. "They showed up for you. They were the shoulders you leaned on in tough times. They were the loudest voices cheering your achievements. They showered you with love and encouragement."
He pushed the class to recognize what that support now demanded of them.
"Most important, they instilled in you the confidence and drive it takes to become a Wabash man — to make the bold choice to select a college that will push you hard — and one that calls you to be a gentleman and responsible citizen," Feller said.
He closed with a simple charge: "Men of the Wabash Class of 2030, welcome to the Brotherhood."
As the bell's ring faded, the freshmen carried the day's charge with them into their new dormitories and fraternity houses — for some, into rooms and chapters their own families had called home decades earlier. For 87 members of the Class of 2030, Wabash marks the first time anyone in their family has attended college. But plenty of their classmates followed a well-worn family path to campus, moving into the same halls and fraternity houses their fathers and grandfathers once called home.
Among them was Caleb Byrn '30, who moved into the Delta Tau Delta house with help from his older brother, Toby '28, his father, James '99, and his grandfather, Robert '68 — all three of whom belonged to the fraternity during their own time at Wabash.
"Some of the residential buildings are different now from when I was a student," Robert Byrn said. "But the spirit of this place is the same."