Dick Merriman, Southwestern College
August 28, 2002
Good morning. It is my pleasure to join the faculty and administration
of the college in welcoming you to Southwestern College. We are glad you
are here and we are excited and pleased to have the opportunity to work
with you and assist you in exploring and developing your potential.
I would like to take a few minutes to tell you, as new students at Southwestern,
how you look to us, and to make a suggestion about how you ought to look
at the college.
We have a strong tendency in our society today to look at everything
from the perspective of the consumer. We want to be smart shoppers. We
want to make a smart buy. We don’t want to get a bad deal.
That consumer perspective might prompt you to think that you are now
a customer of Southwestern. It would follow from that perspective, wouldn’t
it, that you the customer are here to purchase your higher education.
People often talk about “shopping for a college.” Maybe you
and your parents used that phrase in the past year.
I want to be clear with you about this so please hear me: you are not
a customer here; you are something way better than that. You are not merely
a customer, because Southwestern College is not merely a business.
This college is a philanthropy. If you look at the pieces of that word,
“phil” and “anthropy,” you can figure out that
it means “for the love of mankind.” This college exists because
thousands of people, many of whom you and I will never know, have built
it over the last 117 years. And they built it for your benefit. The buildings,
the endowment, the mission of Southwestern were all built for you. They
were built so people like you could gain a college education, prepare
to work in a profession, commit yourselves to service; in short, so you
could become a better person and help make the world a better place.
None of you, not even that rare one of you who receives no financial
aid from the college and is paying the full bill for tuition and room
and board, will come close to paying Southwestern what it is going to
cost the college to educate you. You know what? That’s okay. That’s
not a problem. In fact, that’s the whole idea. Because you are not
a customer, and the college is not a business. This college is a philanthropy.
We have a marvelous gift to give you – a better education than you
can afford -- and we are able to give it to you because of the financial
support of thousands of alumni and friends.
If you have the money to purchase it, you can go into any McDonald’s
in the country and they will sell you a Big Mac. But you can’t buy
a Southwestern College education that way. How much money you have is
not the point. If Southwestern ran like a business we could just educate
students who had a lot of money. We could fill up our campus with screw-ups
from wealthy families. But that’s not our thing. You are our thing.
What I’m trying to say is that you may believe you are here because
you chose Southwestern. And it is true, of course, that you have some
say about the college you attend. But it would be truer to say that you
are here because Southwestern chose you. We chose you. This isn’t
a public university that has to try to educate all comers. We get to choose.
We chose you.
Now, what are you supposed to think of this? How are you supposed to
think about the fact that you were chosen by Southwestern College? What
expectations come with being chosen in this way?
The answer, I think, is pretty simple.
You are expected to have this conversation with yourself on occasion:
Self, there is something that I am supposed to be, something that would
uniquely express my talents and abilities. I wonder what it is? Self,
there is something worthwhile I can do with my life, something for which
I am uniquely well-suited, something in which I can achieve true excellence,
something that will be of benefit to my family, my community, the world.
I wonder what it is?
We expect you to take seriously the idea that there are great things
you can accomplish in your life. We expect you to take seriously that
you have a responsibility to discern those things and pursue them.
If you will take that idea seriously and really believe in it, then you
will find yourself thinking:
Self, I think I’ll get out of bed and make it to class on time.
Self, I think I’ll take it easy on the beer so I can focus a bit
more on my classwork tonight. Self, I’m going to plan my day so
I’ll have time to finish the reading for that class and do a good
job on the paper that has been assigned. Self, I’m going to sit
down with my faculty advisor and talk about how I’m doing, about
career options, about graduate school.
I’m not saying that you can’t, or shouldn’t, have fun
at college. That’s important, that’s a big part of it. It’s
great to be independent and to choose the things you want to do.
I’m just suggesting that as you make those choices you try to remember
this: we have a marvelous gift to give you here, you are fortunate to
have the opportunities we are going to present to you, and we very much
want you to make the most of your time at Southwestern.
Again, welcome to Southwestern College. We are glad you are here.
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