"Building Things"
Opening Convocation
The College of Wooster
Tuesday, August 27, 2002

One of the most familiar opening lines in modern-day broadcasting comes from that program jewel of National Public Radio, Prairie Home Companion, and will forever be associated with its author and creator, Garrison Keillor. When it comes time for Keillor's weekly monologue to begin, the music stops, the lights drop down low, and, with a reverence normally associated only with more religious settings, his mellow voice intones,

"It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon."

Keillor might as well be speaking another opening line, an even more familiar opening line from a definitely religious setting, "Here beginneth the first lesson," because his monologue truly is, for many, the lesson of the week. It is a lesson arising from that magic place where "all the men are strong, all the women are good looking, and all the children are above average."

With only a few years' break, Prairie Home Companion has been with us as a Saturday evening American tradition for nearly 30 years, ever since Garrison Keillor offered the first edition of the show to an audience of twelve in a small auditorium at Macalester College. Keillor has in the course of these years become acknowledged an American treasure as humorist, author, and homespun philosopher. From his youth in the upper mid-western town of Anoka, Minnesota--a town even now of only 17,000--he developed uncommon insight into human nature, and with that insight he is building himself and his Prairie show into a living national legend.

Keillor is in rare company; there is no multitude of such legends in America. But nor is he alone. For the generations of my parents and my grandparents, William Penn Adair Rogers, or just "Will" Rogers, was and is equally legendary and cut from similar cloth. This simple Cherokee cowboy, first turned trick roper and vaudevillian in the Ziegfield Follies, then turned humorist-author-homespun philosopher, was the first big-time radio commentator. He grew up wild on his father's ranch in Oologah, Oklahoma--population now 828--but eventually appeared in 71 movies and wrote six books and 4,000 daily columns before his untimely death at 56 in a plane crash. Forever associated with Will Rogers are the lines:

"I never met a man I didn't like."

"All I know is just what I read in the papers."

"Everbody is ignorant, only on different subjects."

For Rogers, humor in human nature was everywhere. In religion: "Whoever wrote the Ten Commandments made them short; they may not always be kept, but [at least] they can be understood." In Washington: "I don't make jokes, I just watch the Government and report the facts." And he might as well have speaking about last year at Wooster when he wrote, "...Politics aren't worrying this country one tenth as much as parking space." Like Keillor, through brains, wit, and a keen perception into human nature, Rogers built himself into an American tradition.

If Will Rogers and Garrison Keillor have captured essences of human nature in their respective parts of the 20th century, then the path was certainly laid for them by their counterpart in the last half of the 19th century, by the probably permanent icon of American culture, one of the very few individuals with a Ken Burns series devoted entirely to him, Mark Twain. Mark Twain too was a pretty fair humorist, author, and homespun philosopher. And like Rogers and Keillor, Twain, as Samuel Clemens, was raised in a small town--Hannibal, MO, now only 18,000. In fact, Hannibal, Missouri, Oologah, Oklahoma, and Anoka, Minnesota form a tight 600-mile triangle in the absolute heart of America. Mark Twain offers an explanation:

Twain's many observations on human nature are spread throughout his 30 books and other writings. Here's another one to hold onto:

Twain and Rogers long since built their legends; we are fortunate to be able to watch Keillor in the process. To our students I would observe that, just as I used to pump my father about Will Rogers, your children and grandchildren will want to hear from you about Garrison Keillor, so keep watching, and reading, and listening.

But I digress. To be true to my intended direction, let us return to Keillor's quiet week on the prairie, in Lake Wobegon, for a comparison. By contrast, Wooster is not exactly on the prairie. Few would claim that there is much similarity between our small, relatively prosperous northeastern Ohio city and that little, sleepy, mysterious, fictitious central Minnesota town that, as Keillor describes it, "time has forgotten and the decades cannot improve." And few would claim that there is a great similarity between, on one hand, the industrious flock, especially of Presbyterians, who founded this city and this College, and, on the other hand, the Norwegian bachelor farmers who populate the Chatterbox Cafe and Tina's Kitty Boutique. I'll have to admit that there are some who never recognize this difference, judging by the questions and comments many of us at the College receive right after commencement: "Well, I guess you can take it easy now; what are you going to do to keep busy all summer? Must be pretty quiet at Wooster in the summer."

The summer of 2002 was not quiet at Wooster. But, then, to the best of our knowledge, Lake Wobegon has no liberal arts college. Never before has the campus hosted so many people in summer programs: economics conferences, athletic camps, teacher workshops, music camps, synod assemblies, writing camps, the Ohio Light Opera, and much more.

Moreover, the entire academic year 2002-03 was not quiet either. For we too have been building things. From the data, it would appear that, mostly, we have been building buildings:

• 478 tons of structural steel,
• 3,965 cubic yards of concrete,
• 38,741 cubic feet of limestone,
• 145,260 face bricks,
• 13,021 square feet of glass,
• 38,316 feet of plumbing,
• 460,831 feet of electronic & telecommunication wire, conduit,

all assembled by 188,924 person-hours of work, to say nothing of the 121,995 brick pavers on the new south campus mall.

It's not clear what got into us. During the campaign of the 1990's, the College undertook four major building projects in five years, and we vowed that we would never attempt that pace again.

Building three major new buildings, plus undertaking simultaneously a number of other substantial projects like the new mall and Lowry Dining Room, is almost unheard of at Wooster. Only twice in the history of the College has a similar effort been tried: in 1902, to recover from the Great Fire of Old Main with the construction of Kauke, Scovel, Severance, and Taylor; and in 1965-66 to ride the wave of national growth by building three residence halls--Armington, Bissman, and Stevenson--with government funds available in only a short window.

For only the third time in history did the College have the opportunity, the luxury really, of such an undertaking, of such significant growth and strengthening. It is heady stuff to build a big, new building from start to finish, to say nothing of three.

However, lost on few people in September of last year was the irony that, as buildings were rising at Wooster, some pretty important buildings elsewhere were falling. As we were trying to build up this place, other folks were trying to tear down that place, and the country with it. At this point, we might find it useful to consider the implications of words that poet T.S. Eliot once wrote about another of society's significant institutions. Eliot observed, "The Church is forever building, for it is forever decaying [from] within and attacked from without."

For what other institutions is this true? Is there wisdom in this observation for us? Last September, this country was indeed attacked from without. And these outside enemies had decided that tearing down our biggest buildings was the greatest possible blow to our viability. In this, at least, we have proved them wrong. However, they and others also claim that we are decaying from within. As much as we would like to deny this, it only took a few more months for another blow to be struck, for another large building to fall, if only figuratively. For all the damage they inflicted, Kenneth Lay and his colleagues might just as well have driven a jet plane into Enron's Houston headquarters. This was not an attack from without. This was decay from within. And before long, other buildings were falling, if only figuratively, for similar reasons. In New York and in Houston, as well as elsewhere, it appears that this nation does indeed have the need for both of T.S. Eliot's reasons to keep building. It's not just buildings that need building, or re-building.

What are the implications for Wooster? Buildings are not all that that needs building these days, even here. It is heady stuff to build anything of importance; also important are the intangible things we build. In our strategic plan, we have set for ourselves the objective of building a stronger campus community. In the parlance of contractors, the 'program statement' and 'schematic drawings' for this objective may be found in Wooster's Bylaws and in its statements of mission and purpose; the 'construction documents' exist in the College's five-year strategic plan. We are putting these plans under scrutiny twice this year: first, in the self-study for our ten-year accreditation visit in November by the North Central Association, and then in the renewal of the strategic plan for the period 2003 to 2008. In many ways, we do well with community. Scot Spirit Day, Party on the Green, Scots in Service, and a range of all-campus gatherings all illustrate our strengths in normal times, and our responses to September 11 show what we can do under fire. But, as in buildings, integrity depends on each aspect of construction, and last year we put the College in jeopardy too many times in our treatment of our facilities, our city neighbors, even our friends. Some have chosen to fly their jets into our community, and this is decay from within. I would call on the Wooster community this year to establish a higher standard of behavior in all of our actions.

This brings me to my final area of construction, hardly an insignificant one. While the College has been building buildings and community, you, our students, have been building yourselves. All of you, I trust, have been building your intellects. As a college we are pretty good at helping you do this. Many of you have also been building your bodies, your physical strength; with the Swigart Fitness Center and all of the programs in the PEC we are also not bad at helping you do this. However, in addition, you are building character.

Wooster like many colleges often comes under fire for not aiming more explicitly to build character along with intellects and bodies. Yet, character-building is tricky business. I had always thought my views on this subject were idiosyncratic until I was fortunate with the help of Bill Bowen, former president of Princeton University and now president of the Andrew Mellon Foundation, to come upon supporting views from others. As Princeton's president about 1910, Woodrow Wilson was under similar fire, and in a speech to his incoming students, he said (and please pardon the all-male references that were appropriate to Princeton at the time):

Faced with the same demands, Robert Maynard Hutchins, then President of the University of Chicago, agreed:

It is reassuring to be in good company with Bowen--and also Wilson and Hutchins--in believing that "character can be taught, and should be taught, indirectly--by insisting on the highest standards, by refusing to accept easy excuses or slothful practices." At Wooster, our expectations for independent study and for a high level of academic honesty in all work exemplify this belief.

No building can serve its objective without a solid foundation; no community can thrive without the integrity of all of its members; no individual can truly contribute except from a basis of sound intellect and resulting character.

In writing to his father in 1932, the artist Jackson Pollock spoke of the ways in which each of us is in fact an artist:

With faith that together as artists in this sense we can build great buildings, strong communities, and individuals with both splendid intellects and sterling character, the 133rd year of instruction at The College of Wooster is hereby convened.