Dartmouth Student Speaks Out

    This was the Convocation Speech delivered by
student body President Noah Riner last week. There may
be hope for the Ivy League after all;
 
 

"You've been told that you are a special class. A
quick look at the statistics confirms that claim:
quite simply, you are the smartest and most diverse
group of freshmen to set foot on the Dartmouth campus.
You have more potential than all of the other classes.

You really are special.But it isn't enough to be
special. It isn't enough to be talented, to be
beautiful, to be smart. Generations of amazing
students have come before you, and have sat in your
seats. Some have been good, some have been bad. All
have been special.In fact, there's quite a long list
of very special, very corrupt people who have
graduated from Dartmouth.

William Walter Remington, Class of 1939, started out
as a Boy Scout and a choirboy and graduated Phi Beta
Kappa. He ended up as a Soviet spy, was convicted of
perjury and beaten to death in prison. Daniel Mason
'93 was just about to graduate from Boston Medical
School when he shot two men - killing one - after a
parking dispute.Just a few weeks ago, I read in the D
about PJ Halas, Class of 1998. His great uncle George
founded the Chicago Bears, and PJ lived up to the
family name, co-captaining the basketball team his
senior year at Dartmouth and coaching at a high school
team following graduation. He was also a history
teacher, and, this summer, he was arrested for
sexually assualting a 15-year-old student.

These stories demonstrate that it takes more than a
Dartmouth degree to build character.As former
Dartmouth President John Sloan Dickey said, at
Dartmouth our business is learning. And I'll have to
agree with the motto of Faber College, featured in the
movie Animal House, "Knowledge is Good." But if all we
get from this place is knowledge, we've missed
something.

There's one subject that you won't learn about in
class, one topic that orientation didn't cover, and
that your UGA won't mention: character.

What is the purpose of our education? Why are we at
Dartmouth?Martin Luther King, Jr. said:"But education
which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest
menace to society.. We must remember that intelligence
is not enough. Intelligence plus character - that is
the goal of true education.

"We hear very little about character in our
classrooms, yet, as Dr. King suggests, the real
problem in the world is not a lack of education.For
example, in the past few weeks we've seen some pretty
revealing things happening on the Gulf Coast in the
wake of hurricane Katrina. We've seen acts of selfless
heroism and millions around the country have united to
help the refugees. On the other hand, we've been
disgusted by the looting, violence, and raping that
took place even in the supposed refuge areas. In a
time of crisis and death, people were paddling around
in rafts, stealing TV's and VCR's. How could Americans
go so low?

My purpose in mentioning the horrible things done by
certain people on the Gulf Coast isn't to condemn just
them; rather it's to condemn all of us. Supposedly,
character is what you do when no one is looking, but
I'm afraid to say all the things I've done when no one
was looking. Cheating, stealing, lusting, you name it
- How different are we? It's easy to say that we've
never gone that far: never stolen that much; never
lusted so much that we'd rape; and the people we've
cheated, they were rich anyway.

Let's be honest, the differences are in degree. We
have the same flaws as the individuals who pillaged
New Orleans. Ours haven't been given such free range,
but they exist and are part of us all the same.The
Times of London once asked readers for comments on
what was wrong with the world. British author, G. K.
Chesterton responded simply: "Dear Sir, I am.

"Not many of us have the same clarity that Chesterton
had. Just days after Hurricane Katrina had ravaged the
Gulf Coast, politicians and pundits were distributing
more blame than aid. It's so easy to see the faults of
others, but so difficult to see our own. In the words
of Cassius in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "the fault,
dear Brutus is not in our stars but in
ourselves."Character has a lot to do with sacrifice,
laying our personal interests down for something
bigger.

The best example of this is Jesus. In the Garden of
Gethsemane, just hours before his crucifixion, Jesus
prayed, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup
from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be
done." He knew the right thing to do. He knew the cost
would be agonizing torture and death. He did it
anyway. That's character.

Jesus is a good example of character, but He's also
much more than that. He is the solution to flawed
people like corrupt Dartmouth alums, looters, and
me.It's so easy to focus on the defects of others and
ignore my own. But I need saving as much as they
do.Jesus' message of redemption is simple. People are
imperfect, and there are consequences for our actions.
He gave His life for our sin so that we wouldn't have
to bear the penalty of the law; so we could see love.

The problem is me; the solution is God's love: Jesus
on the cross, for us.In the words of Bono:[I]f only we
could be a bit more like Him, the world would be
transformed. .When I look at the Cross of Christ, what
I see up there is all my s-- and everybody else's.

So I ask myself a question a lot of people have asked:
Who is this man? And was He who He said He was, or was
He just a religious nut? And there it is, and that's
the question.

You want the best undergraduate education in the
world, and you've come to the right place to get that.
But there's more to college than achievement. With
Martin Luther King, we must dream of a nation - and a
college - where people are not judged by the
superficial, "but by the content of their character."

Thus, as you begin your four years here, you've got to
come to some conclusions about your own character
because you won't get it by just going to class. What
is the content of your character? Who are you? And how
will you become what you need to be?"

    Noah Riner is President of the Dartmouth Student
Body. His remarks have created a firestorm of
controversy on campus. I downloaded this off of the
Dartmouth website a few days ago but they have already
taken it down. There is more on this in the National
Review Online website and at the Dartmouth Review
site(the alternative conservative campus paper).

http://fairmindedberean.modblog.com/
 
Hebrews 11:1 Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
 
1 Thess 4:17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.