Earlham as a Crossroads Community

Douglas C. Bennett

Earlham Inauguration Speech

March 28, 1998

Gwen Weaver, members of the Board of Trustees, students, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, parents, representatives of other colleges and universities, members of the Religious Society of Friends, fellow Hoosiers, and dear friends and family.

It is a little hard to know what to make of the jumble of emotions I've been feeling. On Wednesday, as an early part of the celebration, Earlham's men's and women's a cappella groups sang at Faculty Buffet, and they repeated the performance last night in Goddard. The men sang a song with the refrain "once I was the king of Spain, now I eat humble pie." I don't know just how they meant that, but that isn't the feeling at all. Nor the reverse: I am especially aware at this moment just how fallible and common a person I am. Maybe another of the songs they sang is more on the mark: "Crazy Love." I have quickly come to have a deep and abiding love for Earlham, for this very special institution, for each of its three parts, and for its many wonderful people. I accept these new responsibilities with passion, with a sense that I will need a great deal of help, and with utter confidence that I will get abundant assistance from colleagues and friends.

Two more personal notes. I am blessed to have many members of my family here today: my mother, my sisters and their families, my aunt and uncle, some of my cousins. My father died several years ago, but I'm sure he's here somewhere. Much of Ellen's family is here, too. These are people I love very much. These are people who have cared for me and molded me. This is also the group of people to whom you'll want to write if you have complaints.

Not so long from now I'll be seeing Tommy Bennett in as Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night. For those of you who don't know him, he's my son, a 7^th grader here in Richmond. I'm looking forward to seeing him in Twelfth Night. I look forward to sharing with him everything he does. He is the one person who makes me regret how busy this job can make me. But he also helps me remember how important it is that Earlham be the very best college it can be. I am very glad he is sharing this moment with me.

I also want to say a word about Ellen. She has joined me in this adventure, and I am daily more grateful that she has. She is a source of strength in everything we do together. She makes every moment better, and every moment more joyous. I want to say to her in this very public way something I try to say to her every day. Thank you for being my partner in life. Thank you for being my partner in all that I do.

Yesterday we had a festival of the Best of Earlham: on display in the ESR Center and elsewhere around the campus, in performance in Wilkinson Theatre, Goddard Auditorium and the Coffee Shop. It was a marvelous opportunity to see the breadth and depth of intellectual and creative, service-oriented and spiritual activity here at Earlham. Will you join me in thanking all those who contributed to this effort?

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Earlham as a Crossroads Community

In gathering here today, I ask you to see Earlham as a crossroads community. It is a crossroads community in its location, in its approach to education, and in the aspirations we have for its future.

In the early 19^th century, Quakers, especially from North Carolina and opposed to slavery, migrated out to Indiana. Many settled here in Richmond and Wayne County, where the National Road crosses the Whitewater River. Richmond became the crossroads for Quakerism in the Midwest, and it was here that Quakers, in 1847, founded Earlham College.

The National Road goes on beyond Richmond. Near where the road west crosses the White River, is the trading post, then homestead of William Conner. This is now the site of Conner Prairie, a gift from Eli Lilly, which Earlham developed into a living history museum. Conner Prairie is a crossroads in time, where the last decade of the 20^th century intersects the first decades of the 19^th. It is a place where visitors today can explore connections between communities today and communities then.

Students now come to Earlham from near and far. They come from Indiana and Maine and Colorado, from Hispanic communities and African-American neighborhoods, from rural areas and large cities, from northeast and southwest, even from Palestine, and Bosnia and Tanzania. Many roads converge here.

Earlham students go out from here to study all over the globe. Students can walk in the front door of Carpenter Hall, and find themselves in foreign study sites in Mexico or Japan. They can walk in the front door of Tyler and find themselves in programs in Jerusalem or Northern Ireland. And students come back to campus share with one another what they have seen and done. We are a small community here in Indiana that serves as a global crossroads.

We are also a crossroads of disciplines. We have become a place where the various fields of knowledge, often isolated from one another at large universities, are in comfortable and fruitful contact with one another. This crossing of disciplines happens in individual courses, in our many interdisciplinary majors, and in informal conversation on and around the campus.

Long ago Earlham became a crossroads of Quakerism: a place where all the many kinds of Quakers came together. (There are many varieties of Quakers: pastoral and unprogrammed, Christocentric and universalist.) I believe--we believe--that what Quakers hold in common is much more important that what can divide them. In 1960 we created the Earlham School of Religion to prepare Quakers for ministry among all these different varieties of Quakerism, and to help bring these several strands of Quakerism into more fruitful contact with one another.

In these and many, many other ways, Earlham is a crossroads community. Crossroads are where people come together, to talk and to work together. Crossroads are places where collisions can happen, so it takes some careful design to ensure that the meetings benefit all who come. Crossroads are where conversations occur. They are where shared projects take shape. They are where celebrations take place. They are where choices are made and risks are taken. They are where the future unfolds. Earlham is such a place.

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Five Aspirations

I have had the good fortune to spend much of my first nine months at Earlham speaking with students, with faculty, with staff, with alumni, with Board members, with neighbors in Richmond and Wayne County, and with other friends of Earlham. I have learned many things from these hundreds of conversations. Today I want to sketch, in very broad strokes, some of what I have heard. Here are five aspirations I believe we share in common. They are ones to which I am wholeheartedly committed. They are aspirations to make Earlham, in its parts and as a whole, an even more vibrant crossroads.

(1) Diversity. We aspire to become a more diverse community. We aspire to become a crossroads community that extends an invitation and a welcome to the whole of the human family. Why? For this simple reason: we believe we will educate each individual better if our community genuinely embraces the whole of the human family. Diversity is not a goal in addition to educational excellence. It is a goal at the very center of educational excellence. We learn from each other what it means to be human, and what the possibilities are. We will learn much less if we only learn from others who closely resemble us.

Recognizing the challenge of diversity--not just at Earlham but around the world--has been the work of the century just coming to an end. Dealing successfully with that challenge must be a global accomplishment of the next few decades. Because we believe there is that of God in each and every human being, I believe Earlham can be at the forefront of this accomplishment.

I am certain the commitment to diversity here is broadly shared. No single goal was mentioned more often or more forcefully in the conversations I have been having during the past few months. Why, then, have we not made more progress? For two reasons, I think. We have not had a plan bold enough and specific enough for achieving that goal. Good intentions will not be enough. And we have not yet fully grasped that embracing diversity will require each and every one of us to make changes. We do need more African-American faculty, more Hispanic staff and students. We need more in our curriculum and campus programming that is grounded in and speaks to the plurality of humankind. But it is the small, warm, half-conscious things we do that make newcomers feel welcome and at home in our community. We will all have to make adjustments and reach a little further if we are to extend a broader welcome. This cannot be the work of a few. We must have confidence that each of us shares the goal wholeheartedly. And we will all work on the goal of diversity together, or we will not make progress at all.

(2) Digital Networks for a Learning Community. Digital electronic networks have made us a new kind of crossroads, a crossroads in cyberspace. Our addresses are no longer just on the National Road and on Allisonville Road, but www.earlham.edu and www.connerprairie.org.

The special richness of Earlham, I believe, will always be best experienced in person, walking our campus, looking other people in the eye, and talking face-to-face. But people are now visiting us virtually, and we can have experience of the world on-line. There is an electronic road to and from Earlham. The challenge is to make the electronic crossroads complement and strengthen the face-to-face crossroads. This is the second aspiration.

I believe our goal will be to create participatory information environments. At the reach of every student, faculty and staff member we can put a great deal of information useful for being active members of the community: schedules of events, The Word (our campus newspaper), governance documents, course syllabi. Classes and committees and discussion groups can carry on in cyberspace conversations that begin in face to face encounters. Prospective students can make a connection with us, begin a conversation, even before they set foot on our campus. Alumni can stay in touch when they have gone off to new adventures. Students on foreign study can let us know what they are doing and hear from us. We are already doing much of this, but we have only taken baby steps towards the horizon of possibility.

Beyond the exchange of information and ideas we generate within our community, we can and will use electronic gateways to gain access to the wider wealth of global library and information resources. No longer will we be limited by when the library is open or what it can physically hold. Students will be able to gain access from their dorm rooms or from classrooms or laboratories. Access will be the easy part, however. The hard part will be organizing the overwhelming mass of material, and making intelligent judgments about what of it is worthwhile. Earlham has long been a leader in bibliographic instruction; we need to carry this leadership into the electronic future.

Knowing how to navigate, without capsizing, in an information-flooded world will be a critical capability in the next century--at home, at work and at play. We aspire to make Earlham a model crossroads in cyberspace.

(3) Connections to the Surrounding Community. Each part of Earlham is a crossroads in a much wider settlement. Each is a special neighborhood in a larger community. ESR and Earlham College are here in Richmond, in Wayne County. Conner Prairie is in Hamilton County, a rapidly growing part of metropolitan Indianapolis. Our third aspiration is to have Earlham as a whole and each of its parts be as good a neighbor as we can, contributing fully and constructively to our wider communities.

We cannot just decide for ourselves what it means to be a good neighbor. We must work in partnership. I have spent much time in conversation with others in the community, hearing their concerns and their hopes. It is clear that Hamilton County needs Conner Prairie to be a gathering point for the surrounding towns, to be a family nurturing place, and a green space in a rapidly developing area. We can do this. It is clear Richmond wants Earlham to contribute to the vitality of the arts in this area. We do this and we will do more: in music, in theatre, in fine arts. Our friends in the community want our athletic teams to be strong competitors, to embody excellence as fully as our academic programs. We can do this, too, and our new Athletics/Wellness center will contribute to the health and wellbeing of the Richmond/Wayne County community.

In the conversations I have been having, however, one particular hope stands out among all the others: that Earlham will contribute to lifting the educational horizons and accomplishments of the communities around it. The hope is that we will work in partnership with teachers and students in K-12 schools. The hope is that we will also work in partnership on education with churches, community groups, business leaders, and local government. Earlham College has a contribution to make. Conner Prairie has a contribution to make. Education is what all of Earlham knows and does best. Helping to improve the education of young people in the communities around Earlham will be a new, major aspiration for Earlham in the years to come.

(4) Quaker connections. Fourth. Earlham is an institution deeply grounded in the Religious Society of Friends. The spiritual understandings and testimonies of Quakerism have nourished nearly everything that makes Earlham distinctive or vibrant. Quakerism is fundamental to our history and our heritage. But it is much more. Our groundedness in Quakerism is a living, present, vital connection. It is our life-root.

We need, in each generation, to explore the present potential of this connection. We need to seek new programs, new forms of service, new spiritual understandings that flow from the insights and testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends.

There are dozens of recent examples of initiatives and programs that are fresh expressions of Quaker orientations to spirituality and service. Earlham students contribute thousands of hours of service here in Richmond and Wayne County. Both on campus and off we teach conflict resolution and consensus strategies for decision-making. Just this past week we initiated a new Community Action Center: a student-initiated and student-run clearinghouse for groups committed to peace and justice. Conner Prairie is previewing a new program, "Follow the North Star, which invites participants to experience what African Americans faced following the Underground Railroad here in Indiana. This spring, ESR will begin a consultation with Quakers asking how ESR can best serve the needs of the Religious Society of Friends for ministry and leadership. We need to keep asking how Earlham can be a living witness for Quakerism.

(5) Transformative programs for the 21^st century. Let me call the fifth aspiration 'transformative programs for the 21^st century.' An Earlham education has changed a great deal in the past few decades.

These are all powerful trends in liberal arts education in this country. Earlham is in the forefront of each and very one of these. But these are not primary: not globalization, not interdisciplinary studies, not experiential education. All contribute to something more central, more fundamental.

We have no small or ordinary missions at Earlham. We do not merely seek to give those who come better skills or improved capabilities. For those who come to Earlham, we seek to "quicken the central aims and ideals by which they are henceforth to live." (These are words of Rufus Jones I quoted in opening this academic year.) In the Republic, Plato talks of "turning souls. We seek to transform lives, and we will be satisfied with nothing less.

Each of the three parts of Earlham has its own way of stating this transformative purpose. Conner Prairie's new mission statement talks of "inspiring and motivating people today to realize the potential of communities, enriching and expanding the possibilities of their own lives." The Earlham School of Religion sets forth "an invitation to transformation." Earlham College speaks of "awakening the teacher within."

Our fifth aspiration, therefore, is to look at everything we do--everything--through the lens of transformative purpose. I have no doubt there are exciting things we can do, should and will do with globalization, interdisciplinary studies, and experiential and peer education. As we think about our curriculum and our programs, however, we need to ask whether we are we quickening the central aims and ideals of those we educate. Do our programs work in this way for every student who comes to ESR and the College? For every visitor who comes to Conner Prairie? This question will be the lens through which we see what more we can do, and how we can do it better.

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At the Heart of Earlham

Each day it is now my privilege to walk across the campus, southeast to northwest, from our house on College Avenue to my office in Carpenter Hall. I have a choice of routes, but they all take me to and around the heart of Earlham, that nearly sacred, grassy circle where old Earlham Hall once stood.

Many well-traveled paths converge and connect at the Heart of Earlham. The walk from ESR to the Stout Meeting House comes through the Heart. The walk from Dennis and Stanley to the athletic fields goes through the Heart. The walk from Carpenter Hall to Runyan Center takes us through the Heart. So, too, the walk from Bundy to Lilly Library. From the Heart you can go out the main drive to Conner Prairie or to Kenya, and return. The Heart is the visible crossroads at the very center of Earlham.

But at the heart of Earlham is more than a crossing of concrete paths. At the heart of Earlham is a crossing and connecting, a conversing, of minds and souls. At the heart of Earlham is a willingness on the part of each of us to share our questionings and our understandings, our capabilities and our commitments. At the heart of Earlham is a desire to respect one another and be vitalized by the deep connections we make with each other.

We do this in the dining hall. We do this on the playing fields. We do this in dozens and dozens of student organizations. We do this in committee meetings. Most especially we do this in classrooms, and in Meetings for Worship. All of these are crossroads where we challenge and care for others, and where we challenge and renew ourselves.

At his inauguration 52 years ago, President Tom Jones used the same image. He called Earlham "a cross between a Friends meeting and a scientific laboratory." Earlham's most important crossroads has always been the intersection between the intellect and the spirit. All truth is God's truth, we believe. In steadfastly seeking the intersections of these two roads to truth, we prepare our students more broadly, more fundamentally for whatever challenges and opportunities will come in their lives.

Earlham proceeds with a belief that there is a center to all things. And we are confident that this sacred wholeness can be found within each and every one of us.

We can find it in ourselves if we will quiet ourselves, center ourselves, and listen to the clear, calm, magnificently powerful Voice that speaks within each of us and across the whole of God's majestic creation, helping us to make sense of a chaotic and confusing world.

And we can find this sacred wholeness in others if we will only meet them and connect with them, if we will only make the effort to appreciate the gifts they also bring to the crossroads at the very heart of Earlham.

Let me say again how deeply honored I am to have a part in this work.