Departments
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Week of 5 September 1997 |
Vol. I, No. 2 |
Feature Article
Westling to freshmen: hats off to 'splendidly qualified' class of 2001
by Brian Fitzgerald
On a muggy Labor Day morning Jon Westling provided more than 4,000 Boston University freshmen with a breath of fresh air as he breezed through some impressive statistics and congratulated the Class of 2001 as "the academically best qualified class to ever enter the University."
Although there is always a risk in showering an audience with too many compliments, in this case it became apparent that the numbers indeed speak volumes: 42 percent of the freshmen graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, and two-thirds of them graduated in the top 20 percent. "Your SAT scores average more than 246 points above the national average, and your high school grade point average was better than 3.26," said Westling.
Then he put on one of the thousands of "Class of 2001" hats that were distributed to freshmen and exclaimed, doffing his cap, "Hats off!" in tribute to the group.
The Class of 2001, which arrived en masse during the holiday weekend and brought the Charles River Campus to life, assembled in BU's cavernous Armory Building on September 1 for the President's Convocation, "one of those rare occasions during which all of you will be addressed, not as students of one of the individual schools or colleges, but as Boston University students," he said. (In fact, possibly the only other time the entire class will gather will be in the year 2001 -- during Commencement Week.)
Pointing out that the freshmen hail from all 50 states and 101 foreign countries, he noted the variety of backgrounds in this "splendidly qualified class," and thus, "part of my confidence in your ability to make an exceptional mark lies in your tremendous diversity. I am confident that eventually -- and in not too many years -- your influence will be felt around the world."
The speech was indeed sprinkled with praise, but it was also spiced with humor and seasoned with the advice of a man who recalled for the freshmen his first few days of college 37 years ago, a period of "intensity and vividness that is matched by only a few other experiences."
The beginning of his address elicited much laughter, especially when he gave a profile of "the average BU student" and quoted from a "typical" applicant's admission essay: " 'I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day, and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small brewery. The laws of physics do not apply to me. I have spoken with Elvis.' All other things being equal, this is exactly what we look for in a successful applicant," he quipped, "modesty and a proven ability to develop new skills."
He also spoke of a "complicated internal change" in the students that is about to begin. But how can anyone brace a freshman class for the joys and disappointments of what is to come over the next four years? "I can't predict exactly what that change will be," he said, "but I can, perhaps, by borrowing a conceit from Kafka, tell you what that change will be like. Imagine that one day you wake up and find that you like Masterpiece Theatre, that the stock market quotations are the most interesting part of the newspaper, and that you have a burning desire to eat Brussels sprouts. You would know that something had happened. You might suspect the CIA had planted little electrodes in your brain to turn you into your parents.
"Well, never fear," he added, "that is not the kind of transformation that Boston University will inspire." But he did warn of a day when students might wake up and find that they "actually enjoy reading Homer, that it is a genuine pleasure to master a foreign language, that you would gladly skip dinner for the chance to spend a few extra hours in physics lab or to work on a programming problem, that you find biochemistry or mechanical engineering to be more fun that you would like to admit," and, evoking a few winces from the audience, "that you find a good conversation about George Eliot's Middlemarch beats two hours spent watching the latest Hollywood epic about cockroaches from outer space, and that you take pleasure in knowing how to thrive in a major city and how to move with ease in the midst of all kinds of people in all kinds of places. One day you will wake up, and without understanding how it happened, you will find yourself with new ideas, attitudes, and tastes."
Although BU will not be solely responsible for these changes, "your Boston University education and experience will be the catalyst of your transformation . . . but relax: you will, I am sure, enjoy the transformation, and anyway, resistance is futile," he deadpanned.
Westling also alerted students to an impostor BU Web page that calls Warren Towers a "maximum security dormitory," refers to BU Beach as a "great place to catch killer waves," and in a "virtual tour" of campus, states that the sculptures around campus "fell off the Mir Space Station."
On a more serious note, he also spoke of the popularity of the World Wide Web as a research tool, saying that the Internet "offers useful resources and a stimulus to curiosity. One of the great benefits of a liberal arts education is the ability to recognize connections among diverse areas of knowledge and experience." On the other hand, he warned the Class of 2001 that a cyberspace odyssey "also encourages some habits of mind that are quite contrary to the spirit of liberal arts. Skipping across a range of misinformation and idle chatter, some Net surfers find themselves addicted to movement and not well-equipped to separate the worthy from the worthless. Jumping from rock to rock in the river of hypertext is not the same as following the steady stream of an absorbing narrative or plumbing the depths of a well-argued essay."
Westling encouraged freshmen to pursue their extracurricular interests and discover new talents -- even by taking courses that appear completely irrelevant to their preconceived aspirations. This zigzag movement among courses in several different fields, he said, "is a path that may have some whimsical detours and an occasional disappointment, but it is also the path of discovery, of finding out who you really are."