PREPARING FOR THE DEATH OF SANTA CLAUS

Dr. Stanley P. Caine, Convocation address to the student body, Aug. 28, 2002

In mid-July, Margaret Valade, the wife of our board chair, arranged for Karen and me to visit Meadowbrook Hall, a mansion located on the campus of Oakland University. As some of you may already know, Meadowbrook Hall is a major cultural center in this area, sponsoring art exhibitions, musical concerts and a variety of other programs each year. Mrs. Valade had arranged for us to meet with the director and assistant director to explore the possibility of internships for Adrian students at this important place.

In response to a question from the assistant director, I described briefly Adrian's long history as a liberal arts college. I emphasized our commitment to producing "active, successful and responsible" graduates, men and women who were broadly educated and capable of adjusting to changing circumstances. "Like when Santa Claus dies," she said.

When we looked a little puzzled, she explained. In her last position, she had been the manager of one of the largest shopping malls in the Detroit area. One of her first big promotions for the Christmas season had been something called "Breakfast with Santa Claus." For days her staff worked hard to decorate the mall in preparation for this Saturday morning event. She arrived early on that Saturday and made the rounds to insure that everything was in place. Feeling satisfied, she returned to the main lobby to discover that the man who had been employed to play Santa Claus had not yet arrived. None of her staff had seen him, so she began to make phone calls. That was when she got the bad news: the man slated to be Santa Claus had died peacefully in his sleep overnight.

What to do? Think about it: I suppose you could go out and tell the 25 or so children waiting for the event to begin that Santa Claus had died and the event had been cancelled. But that really didn't seem like a good idea.

As she cast about for a way out of this dilemma, she said she came to a new understanding of what work, and life, required: the ability to respond creatively when plans go awry, when the unexpected occurs. She went on to explain that she had had too many student interns who could develop interesting and elaborate plans, but had no idea how to respond when, almost inevitably, things did not work out exactly as planned. Too often these interns did not know how to accommodate change, to adjust to the unexpected. She said she liked the idea of supervising interns from a liberal arts institution because she assumed that these students would have the knowledge, skills and temperament to be problem solvers; to find a way out when Santa Claus dies.

In his book, Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain gives us a similar way of thinking about the requirements of modern life. He writes with reverence about the skilled pilots that guided the steamboats up and down the Mississippi River in the middle of the 19^th century. Successful pilots, Twain noted, had to understand this great river intimately. They had to know every snag and shallow place. They needed to memorize the landmarks along the river, the immutable things, that they could count on for guidance in good weather and bad. And, most of all, they had to accommodate the fact that the river was never the same from one day to the next. In the words of Joseph Featherstone, they had to "make and remake meaning as the river kept changing."

I suggest that we think of this College's mission as that of educating good pilots for the society and the world, women and men of clear convictions who can manage change and meet difficult challenges. Our task is help students identify the things that are lasting and eternal, the principles and beliefs that have stood the test of time, and to prepare them to be able to make sense, to "make meaning," and be effective in a complex and ever changing world.

Adrian's founders understood this assignment very well. It took remarkable courage and resolve to create a new institution of higher education in 1859 when the nation was unraveling and the American Civil War was about to begin. But the individuals who started this college believed that the path to progress in that troubled time would be forged by well educated people devoted to Christian service. Asa Mahan, our first president, talked of the value of an education that combined "knowledge and vital piety."

In defiance of the conventions of the time, our founders resolved to make the opportunity for higher education available for all qualified persons, irrespective of gender or race. So, in a time of great turmoil, they recruited a student body that included men and women, both black and white, and laid the foundation for a remarkably successful educational experiment. (See the picture outside of Dr. Borland's office if you would like a look at one of the first Adrian College classes.)

The College's history would include many lean years when sacrifice was required to keep the institution afloat, but it held to its fundamental purpose even during the hardest of times. One such period was during the Great Depression of the 1930's when a young man named Ross Newsom enrolled. When he faced a family tragedy, he experienced the generosity of a caring community. When the young Mr. Newsom lacked the resources to return to Texas for his mother's funeral, the Adrian College faculty, staff and students contributed the funds needed to buy him a train ticket and the business manager gave him ten dollars for the trip. Ross Newsom, who went on to a successful career as an educator, would later write that "this experience has been the greatest influence of my life."

We are now a much more prosperous institution. But the river we enter is more troubled than it has been for some time. The events of last September have created in all of us a new sense of vulnerability. In response, the country has embarked upon a war of uncertain cost and duration. The credibility of elements of our corporate system has been undermined by moral failures. Trust among persons has been diminished by highly publicized stories of abuse and exploitation. Economic uncertainties have made it more difficult for families, and institutions, to chart a steady course.

All of us are obligated, in a widely varying ways, to help the nation and the world find more solid ground. At Adrian College, this means insuring that we do all we can to provide the best possible education for our students. We can accomplish this most effectively by aggressively implementing our newly developed strategic plan.

Our focus in the coming year should be on three elements of that plan.

• The first is refining our "academic focus." I appreciate the good work of the College Planning Committee that has begun discussions concerning Adrian's "academic focus." I am encouraged that these discussions have included considerations of ways in which to improve our students' first year in college. I look forward to the completion of that task, and to the development of more effective ways of describing our academic distinctiveness to the wider audience beyond the campus.

• This year we must also renew our age-old commitment to being a place that attracts, welcomes and supports students from widely varying backgrounds. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes: "Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds." Our commitment must be to insure that there are no outsiders on this campus. We must do this because we believe in the principles of equality and respect for all persons. And because we need to hear the voices and utilize the talents of everyone if we are to reach our full potential as an educational institution. I look forward to the implementation of recommendations I have received quite recently from a hard working Ad Hoc Diversity Committee.

• And we must move ahead quickly with our continuing efforts to provide the facilities and resources necessary to support educational program that will meet the needs of this and future generations of students. In the coming months we will introduce a new generation of computers on the campus, remodel the dining hall, purchase new furniture for some classrooms and residence halls, buy new academic equipment and make a variety of other capital improvements to the campus.

• I am pleased also to announce our intention to begin the building of Ridge Student Center in May of 2003 with a completion date in the summer of 2004. For the first year students in our midst, this means by the time you are juniors, you will have a new student center.

Near the end of his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King writes this about change. "Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of [those] willing to be co-workers with God. . ." This is the our calling: this is what is required of us. This College must produce graduates who will be the builders of stronger communities, participants in the development of a corporate culture that does not tolerate ethical short cuts, contributors to a political order that serves well the broad interests of its citizenry. And it must train up generations of peacemakers who will help to keep alive the great hope of a world where all people can live in peace and harmony.

These men and women should be like the skillful pilots that Mark Twain admired, the persons who can help to guide us to safety along an ever changing and sometimes dangerous river. And they should know how to respond creatively and effectively when things don't go as planned (like, perhaps, when Santa Claus dies.)