Unbelievably Good Student Convocation Speech at Dartmouth

Editor’s Note: Student Body President Noah Riner ‘06 spoke to the incoming class of ‘09 at today’s Convocation.

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.

“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.

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?

Praise to Noah Riner!

I live 60 miles north of Dartmouth. Its faculty is
populated by quintessential liberals. Needless to say, I wouldn't send my Irish Setter there for an education, let alone one of my children.

To understand Dartmouth and the absolute anti-political correctness context of Riners speech, take a look here.

I hope Riner survives this.

It doesn't surprise me that the speech was quickly censored on the Dartmouth Site.

http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/09/22/dartmouths_worst.php

Text:From Dartmount Review ( Republican Students)

Dartmouth’s Worst
Thursday, September 22, 2005

Andrew Garrod – Education

Many unsuspecting freshmen choose Garrod’s Education 20 course because it is hailed in certain circles as “the best class at Dartmouth.” Others stumble into the class expecting an easy A for mastering Horton Hears a Who. You will, alas, be seriously disappointed if you anticipate either. All assignments are graded by upper-class education minors and required to be endlessly re-written with little explanation. Garrod himself does not apologize for his political biases and is wont to show them, presenting as undisputed fact arguments for his pet liberal causes.

Marysa Navarro-Aranguren – History

A dubious distinction, this professor was featured in the very first issue of The Dartmouth Review–over twenty-five years ago. She is still causing problems on the Dartmouth campus today. She is perhaps the most notoriously biased grader in Dartmouth’s history and a feminist reactionary to the bone.

Richard Winters – Government

This former department chair has turned off a number of prospective government majors from even taking a second course in the department with his abysmal performances in Government 3. In one of the first professor evaluations in the Review, we wrote of unbearable “Winters in Hanover.” Nearly two decades later, he’s still here, and somebody forgot to tell him that Mondale lost. Winters claims to be an empiricist, but the only support for his assertions are nonsensical, indecipherable scribbles on the chalkboard. Drop his class before it’s too late.

Lynda Boose – English

How Professor Boose managed to secure a position at Dartmouth is astounding. Nothing good can be said about this lady. She left her English 5 class to sit through more than four weeks of soap operas in place of class lectures. She frequently cancels class with little warning; she once missed class for a whole week because of a toothache. Avoid this nutty professor by any means necessary.

Robert Caldwell – Physics

If you’re a Physics or Engineering major, Caldwell will do nothing to translate what is already a very demanding and difficult subject. He lectures with his back to the class and sidesteps questions, scribbling convoluted problems on the blackboard that he inadequately explains and can’t complete without his notes or teacher’s guide. He manages to make a dull subject even duller; students report that they actually know less after taking Caldwell’s courses than they did going into it. Take him only if it’s required for your major.

Michael Ermarth – History

Ermarth is hands-down the worst lecturer at Dartmouth–he is utterly incomprehensible. Ermarth is a fine scholar (he studies German intellectual history) but it’s as though his mind unhinges when he steps into the classroom. His lectures are at once dense and rambling, combining numbing, irrelevant tangents with meaningless generalities. He’s ultimately impenetrable. It doesn’t help that he speaks with a thick accent and is fond of nonsensical analogies: he once claimed that the spread of the Third Reich was like “a spider web with octopus tentacles.”

Brenda Silver – English

An avid feminist critic, Professor Silver reads literature with the firm belief that anything longer than it is round must be a phallus. Silver is addicted to anything anti-male and holds androgyny to be the human ideal. If you enjoy listening to the classics of Western culture being destroyed by feminist deconstruction, then you will love her lectures.

Ronald Edsforth – MALS

Professor Edsforth ranks amongst Dartmouth’s most notorious professors. He’s managed to teach here for over a decade without getting tenure, hanging on to a job only through the much-maligned MALS program. It’s little wonder why, really, considering that Edsforth’s particular brand of scholarship is light on disinterested inquiry but heavy on heavy rhetoric worthy of the Daily Worker. Students misfortunate enough to enroll in his ‘War and Peace’ class last spring learned little about war; some about the evils of American car companies (seriously); much about about castle-in-the-sky theories for world government.

Mathilde Sitbon – French

Madame Sitbon teaches the broadly-titled “French Language and Culture” class on the French FSP in Paris. An unapologetic socialist, as the French are wont to be, she makes no effort to leave her opinions at the door when she comes into the classroom. Always quick to criticize American politics and culture, she subscribes to the popular opinion that “the French way is the right way” and isn’t afraid to share it. Needless to say, Mme. Sitbon plays favorites like it’s her job; men and anyone she perceives to be privileged inevitably come out on the short end of this arrangement. Unfortunately, because Sitbon teaches on the FSP during all three terms, any student traveling to Paris must take her class.

Tanalis Padilla – History

One tasty tidbit: Padilla made her students come to an x-hour once to watch a movie extolling the virtues of the Zapatista terrorists who are fighting against the global capitalist conspiracy and the evil Mexican central government. The video featured the profound commentary of the angry bandmembers from Rage Against the Machine, countless crackpot academics, and even featured the indomitable, cop-killing Mumia Abu-Jamal. Take her classes only if you want to hear rants against US imperialism in Latin America.

Ann Bumpus – Philosophy

Bumpus is a case study on how not to use PowerPoint. Her “lecture” consists of progressing through slide after slide, each with a long quotation. At times it seems as if she hasn’t prepared anything beforehand, as she pauses for minutes on end, combing through a pile of papers. She’s a nice enough woman and gives very generous marks, but unless boredom is your bag, keep away.

Dartmouth’s Worst Professor
Shelby Grantham – English

A self-described “recovering racist” who makes her classes into an airing of grievances rather than a study of literature because she “can’t read male authors anymore,” Grantham injects her Introductory Writing courses with dogmatic liberalism. Notorious for declaring Band-Aids “racist” because of their color, she terrorizes those who disagree with her and fills her class with rants that verge on insanity (the plight of the lobsters at the Co-Op apparently keeps her from sleeping at night). If you find yourself unlucky enough to be assigned to her Writing 5 section, bolt for the door.

Also of Freeper Interest:

http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/09/22/what_you_know_is_wrong.php

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Noah Riner ‘06 Welcomes Class of ‘09