A PLACE OF WELCOME AND CHALLENGE
I am told that Professor of Biology Tom Cole ’58 used to memorize the names and faces of incoming freshmen. That way he could greet each freshman by name on the Mall between classes during their first few weeks on campus.
I can imagine a new student’s surprise upon being welcomed to Wabash by this quiet, thoughtful, well-dressed professor. The student wouldn’t realize the man speaking his name was Phi Beta Kappa, a former graduate assistant at Cal Tech who worked on research with a future Nobel Prize winner, a brilliant researcher, and an admired, but challenging, teacher. He almost certainly did not know that the man greeting him was the son of a coal miner and had grown up in a small town in the Midwest.
The freshman probably wondered how Cole knew his name (I am told he may have had a photographic memory). It’s typical that freshmen, in their first week in college, feel insignificant and far from family. Tom Cole let them know they mattered and belonged here.
What does it say about Wabash that while Cole’s particular method of welcoming students may have been unique, such hospitality was not, and that it continues today?
I suspect many of our alumni can name a professor or staff member who helped them through those first few weeks. In this issue of the magazine, Ward Poulos ’96 talks about his ideas “being valued from the start” during his classes. He recalls getting together with Professors Glen Helman and Bill Placher ’70 to talk with them and try out those ideas. He says, “I had a seat at the table.”
Tom Cole’s welcome to freshmen on the Mall swung open the College’s door to hundreds upon hundreds of young men.
Some colleges exist for status. They create an elite air for themselves, which, at its genesis, is about selectivity: Who belongs and who doesn’t belong. I know colleges where people will spend their whole lives trying to prove that they belong, though they never will.
Wabash was founded on the Western frontier to be different, to do better for more young men. As the College’s first president, Elihu Baldwin said in 1836: “Some are jealous of colleges as institutions that minister to the aristocracy by elevating a portion of the community intellectually above their fellows. And knowledge is power. We should doubtless guard against whatever is unfriendly to equal rights... A most desirable improvement would be some adequate provision through which the benefits of a thorough course [of study] could be more equally extended to all citizens.”
The “movers and shakers” in this issue come from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds, but they all worked hard to get where they are today; and many learned how to do that here. Wabash is a meritocracy. You will be welcomed. You will be tested. You will be supported. But everything you get at Wabash you earn.
The Wabash model is not one of exclusion, but of gratitude. Once you get to campus, it’s all about what you do, not about how much money you have or the car you drive. It’s about how hard you work, how well you perform, and if you behave like a gentleman.
We are not a status-centered institution; we are a student-centered institution. That allows us to elevate our students, rather than our status.
i was thinking about this after the January meeting of the Board of Trustees, when we had been discussing the new campus master plan and how it will shape the look, feel, and performance of Wabash into its third century. We are thinking hard about how we create the kinds of interactions with our students, faculty, staff, and alumni that help sustain a thoughtful college. What does a residential liberal arts college look like as we move into our third century?
There are many parts to this plan—the residential life district and athletic facilities among them. But the Mall is central to all we do. It defines our academic endeavor and is the core of our work together.
Every generation or so, other parts of the College change, but the Mall has remained. The Chapel on the Mall is where students are rung in. It is filled with young men’s voices singing “Old Wabash” during Chapel Sing. It is where students are rung out on Commencement Day.
The pathways connecting the buildings are like an intersection of different disciplines, the foot traffic a metaphor for the ideas that flow between them. It is where we talk about those timeless truths that connect the holistic education of our students.
It is where they discover that, once you ask the right question, you can’t stop until you answer it.
In whatever ways the campus changes in the coming years, the Mall will always be at the heart of Wabash.
spring is finally here as I write this. On the Mall, students’ voices are rising with the temperatures. I am fortunate to have an office that looks out onto this space. It’s the same Center Hall office that has been occupied for 74 years by Wabash presidents, including Byron Trippet ’30. His words are well-known here: “Once on this familiar campus and once in these well-known halls, students and teachers as real as ourselves worked and studied, argued and laughed and worshiped together, but now are gone.
“If you listen, you can hear their songs and their cheers.”
For the students of Tom Cole’s era, surely one of those voices is his, welcoming each freshman, by name, to a place he already belonged.
GREGORY HESS President | hessg@wabash.edu