Student organizations don’t celebrate centennials.
For most students, the lifespan of their “college” is measured in four-year quanta. Dean Ben Rogge knew that all the way back in 1963, June 8th, to be precise, when he said, “Your Wabash College existed for only one brief four-year period, a period that is now closing. Next year this college will be different from what it was this year.”
That is the great and terrible thing about a place like Wabash. The fact that this place changes means that the students here have wide latitude to change with it. Heaven knows that I have taken advantage of that opportunity on a whole host of issues. I am not the same person that I was in the fall of 2004, the spring of 2006, or last week. No one, except the clinically insane, can manage to hold on to his persona with such an iron grasp.
At the same time, the fact that this place changes – in its physical and intellectual landscape – can lead to traditions and organizations falling into quiescence. The men whose passion led them to form an organization or start a ritual of sorts will be, assuming all goes to plan, graduated in their turns. The underclassmen will care just a little bit less with each successive iteration until, one day, there is no one left to take up the torch and carry on the cause.
So, when I say that student organizations don’t celebrate centennials, I think that I am not without my reasons. I should note, too, that fraternities and the like are automatically exempted from that rule. The external accidents of the bond formed by that initial spark of amity and mutual passion exists in, more or less, so I understand, the same form for the current generation as for the first.
What, then, is so special about the Bachelor?
There is no ritual, except a communal sort of suffering on layout night when the deadline approaches with a cold inexorability. There are no shared specific values that will inspire the men of the Class of 2011 in equal measure as the Class of 1908. There aren’t even consistent external accidents onto which the men who staff the paper may cling and say, “This is why I care.” The paper over which I preside looks – in form and content – much different from the paper I saw as a pre-frosh and then as a freshman, all the way back in 2004.
The Bachelor changes, as Wabash and her loyal sons change: sometimes for good, sometimes for ill, but it always changes.
It is true, as some of you, dear readers, know: there are occasionally passionate cliques of individuals, all motivated by a common vision of the Bachelor and its place on campus. Those groups, I am reminded of a comment from Ken Burns’ series, The Civil War, burn like comets: they illuminate the paper and the campus for a brief moment and then fade.
Those men, too, in their turn, leave Wabash and go on to their lives. Their passion might motivate the next couple of generations, but – even then – “the mystic chords of memory” grow fainter and fainter, until there is nothing left but some moldering issues of a newspaper sitting in the basement of the Armory.
Still, the Bachelor endures.
I cannot tell you why, when so many worthy student organizations pass into memory and history, the newspaper remains, strong as often as it is weak, in an almost-unbroken string from this issue, to the first, published almost exactly 100 years ago.
I have an idea.
The Bachelor, in its own, quirky way, represents what Wabash means to students. The news section encapsulates the mundane and the magnificent in equal share, just as our time at Wabash has events that will be remembered for the rest of our lives and those that will be forgotten the same day. The opinion section refracts just a little bit of the animated and intense discussions that happen every day here. The stuff section represents the wideranging interests of Wabash men, and – of late – has endeavored to tell the stories of a few of them.
The sports section, too, captures the facts and the thoughts about an important part of life here. Student experience here varies, but the Bachelor connects with many students in many ways because each section manages, I hope, to present at least one aspect of life at Wabash that resonates with each student.
Will most of you remember that time I took the football coaching staff to task for kicking a blood-drive out of the field house to spare our fine sod? No. Will you remember the times you were critical of the administration, faculty, or staff? Maybe, but probably not. Will you, however, remember the critical spirit with which Wabash imbues all of us? I hope so; otherwise, your education has been in vain.
That is what I mean: the Bachelor represents the universal principles of Wabash in the particular instances that help form our impressions of what this place means. You won’t remember every lecture, every meeting, every controversy, or even every sporting victory. You will, however, remember to think critically, to take in all sides of an issue, to formulate an opinion, and to be passionate about the events that give flavor to life.
The Bachelor does not defy the laws of human organizations. It waxes and it wanes. The men who define it for a few years, at most, move along in life, letting another group come in and make the publication their own. The issues that make it loved and hated, in turns or at the same time, will change, but there will always be issues that engage and inflame the campus.
Student organizations don’t celebrate centennials, but the Bachelor defies that rule. It can only do that because of Wabash. This College is on the frontiers, in, “the country to be benefited by such an institution, as the other institutions of the state do not afford a prospect of supplying its wants.” The Founders were, “resolved to establish a school of high character in [this] place.” Something of their character – faithful, hopeful, indomitable, and tenacious – has left a mark here.
The Bachelor can endure where other organizations rise and fall because it provides a snapshot of a unique place and of men of whom Oliver Wendell Holmes comment of the Civil War rings true: “Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.”
Nothing that records something that grand, that wonderful, and that powerful ever passes away from its home, though its stewards do, as they must.
The Bachelor endures because Wabash and her students endure. Student organizations don’t celebrate centennials, but Wabash, her ideals, and her student do and will. Anything that devotes itself to those things will have its own share of this College’s longevity.