FRESHMAN ORIENTATION 2014
MOST REVEREND GORDON D. BENNETT, S.J.
Thanks, Matt, and thanks to you and the whole Admissions Office for all you’ve done to gather these great men and women to our campus.
Good morning, class of 2018! And welcome to Loyola Marymount University. I also want to extend a very warm welcome to the parents and guardians of our new freshmen and thank you most sincerely for all the support you’ve given your sons and daughters during the college admissions process and for supporting their decision to attend LMU. We hope we will always be worthy of the trust you are placing in us.
In many ways, today is a public assurance of the terms of the covenant that we proposed to you in your acceptance packet, a covenant you need to know we take extraordinarily seriously. The university is very well aware of the enormous investment you, as parents and students, are making at this moment, certainly financially, but in every other way as well. You have every right to have high expectations of us, expectations we have for ourselves and expectations we intend to live up to.
It’s my great honor this morning to speak to you about the whole project of university education and about this particular community of learning you are now a part of.
We all know that every level of education has two distinct sides: education has a content, that is, it proposes a scope and a sequence of an academic course of studies e.g., (liberal arts, science, economics, business, education, music, dance, computer studies.) The content of education here at LMU had to have been very much a factor in your decision to apply. You asked yourself what you see yourself doing in the future and what academic achievement you will need to have mastered in order to get where you want to be. And you are either thinking about choosing a major field of investigation and research or you are still sampling possible professional paths. In either case, you have decided that LMU provides the academic sequence you want to dedicate yourself to pursuing
But, in addition to content in education, there is also a context in education, the social atmosphere and climate in which the content of education takes place. Important questions about context are: Is there a philosophy of life and of learning that underlies the academic program? Who are the professors and what is the quality of their interaction with the students? Does the faculty show the students rather than just tell them? What support systems for students does the school provide to accompany them through their academic, athletic, social, emotional and spiritual growth? Who are the students themselves and where do they come from? How does the interaction on campus facilitate a fuller understanding of oneself, of one’s faith, of others, of the world? Are there opportunities on campus which facilitate students being able to collaborate with one another, to develop strong bonds of affection and love? What is the quality and condition of the campus facilities and of the campus itself? Hopefully, your being here among us right now is the result of a decision that, in the area of context, as well as that of content, LMU offers what you are looking for.
With respect to the content of education, any reputable university will most likely be able to satisfy what you might be looking for in an academic sequence. If, for example, you are interested in pre-med studies, every college that offers pre-med will offer a course in organic chemistry. As a matter of fact, the content of education could pretty much be satisfied very well without attending a university at all; many young people your age, because of the rising cost of both public and private higher education, are deciding to do exactly that.
It is the context of education that truly makes the difference; and it is the context of education here at LMU that distinguishes us from other higher education offerings.
It’s worth spending a few minutes reflecting on how we at Loyola Marymount understand what we are trying to do beginning today.
This context of the education we offer has a definitive origin and goes back nearly 500 years to the life experience of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. St. Ignatius lived his early life as, in his own words, a rather vain, idealistic seeker of worldly glory and honor and the attention of women, as he served as a knight and a soldier in the Spanish army.
St. Ignatius ended his life in Rome, as a Catholic priest, as the superior general of a new religious order which had put itself at the service of the Church and, in just a few years, had grown enormously in numbers, enough to wield influence and bring about change on four continents.
One would have to conclude that something extraordinary had to have happened to Ignatius for the arc of his life to have been so radically altered, and that is exactly what occurred. In a battle against the French, Ignatius was severely wounded when a cannonball shattered his leg. After a couple of surgeries, without anesthesia, to attempt to heal the wound and set the bone correctly, Ignatius was confined to recuperate in his family’s castle in Spain. During his long convalescence, he had the experiences of insight, choice and awareness which changed his life in such profound ways that you and I are here today talking about the impact this one man has had on the world.
St. Ignatius’ conversion was profoundly spiritual and was intricately bound up in his mystical experience of the love of God for him personally, and his intense desire to return God’s love by serving Jesus Christ. But in the process of describing the impact that ordered passion and generous service have on a human being, on how a human being comes to value and to choose, Ignatius happened upon and described a way of living in love which will bring anyone who is capable of being honest with themselves to interior freedom, ultimate meaning, and deep peace.
Interior freedom, meaning and peace are universal human values. They include religious faith but they also transcend faith. Because they are universal values, they are both the source and the summit of all noble human endeavor and aspiration. Thus, the Ignatian method, while it is thoroughly Catholic (with the capital C) in its origin and in its present incarnation at LMU, it has also become a familiar and invaluable resource for anyone at all who values excellence, personal integrity, academic originality and rigor, and a commitment to justice and service in the world.
Let me highlight three pillars the Ignatian method is built upon which underlie every one of the ministries he established and are particularly evident as we describe the context of the education we are offering to you today.
The first pillar is Ignatius’ vision of the world that, for all practical purposes, reverses the way we ordinarily view reality, i.e., he invites us to move from a standpoint of “I’ll believe it when I see it” to “I’ll see it when I believe it.” Ignatius invites us into a beautiful and sacred world of limitless possibility in which reality includes more than what meets the eye, more than what can be assumed or measured or observed, a world that you and I encounter and are affected by every single day even if we are not aware of it.
The second pillar is Ignatius’ emphasis on using the human imagination, the ability to think critically, and the impulse to simply stand in wonder as the sources of all true learning. Only imagination and wonder will allow us to gain access to that world of possibility out of which our passion for learning and our attraction to service will emerge. Ignatius invites us to aim high and to dream big.
The third pillar is Ignatius’ emphasis on wanting to be, not only competent, but excellent. Hopefully, none of you here this morning are coming here because your deepest desire in life is to be mediocre. Ignatius invites us to see ourselves as being outstanding, not in the selfish, adolescent, narcissistic sense, but in the sense that re-creating the world we live in takes men and women with generous hearts and brave souls, men and women whose compassion for humanity is so immediate, so immense, and so well-honed that, in whatever field of study they find themselves, they feel that they are crucial to the advancement of the entire human project and of every human being.
These three pillars underlie what we offer here as the context of our education; and over five centuries, this method has continued to attract and engage persons of every gender, race, faith and culture with demonstrable success. You are the inheritors of that great tradition; it is now being both offered and entrusted to you, to each one of you without exception.
Just a month ago, I was listening to members of the class of 2014 try to express in words what their four years here had done for them. The word that dominated the 16 speeches I listened to was “transformation”, becoming a new person, living in knowledge of, acceptance of, and in some cases, a confrontation with, their best self, the one they believe they had been created to be.
Whether you will use that word to describe your experience here after four years will depend, to a great extent, on how you allow yourself to engage both the content and the context of LMU, whether you choose to connect your learning with your living, whether you choose to desire to be not just smarter, but better, whether you aspire to become not just successful, but significant.
I can’t resist giving you some advice about how to interface with LMU’s content and context because I firmly believe that everyone here has a right to my opinion.
- Remember that this university is unequivocally on your side: take advantage of the support systems that are available to you, in the orientation leaders, in the residence hall staff, in the offerings of Student Affairs, in the Campus Ministry. Be humble enough to reach out when you need to. There’s nothing we desire more and little we are more skilled at than facilitating your growth and health as an individual.
- Allow yourself to take some risks, to step out of your comfort zone: the risk of honesty by being yourself, not a fake or false self, but the one without masks and without extra identities – be yourself, everyone else is taken!
Dignity, take the risk that, whoever you are, you are good; and nothing outside of you or no one outside of you will be able to add anything to your dignity: hold on to your soul (don’t become a slave to the expectations of others under the illusion that you will be more acceptable to them.)
Community: LMU would never work if everyone considered themselves the center of the universe. Realize that our life together in this diverse community involves a level of mutual responsibility which includes everyone being absolutely respectful of, and compassionately taking care of, one another. Take the risk of responsibility: realize that you are responsible for what you choose to do and what you choose to avoid; and that all choices have consequences which, as an adult, one cannot escape.
And simplicity: be content with living life in a drama-free way, realizing that there’s no social totem pole in which your position changes daily.
- Take the long view. I recommend that you take some time before classes begin to write a personal mission statement that lists your ultimate academic and personal goals. What do I want to achieve and who do I want to be? Review it from time to time to determine whether the road your choices and avoidances have put you on is leading you where you want to end up. And remember: wasting time is wasting money, in most cases, that money is not yours. Once in a while, look in the mirror, and after you have gotten over how insanely hot you are, look into your own eyes and ask yourself whether you recognize the person you see.
- By all means, try to continue to distinguish between opinion and fact, between fun and immaturity, between information and wisdom, between want and need, and between reputation and character. Most of your success in college and beyond will depend upon your ability to make these distinctions.
- Lastly, give your poor, tired texting thumbs some rest by taking some time each day for some silence, for some respite from the external and internal noise that invades your life continually. Silence is the place where you can discover possibility, where you can encounter wonder, where you can let your imagination take flight, where you can resolve to aim high, where you can come face to face with the truth, where you can admit your motives, where you can let your soul breathe. Socrates called this living the examined life, Ignatius called it prayer, I call it essential.
So 2018, welcome aboard! We are setting sail on this exciting voyage together, you as paying customers, the rest of us as your service crew. I can’t promise that the winds will always be fair and the waters smooth (that really never happens), but I do promise that, if you let us, we can deliver you to the safe shores to which you signed up with us to take you. And I can promise you that, if you let it, if you can leave behind your fear or your pride, this will indeed be the journey that transforms you, the journey that changes your life, the journey you will never regret, the journey you will never forget.
Thank you for listening to me; and I pray that the One who has the steerage of our course will protect us and direct our sail.