<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Daniel Mason '93 was just about to graduate from Boston Medical School
when he shot two men killing one after a parking dispute.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>These stories demonstrate that it takes more than a Dartmouth degree to
build character.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>What is the purpose of our education? Why are we at Dartmouth?</p>
<p>Martin Luther King, Jr. said:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>It’s so easy to focus on the defects of others and ignore my own. But I
need saving as much as they do.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In the words of Bono:</p>
<p>*f only we could be a bit more like Him, the world would be
transformed. …When I look at the Cross of Christ, what I see up there is all
my s— and everybody else’s. So I ask myself a question a lot of people
have asked: Who is this man? And was He who He said He was, or was He
just a religious nut? And there it is, and that’s the question.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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?</p>