Good morning W bash speaking today at Pioneer Chapel will be president Scott Feller with his talk titled Rivals Dr Scott Feller is the 17th president of w bash college and holds the title of Professor of chemistry he arrived at w bash in 1998 as a chemistry professor and over the
Span of his career has served as department chair division chair and for six years as the dean of the college he is also a nationally recognized researcher and has earned 10 grants from the National Science Foundation National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration elected by the Board of
Trustees at the onset of the pandemic president Feller has proven again and again that he is unflappable and unded in the face of in the face of uncertainty and he is able to keep his focus on the best interest of our students faculty and staff all while making a commitment to students
Traditionally underserved by higher education he’s a graduate of will Amit University in Oregon and earned his PHD in physical chemistry from the University of California at Davis Scott and his wife Wendy have two grown children Amanda and Jake and they own a farm in rural Montgomery County let’s
Give a warm welcome to president Feller good morning Wes I want to thank the Sphinx club for inviting me to give this week’s talk this is only my second Chapel talk as president it’s actually the first one I’ve given from this stage the other Chapel talk I gave the seniors may
Recall was in the fall of 2020 it was out there on the mall 2020 was a rough year uh for me at least I’d say the the good memories are are few the few that I do have revolve around times when individual students faculty and staff Rose above the
Difficult conditions of the moment to lead effectively and to live humanely some years ago I accompanied Professor Derek Nelson on a trip to South Africa Africa it was part of the Wabash pastoral leadership program it’s essentially an immersion trip for a dozen or so early career pastors who were participating in the
Program it was also one of the most memorable weeks of my life the experiences were so intense it was easy to have a kind of sensory Overlord I’m being toured around Robin island with uh NE one of Nelson Mandela’s cellmates I’m at a birthday celebration for Desmond Tutu one morning I hope some
Of your immersion trips have had these kinds of intensity to the experiences but one of Dr Nelson’s most important lessons to us was to remind us early on and often that we don’t learn from our experiences nearly as much as we learn from our reflection of those
Experiences and that may be why my 2020 memories are so vague they’re about individuals or small groups what the pandemic stole from us were the communal experiences those things we experien together things we could talk about in the following weeks things on which we could reflect with
Others that we could discuss and debate and ultimately store in our individual and Collective Consciousness and in the years since the pandemic I’ve come to better appreciate the value of communal experiences and that’s also perhaps because it feels like we live in the era of the
Individual few of us fewer of us are married or have romantic Partners we have fewer friends participation in churches and other Civic organizations is on the decline now researchers identify this as a as a long-term Trend it began before the pandemic it’s continued after the pandemic but I think that the rapid
Onset and the sustained isolation from covid-19 jolted me into an awareness of the value of community that’s one of the reasons that I made the construction of a true Community Center for Wabash our College’s highest priority so I want to share my thoughts today about Community uh the first the first is
About the mon on Bell game certainly one of our signature communal events on this campus and one that we also missed in 2020 it tends to be right up there with ringing in commencement comprehensive exams on my list of the top communal experiences at this good
Place now before I dive in let me be clear you you are welcomed to disagree with anything or everything I have to say this morning I will ask that you don’t reject it reflexively don’t dismiss my ideas because they don’t fit your prior assumptions or because you know you
Don’t like me or the administration don’t like people people from Oregon uh I don’t know don’t like sheep Farmers whatever but if you’ll listen and think critically and reflect on my message ideally communally with others and you decide I’m wrong I’m totally cool with that in fact if you
Want to get a cup of coffee sometime to tell me why I’m wrong that would be even better so I want to talk about rivalry and I started thinking about this after our second football game of last fall uh we played the Bulldogs over at the butler Bowl on a really beautiful
Saturday evening the Wes Club of Indianapolis organized a nice tailgating event that brought together many hundreds of Wabash students alumni and their families and friends of the college and the game attracted even more I would guess there were three or 4,000 w fans based on the stated attendance
Which exceeded 6,000 people and my estimate that 2third of the stadium was wearing red Wendy and I took Gus our six-year-old grandson I was able to see and meet current students my former students and alumni who graduated more than 50 years ago back when w bash and Butler were Fierce
Rivals and more importantly I met their spouses their Partners their children I met their parents their neighbors their friends from work the Wes Nation turned out to cheer for the little giants to be sure but also to share in fellowship and Brotherhood and to show the people who
Are important to them what Wes is all about I saw a lot of Wabash red before during and after that game but I also saw a lot of mixing with Butler blue there were families who had members that attended both schools W bash dads and their Butler daughters current students
With friends at Butler and alums with co-workers who are Butler grads it was a great evening Wabash was loud and enthusiastic and supporting our team there was a moment in the third quarter when you could literally see the fear in the eye eyes of the butler fans as it
Felt like a Wabash always fights comeback was in the works now ultimately that wasn’t in the cards but it didn’t matter we were proud of our team and we showed our absolute best selves the latter was clear to me the next week when we received feedback from the
Butler security and cleaning crews on how much they appreciated our fans Behavior now all of this is supposed to make a college President happy and while I was experiencing the game I was ecstatic because of all these good things I just told you but as the days
Went by and I reflected on what I witnessed my feelings actually changed I felt bad because our experience at Butler made me confront for the first time what we’re missing out on at the Monon Bell game when we play toal we separate families and we separate friends and we never show our best
Selves and neither does depal we end up strangely taking Pride each year in which school behaves less badly now each year one of the teams wins a football game but I fear that each year both institutions are losing because we’re missing out on an opportunity to showcase two exceptional institutions of higher
Education I fully realize I may have just lost my Audience by saying something positive about depa and that’s the root of our problem we have lost the ability to see them as Rivals as good and worthy competitors who push us to be better instead we use rhetoric that frames depa as our enemy
And let me be clear they do exactly the same thing it definitely happens for a week every November and I worry we let it happen too many other times throughout the year we need to reflect on the differences between Rivals and enemies why do we need to tear them down rather
Than build ourselves up why do we use terms like evil to describe people who are in fact our friends why can’t we even acknowledge that they are our friends those of you who are from Indiana probably have a friend or two at depal most faculty and staff have a
Friend there depal president Lori White is my friend shift ing from Rivals to enemies just changes our language in such unhelpful ways we talk about we talk in ways that emphasize difference over commonality we use languages like hate an enemy and destroy it feels like it’s more important that they lose than we
Win reflect on that for a minute it’s more important that they lose then we win not only do we use language that emphasize difference over commonality but for the last 25 years we’ve literally separated our schools on game day we use red tickets and yellow tickets we fence off the North and South
Sides of the stadium those fences amplify The Divide I fear they perhaps send an unintended message that we expect the worst behavior from each other now I don’t like it when people bring me problems without bringing potential Solutions but I admit I I don’t yet see the path to get from the
Current moan on Bell environment to something closer to our Butler experience I do think it begins with language and I fully admit it will be tough I realize I must reprogram my own language knowing how easy it is to casually slip into patterns that I have developed over the past 20 6
Years ultimately our two campus communities must decide that we’re ready for change I generally shy away from top- down Solutions and this problem in particular seems ill suited for presidential decrees so you won’t hear one from me there needs to be a will to change both from students and alumni from both
Wes and depal my challenge to those who would like to see this change is to think creatively about what our first steps might look like they can and perhaps need to be small steps to get started I would love to hear your thoughts about small steps we could take to get a little
Better and to repeat that and to repeat that and to repeat that and get to a place where there aren’t any es in the Little Giant Stadium or in Blackstock Stadium I’ve heard from alumni at both schools who would like to see us move back to a spirit of rivalry based on
Admiration and respect and President White and I have been discussing a joint alumni event the week of the Monon Bell game that could potentially give us a start but the bottom line is I need your help for us to make progress and I would invite anyone to give Bev a call over in
My office I’ll happily buy a cup of coffee for anybody who wants to talk about ideas and solutions so as I mentioned I’ve been around the Monon Bell rivalry for almost half my life I’ve seen it grow less and more intense over the years I also want to say that I believe
That our current situation which I might describe as all hate and no respect is not unique to Wes and to Paw I fear in fact it reflects broader attitudes in our country so I want to shift gears now to talk about another contest in early November the 2024 presidential election
It seems to me our political parties and our candidates have also moved from rivals to enemies the inflammatory and derogatory language we use to describe the other party makes Bel game chance seem pretty tame by comparison everything is framed as negative every any step forward is simultaneously used as a weapon of Hate
By the other side I’d challenge any of you to watch five or 10 minutes of Indianapolis newscast just to see the political commercials right now you’ll quickly see what I’m talking about you can check out the ads for our gubernatorial candidates and you’ll see the majority do nothing but trash and
Opponent rarely do these ads prop up the values of the candidate who’s paying for the commercial here again we seem less concerned that our candidate wins than we are that the other candidate loses it seems that the goal is not to make the country better with my ideas but to
Prevent the destruction of the nation by my enemy we’re not talking about ideas we’re talking about people and we’re using really unhelpful language I actually think we have much more commonalities than the present moment suggests I think we generally want the same things from our government public safety access to decent paying jobs
Health care affordable housing some common sense laws good streets civic pride but we spend way too much time arguing about how we can provide these basic needs and far too little time working together to make them happen for the benefit of all so this dehumanizing rhetoric dominates both political campaigns and
Athletic competitions but I’m afraid it doesn’t stop there it has crept into virtually every aspect of our lives and I think social media has tended to normalize it let me be clear dehumanizing rhetoric is not normal it’s toxic it coarsens our language to the point that insults and
Slurs come out as second nature with no thought for how those words are received think for a moment about what some of us shouted at wooster’s basketball players about them their coaches even their girlfriends these are hardworking young men we don’t even know do we think those players are
Really different from ammani Jones from Sam comr from Noah hoopman sadly this toxic dehumanizing language can take over an entire Community RIT large it spreads way too easily before we know it we’re using Unthinkable language on people who should be our friends and our brothers I worry this is part of what
Happened at beta side chapter of Delta Delta a few weeks ago every member of this Campus Community is worthy of has earned earned our mutual respect choosing to attend or work at Wabash embracing the grind constantly challenging yourself to be the very best version of your authentic self we share
These things in common every single one of us if it’s true that we are one wob bash two or three times a year for these powerful communal events then it must be true that we are one Wabash every day of the year yes there are differences between us yet yet those differences are
Trivial compared with what we share in common a love of learning a desire for excellence and shared Brotherhood and lifelong relationships that are at the heart the very essence of our College when we sling around derog atory terms in a locker room spray paint homophobic words on a fraternity chapter house or
Question in any way a person’s worth we violate the letter and spirit of the gentleman’s rule that defines us we chip away at the foundation of community that holds this good place together and we fail to live out our mission of our College to think critically act responsibly lead effective ly and live
Humanely when I ring out the class of 2024 in a little over a month my thoughts will focus on whether we have fulfilled the promise we articulated on a Hot August day four years ago did our graduates receive a worldclass liberal arts education did they learn to judge ideas
And not people did they live by the gentleman ‘s Rule and in my closing words to our graduates that day there will be a charge I will call on them to leave the college and go out and be good wob bash men if what I said is true that the
Current culture of all hate and no respect is a national problem then why can’t a small band of liberally educated young men provide A New Path why can’t we Embrace and live out our values each and every day no matter the athletic or political opponent or the perceived differences between
Us the title of this talk is Rivals so to close I’ll give one of Miriam Webster’s definition of the transitive verb quote to possess qualities or aptitudes that approach or equal those of another other as we leave this chapel today I hope you’ll reflect on the word rivalry
Shift your thinking from hatred of others to the idea that our Rivals possess qualities and aptitudes that approach or equal our own it won’t be easy but I assure you that it will be worth it I’d suggest maybe we could get started with some little steps reflect on these remarks as I said
Schedule some time to grab a cup of coffee and think about it more importantly discuss with your teammates your classmates your roommates your ideas about how to reduce hate and lift up mutual respect for our Rivals talk in your classrooms and living units about your hopes for a fall
Election season when we cheer on our he our candidates with healthy resp respect for our Rivals and together let’s all of us imagine a vision for Wabash where every member of our community is respected and valued a place where every person feels like they belong where we are truly one W bash thank
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