On Sunday, September 1, 2002, the College officially began the 2002-2003 academic year. Because of inclement weather, the opening convocation took place in Anita Tuvin Schlecter Auditorium, with President Durden convening the College for the new academic year.

The address Expectations, Standards and the Desire To Be the Best was given by Thomas DiBiagio, Esq. '82. The Presidential Scholarships were awarded to a rising male and female senior who have distinguished themselves in the areas of leadership and scholarship while at Dickinson. The Senior and Junior sophisters were recognized, as well as the new members of Phi Beta Kappa.

At the conclusion of the opening ceremonies, the new students processed up the stone steps of Old West to sign into the College.

Remarks by William G. Durden, President

Soon, the Class of 2006 and other new students will enter Old West and Memorial Hall, sign into the College and thereby become official Dickinsonians for a lifetime. Let me begin by commending each of you on your wise choice in a college. In making this choice, you have already joined a very accomplished group of individuals.

While Dickinson is proud to be among the nation's most prestigious liberal arts colleges, we are even more proud of our distinctiveness. We know who we are and we define ourselves from out of our own assets. We are, you see, a liberal arts college unlike any other. We are, in fact, Distinctively Dickinson.

Permit me to take a few minutes to elaborate. Over the next four years, you will hear a great deal about our founder, Dr. Benjamin Rush. Rush, a physician by training, was a true revolutionary in many ways. Not only did he early embrace the colonies quest for independence from England and ultimately, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but he also advocated for social and political causes far in advance of his contemporaries. Rush, for example, was one of the first to speak out openly against slavery. He funded personally the building of the first African-American church in America and attended it. He pushed for the education of women. He argued for the need for a free public school system and he worked tirelessly to upgrade the public health conditions of the urban poor. He worried about the poor constantly and early noted the severe divide in access to basic human service and the disproportionate suffering between rich and poor: In the midst of a yellow fever epidemic-September 18th, 1793 he wrote, "Some of the rich suffer, but the weight of the distress and the mortality falls upon the poor."

Rush's views on education were equally revolutionary. He received his medical training in Scotland at a time when the Scots were developing particularly progressive ideas about the interaction between education and society. Rush brought these ideas back to the colonies with him and he soon began to think of American higher education as an integral and necessary component of revolutionary thought and action.

To this end, Rush carried back with him at least three powerful ideas:

• To Rush, education was to be, above all, useful. The success of the new democratic nation would be dependent upon citizens who were well-informed, pragmatic, engaged and resourceful. To achieve this constellation of qualities, Rush's conception of education combined a solid grounding in the classics with broad and intensive exposure to newer, emerging disciplines. Science, in particular, was to play a central role in the new curriculum, for it was in the sciences that the application of new knowledge gained through research was most evident and immediate. Rush instinctively knew that America's future lay in its ability to remain at the forefront of the knowledge frontier. He also advanced modern languages-German, French, Spanish-since they connected one the most, he thought, to contemporary events and new knowledge from diverse sources around the globe.

• Rush consciously eschewed the concept of education as an activity that should be undertaken exclusively in a peaceful, secluded, environment-a conception that many higher education institutions still cling to today "the academy on the hill." He did not arrogantly believe that one institution could be the source of all useful knowledge. On the contrary, he encouraged-in fact, he demanded-engagement with the broader world. Rush expected students to walk regularly the intervening blocks between the College and the county courthouse-note Dickinson is not on a "hill" separated from Carlisle-so that they could observe, firsthand, democracy in action. And he greatly valued those who took the time to care for those less fortunate than themselves.

• Rush also believed that America's future depended upon the new nation's ability to secure a prominent place in the world economy. To that end, he advocated strongly for the study of contemporary languages, for a solid understanding of the history and traditions of other countries and an appreciation of the complexities of finance and business.

Rush's views on education evolved and crystallized for a decade after he returned from Scotland until he was able to put them into practice when Dickinson College-which Rush soon referred to as his "petulant brat"-was chartered in 1783.

Rush's vision remains remarkably relevant and continues to guide us today. We remain a revolutionary college with a forward-looking, ambitious, energetic and sometimes contrarian disposition. We also remain a College that is, quite simply, not like other liberal arts colleges. Our historic legacy, our focus on an ultimately useful education, and our commitment to become engaged locally and globally sets us apart from our peer institutions. We are scrappy; we have a sense of humor about our lives; we have a voice and we are Distinctively Dickinson.

You will all soon be a part of this healthy, distinctive tradition, and with that, comes both opportunity and obligation. Becoming a Dickinsonian is a lifetime commitment and a privilege. You will not just spend the next 4 years here and move on. What you experience here will remain with you always-it will shape, guide, direct and influence you for the remainder of your life.

The price of your Dickinson experience is also a costly commitment for you and your families. I am well aware of the sacrifice you are making to be here. Please know, however, that Dickinson College is also making a significant monetary investment in you. We believe in you and we want you to succeed. The true annual cost of educating each of you is not the $33,000 comprehensive fee that is so often quoted. The true cost is $45,000. The College, therefore, covers the $12,000 gap from the proceeds on our endowment and from funds given to us by grateful alumni. Every single one of you, even those without financial aid, is receiving a sizeable shadow contribution from Dickinson College. It is a measure of the high expectations we have for you and our faith that you will remember this gesture over a lifetime of your accomplishment achieved in large part by the dedication of the faculty you see before you.

The scope and size of the return on our mutual investment-yours and ours-is now in your hands. Make use of these four years. The kind of intellectual environment you will encounter at Dickinson is more than likely far different from that which you experienced in high school. You will not immediately enter a "comfort zone" here. In fact, we may go out of our way to make you feel uncomfortable. It is our responsibility as educators in the Dickinson liberal arts tradition to challenge you constantly, to make you aware of what you do not know. We are committed to moving with you through complexities so that you may achieve substantive understanding, not mere opinion.

Seize as many of these opportunities as you can-but also select them carefully. Merely "being busy" is not a virtue. Remember Benjamin Rush-education must, above all, be ultimately useful. It must serve a noble purpose. To achieve this requires discipline and focus.

You should also be forewarned that the practical and the seemingly mundane will be a part of your Dickinson education. We will aim to instill in you the ability to distinguish opinion and rumor from fact-or as the Germans would say, to distinguish "wahrschein" from "tatsache"-the difference between that which appears to be true and that which is, in fact, reality, that which indeed happened or was said. This is a quality of mind that many, unfortunately, never develop. Do not, therefore, be offended or affronted as the faculty push you to make this critical distinction. We will ask you to defend your statements with more than "Don't know," or "Beats me!" We want to witness your logic-the solid, creative deference of your positions.

We also intend to push you on something perhaps even more basic and controversial. Dickinson College by tradition and definition takes on national and international issues that matter. We do not remain silent. From our revolutionary heritage, we are intended to lead and create a vital nation.

In that spirit, we confront now a national issue that, at the level of higher education, is all too frequently avoided, belittled and untreated-the English language. In a direct, yet good-natured way, we now commit as a community to make certain that you, as Dickinsonians, use among all your various languages, the English language well-that is, an English at a standard of international/global transaction with generally shared rules of grammar and usage. As other colleges should, we take the lead and move to correct those English language practices that are egregious and to tell you why something else is preferred. We will, for example, as a community, cast umbrage upon such statements as "Myself and Joe went to the store"; or "She gave the book to him and I"; or "I should have went to the football game"; or "Mary and me like our classes"; or "The team (singular) demonstrated their (plural) skill." We will also correct you if your answer to questions such as "How do you feel?" or "How are you doing?" is "I'm doing good." In addition, we seek to challenge the ubiquity of those vacuous phrases such as "You know" and "Like."

LIKE, these faulty practices have needlessly cost students professional, YOU KNOW opportunities LIKE, throughout America-students from the full spectrum of quality institutions. Dickinson will be distinguished by a public commitment to getting this right. We owe it to you to make certain that, as otherwise extremely bright and ambitious young people, you are not prematurely misjudged and denied opportunity in the global arena by casual and easily preventable linguistic errors. We do this confidently as an intellectually demanding college that engages language, that intensely celebrates fluency in many languages and cultures, including idiosyncratic, and intra-regional, intra-cultural English. We do this as a college that, again, does not by original definition avoid unpleasant issues that matter. America's students at the pre-collegiate and collegiate levels are sadly strangers to the English language and we at Dickinson intend to help end that costly alienation. We encourage other colleges and universities to follow our example.

As you move through your four years at Dickinson and beyond, you will be assisted in your quest for an engaged and purposeful life by a vast and wonderful network of accomplished alumni. Preceding you up-and later down-these stairs are a US President, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, countless members of Congress, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, diplomats, teachers, writers, doctors, artists, scientists and even a few college presidents. Turn on the nightly news and you are likely to see Congressman Jim Greenwood, Class of 1973 conducting hearings on the recent accounting scandals. Pick up a USA Today, and be reminded that our current chairman of the Board, John Curley, Class of 1960, just recently retired as CEO of Gannett Publishing. As you watch the ups and downs of the stock market, be aware that Margaret Lindsay, Class of 1973, just received one of investment banking's most prestigious international citations. The next time you look at a National Geographic magazine, know that Steve Giannetti, who also graduated in the 1970s, is a vice president and publisher.

When you watch MTV, realize that the programming has passed the scrutiny of Kathleen Sweeney Scheier, Class of 1989, who serves as Senior Director for Network Standards and for Warner Brothers Television network, alumnus Rick Mater, who is Senior Vice President for Broadcast Standards. If the Chicago Cubs make the World Series-well, maybe next year-give some credit to Andy MacPhail, Class of 1976, who serves as the Cubs General Manager, President and CEO, and Adam Katz, Class of 1981, who is Sammy Sosa's agent. And, in the very near future, I have no doubt you will be hearing about Peter Bechtel, Class of 1981, who has spent the past two decades working in rural development in Africa and who just recently succeeded in establishing the Quirimbas National Park in Mozambique, the largest marine protected area in Africa and the first park anywhere on the continent to be created at the request of local inhabitants. These are Dickinsonians; I am a Dickinsonian and you are about to become one.

These alumni have gone before you to show you what is possible. They are the products of Benjamin Rush's vision and they are all Distinctively Dickinson. When you proceed up these symbolic steps, you are opening your door to opportunity and accomplishment. Let these alumni serve as inspirations and as mentors.

I now invite our new students to ascend the steps of Memorial Hall to officially "sign in" to the college. I envy you for the journey you are about to embark upon for I know its steps, and I welcome you, as an alum and as President, to Dickinson College. We will soon share a common experience as you join the few people in the world to have the privilege of walking up the Old Stone Steps to acquire a distinctive education and a lifelong obligation as a citizen leader. Remember Bingham's Porch! That is a Dickinson phrase awaiting your discovery.