By a rough count: 15 faculty and staff, 32 students, 13 sphinx club members, 13 rhynies (who probably would not have been there otherwise), and 2 ESH workers. The disappointment that overflowed from Mr. Jim Amidon’s words spilled into an empty chapel. “It takes effort to build and sustain this community,” he said, staring at empty pews and exhausted faces. Apathetic faces. Look it up on the Wabash website. It was a good speech, but I’m not interested in summarizing it. I’m more interested in trying to understand why so few of us made it to the chapel Thursday morning. Perhaps because we have been knocked down, and we do not have the guts to get back up. Perhaps because we are afraid. Perhaps, most of all, because the wrong man was at the podium giving the lecture.
After all, Mr. Amidon is a man with every reason to look back. He has been a part of every Wabash moment for the last twenty five years, and he has the authority to look away wistfully and say, “Wabash just isn’t the same.” And instead, the paltry few in the chapel Thursday morning heard the opposite: “That pain was real,” Mr. Amidon said, “But we must move on.” Where was the fraternity brother, asking, “Hey, how do we get past this?” And then answering late one night, “Well, I know we messed up. But need to learn and move on. We need to stop doing what hurts us, and we need to keep doing what makes us better.” Where was the track athlete who looked hard at the loss on the bus ride home, and he said to the man sitting next to him, “So next time we take the race out faster. We throw harder, we jump higher. And we do better, because we can.” Where was the senior who looked back at his freshman year before his written comps, and said, “There is something wrong with the class of 2012. They slouch, they don’t swagger.” Mr. Amidon was dead on. No one heard him, but he was dead on: We need to get our swagger back. The quiet confidence, the ability to adapt, to engage, to work. It should have come from one of us, from a student who looked around and said, “This isn’t what I signed up for.” It didn’t, but at least the message is out there. It came from the wrong place, but we can all pick it up. From the president, to the professor, to the students, we can recognize Mr. Amidon’s good advice, and we can bring back the Wabash swagger. And maybe we can start by showing up to chapel next Thursday. |
