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First Response: Christ and Character |
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Written by Editor
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First Response: December 2005
Dartmouth’s Student Body President Speaks to the Incoming Class of 2009: Christ and Character
By Don Williams
For those of us with University or College Students in our churches or
within range of our ministries, here is a witness, public and
compelling, at the center of “Ivy League” life. Noah Riner ’06, Student
Body President of Dartmouth, addresses the new freshman class and sets
off a fire-storm. Clearly the gospel is no longer on the margins of the
“Establishment.” Neither is it able to be seen as a Fundamentalist
reaction to modern liberal American life. This campus leader has the
faith and courage to speak honestly and compellingly about real issues,
apart from mere intellectual advancement. Because this is a significant
voice with significant content, kingdomrain.net offers the text of his
remarks in full (reprinted from The Christian Observer, October 2005).
Imagine yourself with a 1000 incoming freshmen at orientation listening
to this student leader.
“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 are really
special.
“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.
“In fact, there is 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.
“Daniel Mason ’93 was just about to graduate from Boston Medical School
when he shot two men – killing one – after a parking dispute.
“Just a few weeks ago, I read in the D [school paper] about P.J. Halas,
Class of 1998. His great uncle George founded the Chicago Bears, and
P.J. lived up to the family name, co-captaining the basketball team his
senior year at Dartmouth and coaching a high school team following
graduation. He was also a history teacher, and, this summer, was
arrested for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old student.
“These stories demonstrate that it takes more than a Dartmouth degree
to build character. 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
[Under Graduate Advisor] won’t mention: character.
“What is the purpose of our education? Why are we at Dartmouth?
“Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘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.’
“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. 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 refugee areas. In a time of
crisis and death, people were paddling around in rafts, stealing TV’s
and VCR’s. How could Americans get so low?
“My purpose in mentioning the horrible things done by certain people on
the Gulf Coast isn’t to condemn 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. 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.
“The Times of London once asked readers for comments on what is wrong
with the world. British author G. K. Chesterton responded simply, ‘Dear
sir, I am.’ 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.’
“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.
“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. It’s so easy to focus on the defects of others and
ignore my own. But I need saving as much as they do.
“Jesus’ message of redemption is simple. People are imperfect, and
there are consequences to 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.
“In the words of Bono: ‘[I]f only we could be a bit more like Him, the
world would be transformed. …When I look at the Cross, 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.
“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.’
“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?”
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First Response 
