New Student Academic Convocation 2009

Remarks by John J. DeGioia
New Student Convocation
McDonough Gymnasium
Georgetown University
August 30, 2009


Welcome. We can all remember very special days in our lives. In an academic community, like this one, we view this day as one of the most important in your lives. That’s why we’re all here. It’s why we hoped that so many of your parents and loved ones could be here to share this moment with us.

Today you are at the beginning of the most extraordinary adventure...the most remarkable odyssey...the most incredible journey of discovery and exploration on which you will ever embark.

As you begin this journey, I’d like to share with you three dimensions that—I believe—may be helpful for you as you go forward from this moment.

You Are Not Alone…
As you take your initial steps as a member of this community, the first dimension to remember is that you do not make this incredible journey alone.

You make it along with a truly extraordinary group of people – your classmates. You have each other – women and men of enormous potential with whom you will forge lifelong bonds of friendship and love. With your unique experiences, perspectives, and abilities, you will challenge each other to broaden your horizons...to understand the perspective of others...to examine your own deepest beliefs.

This interaction is very much in keeping with our University’s motto. Inscribed on the Georgetown shield, and taken from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, “Utraque Unum,” or “Both into One,” captures the joining of faith and reason in pursuit of truth...the gathering of both the arts and the sciences. At one time in our University’s history, it captured the reunion of the “blue and gray” following the Civil War. It also speaks to the synthesizing of ideas and cultures that you will experience, together, with each other.

Along with your classmates, you will be making this journey with the women and men who join me on this platform – the faculty of Georgetown – renowned scholars and teachers. The defining characteristic of a university is a pursuit of truth. Every day these extraordinary people commit their lives to pursuing the truth...to engaging in the world of ideas...and to sharing their insights and discoveries with all of you. They are here to play a vital role in your formation. They are here to help you fulfill your promise and potential. They will challenge you. They will inspire you. They will urge you to read...and to work...and to accomplish more than you ever thought possible.

And you also make this journey with the resources and resilience that are the gifts of your parents and loved ones. They have prepared you for this day — and now they leave you in our care. We are humbled by the confidence they have in us as they leave you to begin your journey...a journey that will continue the work of discovery and formation that they first began with you 17 or 18 or 19 years ago.

Metanoia…
It is truly a special moment when you enter Healy gates. Why is this day so special? We believe it’s because something very important happens here—and this is the second dimension of your experience at Georgetown that I wish to share with you.

You are beginning a journey, and we truly believe that it is so meaningful, so significant – that it can change the world. In fact, we believe so strongly in this journey that we have dedicated our lives to joining you…to supporting you…and to challenging you in this endeavor.

This journey is the next stage in your education…the next stage in your development…the next stage in your preparation for leadership. And it is a journey in which you will seek to make the most of your promise, talents, and abilities.

The Ancient Greeks had a word for this—for what happens here. The word is metanoia, based on two words, meta – beyond, and noia – or spirit. It means something like to go beyond your way of thinking — to attain a deeper, more profound, more intimate grasp of truth…to develop a livelier, richer, more engaged imagination… to forge an interior freedom –-a capacity for self awareness that provides the conditions for freedom in thought and action.

Our purpose as a university community is to provide you a place to engage in this work. We are a community, shaped by a tradition. It is a tradition that we share with you today. Dimensions of this tradition are present in everything that we do. The animating spirit is captured in the beautiful banners that hang throughout the campus. But traditions are not static. They are never fixed in time. They need to be engaged, with our imaginations and our intellects. They need to be shaped and re-shaped, imagined and re-imagined. It is an on-going work, ever in progress. It is the work of a community. It is our work.

In recent years, we have been given further insight into the nature of this work. Just last year, Jesuits from throughout the world came together to engage this question of what this moment demands of us. And they wrote that our mission must be “...to discover new horizons and to reach new social, cultural, and religious frontiers.”

As a university community, we try to live at these frontiers…to push at the frontiers of knowledge. In our scholarship and our teaching, together we ask you to come to understand what is known, and what remains unknown. We ask you to explore the truth, and to identify where the truth remains to be discovered, revealed, or constructed. And in our tradition, we recognize the need to explore the social, and cultural, and religious frontiers.

We must also recognize that, in the words of the Jesuits, “new frontiers beckon that we must be willing to embrace.”

We ask you to live at these frontiers. But as I said, you are not alone. This is a community dedicated to supporting you as you begin these first steps—steps that will bring you out to these frontiers.

Your Responsibility…
Now there is a third dimension to your experience here – another way in which you are not alone…and another part of your formation. To capture this dimension, I’d like all of you to join me in an exercise of the imagination. Such an activity is very much in keeping with the heritage of this University – the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.

I’d like everyone in this gym — all 3,500 of us – to imagine that we represent the population of the world. The entire world, with all of its 6.5 billion people, is right here, right now.

I would like all students and all faculty to please stand. Now, I would like all women who are still seated to join them. All of you represent 5.2 billion — 80% of the world’s population – who have never traveled more than 100 miles from their homes.

Thank you; please be seated.

Students, on the backs of your programs, you will find colored stickers. Some of you may have more than one colored sticker. When I call the color of a sticker on your program, I’d like you to stand.

I want all students who have a red sticker to stand. You represent more than half the world – 3.3 billion people – who live on less than two dollars a day. One billion of you live on less than a dollar a day.

Thank you.

Those with a yellow sticker, please stand. You represent the 37% of the world – 2.4 billion people – who do not have access to adequate sanitation, to clean water.

Thank you.

Could all the students with a blue sticker stand? You signify the 980 million people – 15% of the world’s population – 2/3 of who are women – who are unable to read and write.

Please be seated.

Will the students with an orange sticker please stand. You represent the 852 million people around the world who suffer from chronic hunger—a crisis that has never been more urgent in our lifetimes than it is now.

Thank you.

Finally, could everyone with a green sticker please stand.

This is Nereida Jaima.  Nereida is a senior in the School of Nursing and Health Studies, and came to Georgetown from Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago. I asked her to do this. She represents the 1/100th—of one percent—of the world’s entire population who share with each of you the privilege of attending a major American research university. Thank you, Nereida.

All of us enjoy a privilege that is very rare in our world – a beautiful world – but a world marked by injustice…a world in desperate need of your dreams. What you do with this privilege matters. We are not alone. We have each other. We also have women and men who need us – who are looking to us – to respond to the challenges that define our world today. In the words of former Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe, we must accept the responsibility of being women and men for others: Women and men who accept responsibility not only for their own personal development…but for the collective development of the human family.

Conclusion
There is nothing quite like this moment.

This is a very special time in your lives—this is your time.

Today you begin the journey to fulfill your dreams.

We are privileged to share this time—this journey—with you.

We are excited about the role we will play.

We are humbled by the trust placed in us by your parents and loved ones.

And we are hopeful for the lives you will touch…the justice you will deliver…and the contributions you will make to the world in which we live.

Welcome to Georgetown.