A Deeper Understanding
President Rooney addressed first-year undergraduates and transfers at New Student Convocation on August 23, 2019
New students, welcome to Loyola! This is an important day. It is the beginning of your Loyola Experience and signals the start of a wonderful new stage in your life’s journey. Much of what has come before–your schooling and the support and guidance of family and friends–is the foundation for what is to come. Many of you are anticipating this new and more independent phase of life with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
Yes, you will determine how you spend your time, whom you get to know, what courses you take, the focus and dedication you will devote to your classes, and how you will balance your academic pursuits with social, athletic, and other activities. If you are late to class…if you don’t have any clean shirts…or if you realize at midnight that you forgot to eat dinner and the dining halls are now closed…you will be reminded that, yes, you are now more independent.
Remember, though, that you are not alone on this new path. . .far from it. You will build relationships with new people; people from diverse backgrounds, and people with experiences that may be quite different from your own. Bringing diversity together in community is what a great university is all about—it is what makes Loyola a special place for you to learn and grow. The Jesuit tradition is about being yourself--and being open to all cultures, backgrounds, and perspectives. Catholic, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and those without religious practice find a home here, and we are enriched for it. A great university brings cultures together and facilitates civil discourse among them. A diverse range of backgrounds and viewpoints provides fertile ground for thinking and learning, for insight and action.
That is why your Loyola experience begins with a sharing of ideas, with reading and discussion on a topic related to our Jesuit mission, to social, economic or environmental justice. We are happy to welcome today our guest speaker, Eve Ewing, author of this year’s amazing First-Year text, Ghosts in the Schoolyard. The book is a compelling, well-documented, and personal examination of social divisions, racism, and school closings in Chicago. I recommend it to everyone--not just our newest students.
What comes across in the book is how policy decisions profoundly affect people, families and communities, and how critical it is, in addressing them, to listen to all voices, to take into account how our narratives are shaped by what we each experience, or by what we do not experience or understand first-hand. Professor Ewing makes the case for deeply listening to those narratives to help untangle the complex factors that enable institutional racism and impact efforts to implement change. Policies are not just ideas committed to paper. Policies affect people. The author expertly utilizes data but, importantly, incorporates the stories of people to illuminate the human consequences. She relates the inequities of public education in Chicago to her own life as a CPS student and to the history of racism and segregation in the city.
This is the holistic approach a Jesuit education aspires to instill. When we say we seek to “find God in all things,” it is not just a catchy phrase or marketing label. It is an acknowledgment that we must strive to identify a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Whether through science, theology, the arts, the humanities, commerce, law, psychology, social work or medicine, there is, wondrously, more to be learned and more to be done, always in the service of others and the quest for a greater good.
A Jesuit education helps you challenge your own assumptions, filters, and preconditions, so that you can arrive at truths that are more authentic and actions that are more effective. In this community, you will be intellectually challenged as never before, and your thinking will take you places you may never have imagined. You may very well discover a passion and pursue a field of study you had not imagined before, and make it your own.
You will find innumerable ways to contribute to a world that has already provided you with so much--and made it possible for you to be here. Let us pause for a moment in gratitude for the gifts others have shared with you, and for the gifts you bring to Loyola. Let me thank you for bringing your talents, your passions, your values and viewpoints and beliefs, your spiritual and social traditions—your individual imprint. As you share your own unique gifts in our community, you begin to understand on an entirely different level what it means when we say we are “women and men for others.”
At Loyola, we are called to learn, to teach, to listen, and to serve. We are prepared to help you excel in the years ahead by challenging you to think critically about the world, and no matter what your chosen field, to be inspired to make the world a better place by being of service--most especially, to the vulnerable, the marginalized, the sick and the suffering members of our global community. We endeavor for you to become women and men who are transformed by this education.
Start here. Start today. Look around you and reach out to each other. Beginning now, may Loyola be a place where you find community and connection, where you learn and grow, and where you are inspired to go forth and set the world on fire.
We welcome you, and we embrace you with open arms. May today be the start of a wonderful journey together.
Go Ramblers!