2007 Opening Days Speech

Sue was asked to give the 2007 Opening Days speech for the incoming freshman class. Here is the speech she gave that day.

"This is the most fulfilling day of the year for an admission officer. I'm excited and happy to welcome you all to the Willamette community on behalf of the Enrollment Division. Surprisingly, I have some of the same butterflies in my stomach that you have. You ask. "How will these next four years shape my life?" I wonder how each of you will change the shape of Willamette. I am second-guessing whether or not I have fully communicated the high expectations our faculty have for you; you question whether or not you are prepared to meet those expectations. You are nervous about meeting new people; I worry that my memory--or my eyesight--or both--will fail me and that I won't recognize all of you whom I have already met.

It was thirty-five years ago that my parents and I were sitting here for orientation speeches. Well, maybe we weren't actually sitting here since Sparks Center hadn't been built yet. The facilities have certainly been transformed since my arrival at Willamette. I envy you the Hatfield Library and Olin Science Center, the Montag Student Center and Kaneko Commons, the coffee in the Bistro and the food in Goudy, just to name a few of the things that make this campus and even better place to spend four years.

But the changes that will have the greatest impact on you are those that have accrued in our faculty and our student body. Our faculty has grown by 50% since I was first a student here and they teach over 400 more courses that were taught in my day. We are just two years into the scheduled addition of 25 new faculty positions. Just think of all the new courses that will be added for you over the next four years!

Although, our faculty continues to put teaching responsibilities first, they pursue their individual research interest to a much greater extent than their predecessors. This, in turn, infuses your classroom experiences with more depth and substance and give you many more opportunities to do your own research as an undergraduate.

It isn't just the facilities and faculty that have gotten better. By every measure, our students - you- are academically superior to me and my classmates. You are also more geographically, ethnically and socio-economically diverse. You are better traveled. You have already contributed more to your communities than I had and my peers at this stage in out lives.

Of course, not everything has changed in thirty-five years. My Parents found little to appreciate in the music that I preferred and I expect the same could be said of many of your parents, too. When I came to Willamette, many of my age group were fighting - and dying - in another country in a war that didn't have qualified support at home. Sadly, you cannot make the same claim today. My college years gave rise to the modern-day environmental movement, despite the skepticism of those like the-governor Ronald Regan who said,: "If you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all." Global warming - which is surely one of the most pressing environmental issues for your generation- is just the current iteration of a problem that my class knew well, too.

So, I tried to think of one piece of advice that I was given that would span the thirty-five year gap in our experiences. Unfortunately, the only thing that came to mind was, "Don't mix the dark clothes with the white ones." As advice for doing laundry, it's terrific. As advice for beginning your college experience, it is completely wrong. So my advice for you is to, "Go ahead and mix things up."

I want Hannah from Shorewood, Washington to meet Ezra from Puerto Rico. I want Joe from Chicago to find common ground with Cole from Dalles (that is Dalles, Oregon, not Texas). I want the math nerds to find beauty in a poem and the bookworms to realize the importance of macroeconomic theory. I want all of you who merely endured your high school history class to be captivated by classes from Professors Bill Duvall and Ellen Eisenberg.

I suspect you are familiar with the book, "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein. His poem, "Colors" perfectly describes the variety that you - the Class of 2010 - are bringing to the Willamette community. He wrote:

My skin is kind of sort of brownish
pinkish yellowish white.
My eyes are grayish blueish green,
But I'm told they look orange at night.
My hair is reddish blondish brown,
But it's silver when it's wet.
And all the colors I an inside
Have not been invented yet.

So take all those infinite colors that you are in mind, body and spirit and mix them up. If you end up with something that looks a little tie-dyed, that will be just one more thing your class and mine have in common.

Peace"


Susan J. Rauch
Interim VP for Enrollment
August 2007

Refrigerator Magnets

Sue had a huge collection of humorous, inspirational and irreverent refrigerator magnets. Here are two of my personal favorites:

"To Laugh often and much, to win the RESPECT of INTELLIGENT people and the Affection of children, to earn the appreciation of HONEST entities and endure the betrayal of false friends, to Appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch... to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!"

~Emerson~



"You say "Bitch", like it is a bad thing!"

~anonymous~