The Title of the Blog - Part 5

Don't know exactly what to say as an intro this week. Column number five dealt with collective memory and my views on the idea of a tradition at a place that changes its personnel every four years. Upon rereading this one, I'm struck by how scattered the ideas are.

I do want to warn you that there is a spicy word in the middle. I was in college, so I clearly had to curse from time to time - because that's the truest measure of mature writing, doncha know...

Let me drop a phrase on you just to see what your reactions are: collective memory. Just take those couple of words and mull them over a bit before you give me an answer; no pressure involved here; just a columnist wondering what a couple of words mean to you. Okay, guess time’s up. I might as well wander into my column now, hope you like, here it goes…

I came to Wabash, just over three years ago, as a fairly impressionable freshman. I wanted to fit in, to what everybody else does and has done for years now. I joined a fraternity – partially because most of the guys who came here do that too. I screamed my lungs out at chapel sing, a bit because all of my associate brothers were doing it too. And the next year, I encouraged the new freshmen to do things just like I had done them, because what I did was right for me. Not that I knew them at all, not that I had any idea of what they should do based on who they were, just because I did those things, and they should too. Seems pretty average, fairly easy to understand, doesn’t it?

Well, in these last few days, I’ve been wondering about why something that someone did in the past should have any influence on what you do today or tomorrow. More specifically, what I’ve been wondering is why anything that somebody calls a “tradition” should influence my behavior. Here at Wabash, we seem to pride ourselves on traditions, on things that we do or believe that tie us into some sort of cosmic past. It is these things that I have come to call into question this week.

There are actually three things that I’ve been pondering. First, I am not too sure that we should be followers. Then I’m having questions about the people who put those footsteps there in the first place. And last, my eyesight is a little bad, and I’m not sure I can see those footsteps all too clearly.

The world needs ditch-diggers and phone sanitizers and even ice cream scoop girls. If someone enjoys their job and performs it well, then they should hold no shame in what they do. Some people were born to lead, like the man who pointed the direction as the elephants marched across the Pyrenees, and some were born to shovel up behind them. That just is. I will not question that. What I am pondering is whether I should be a pointer or a shoveller. One of those men gave the orders, told everyone where to go, and made the rules - the traditions. The other did what he was told, got to play with manure, and followed those rules.

Each of us has a choice, a choice that we have been making for roughly twenty years each: are we to sit above the shit or are we to play in it? Here at Wabash, I would hope that we are becoming men who will lead our country, who will forge new paths where the old have become overgrown or obsolete. Some of us, I am sure, will find our calling by walking where others have walked before, but I would like to think that we can do better than that. I would claim that we should be leaders – not followers.

We, the Wabash students, are a community of men. I say that because somebody said that to me a few years ago when they wanted me to come here. We have one rule, and one rule only: to act as a gentleman at all times. Again, somebody told me that, but I’ve forgotten his name, so I’ll not be quoting my source this time. Heck, it’s a tradition that we say this to each new prospective when he tours our fraternity house. “One rule…treated as an adult…lots of studying…some partying…busloads of women every weekend.” Well folks, I was lied to in at least one of these areas, and I’ve been a little hacked off ever since.

But, I’m going to give that now-departed Wally the benefit of the doubt. I will assume that he was merely following a tradition that had lied to him before and to his liar before that. Does this mean that some of our past Wallies haven’t been totally honest, haven’t been fully truthful, haven’t followed the Gentleman’s Rule to the letter of the ‘law?’ Dare I question the choices made by those who have gone before my? Hell yes, I dare. I doubt whether that lie is worth getting another student next year. I doubt whether it makes any sense to dress a freshman p as a woman and parade him around the track. I doubt whether we should be all male. Do I dare to say every act gone before me was wrong? No I don’t. Quite a few of them were excellent deeps, done fore the right reasons and at the right time. Heck, I’m not even saying that those three doubts should fall either way for me. All I am saying, is that just because someone does something, it doesn’t mean that you should do it. It’s as simple as when my mom asked me “If Wayne jumped off a bridge, would you?” And it’s as simple as the tradition that I will likely continue by asking that of my children someday.

Now I return to the idea of collective memory. We, now we are ‘the seniors,’ have been around this place longer than any of the students, and we know what things should be like around here. We know that tradition says we’ve always had comps in January, that Wallies have always partied on Saturdays, and that the Phi Psi’s always win the IM crown. We know these things because they’ve been true since we came to Wabash…since three years ago. That’s it. Our only basis for claiming things as traditions is three years of Wabash’s hundred-thirty-four. Well, freshman, I’m here to tell you that we don’t know that much at all. If this senior class were to decide ‘tradition’ demands that every one of us come to commencement naked, then in it would be tradition on less than half a decade. Three classes have only us left to learn from, and we are the ones who are left to pass along the ‘traditions.’ Remember that.

The collective memory of this student body is something around four years. I can only tell you what Wabash was like three years ago. Heck, our president can’t do more that from his personal memory. The only people around here who can recount what Wally World was like longer ago than that are the professors and the custodians. They are the ones who know what the traditions of this place really are. They can tell of oral examinations twice weekly for every student, of Saturday classes, and of a day long in the past when the Lambda Chi’s won intramurals. Wabash’s memory lies with them, and often that fact is overlooked. We turn, instead, to the members of our fraternities for guidance, to tell us what we should do, how we should be. Is that right? I can only tell you the traditional answer.

Now comes the hardest part for me: telling you what I think you should do about all of this. Am I condoning mass over-throw of anything denoted ‘tradition?’ Do I want Chapel Sing, Homecoming, and the senior Bench demolished? Should you spit in the face of convention and take only the path un-traveled? No, that’s not quite it. Those well-trod paths were traveled by amazing people, and we ach need the opportunity to walk there ourselves. My charge for you is a more complicated one, a more difficult one, I think. I want you to think about your traditions and about ours. Take what is right for you and discard what is wrong for you. Adapt the trappings of the past to your todays, not to those of your processors. And, if need be, burn the bridges built by those who went before you. Be not scared to take a leap if faith and try something different, you never know when you can do something better than your idols could…