Provost Dr. Ian Bickford Welcomes Simon’s Rock Students on Arrival Day
Welcome to Bard College at Simon’s Rock. We’re proud to have you here. As you meet
each other, and get to know each other, you may begin to suspect that there has never
been a more interesting group of people assembled in one place. And that suspicion
might become a conviction. And your conviction in each other – which is just a way
of saying the community you build together – is what will really make this group not
just interesting, but profound.
It’s a special pleasure to welcome you, especially you, to Simon’s Rock, which is, to me, the most special place in the world. Here’s a good fact: you are the 50th group of students to arrive here ready to start college before the so-called “normal” age. Five-Zero. 50 percent of a 100. For half a century, Simon’s Rockers have been challenging the idea that your late teenage years need to be spent in pointless obeisance to a failed educational structure that inhibits imagination and delays authentic inquiry into ideas.
So let’s talk about ideas. Here’s one:
This is one of my favorite images. It is Charles Darwin’s first attempt, in 1838,
to sketch the evolutionary tree, which he called The Tree of Life. Above the tree
he jots the phrase: “I think.” I love the way the concept of natural selection as
the driver of evolution begins with a gesture so speculative, so tentative, the way
you can see the spark of an idea on the verge of becoming knowledge. And I also love the way
the diagram, which represents existence itself, seems to complete a sentence: “I think…”; and if you add a conjunctive adverb: “I
think; therefore…”; and another clause: “I think; therefore, I am.” But because the
diagram itself starts at the bottom of the page, with our early biological ancestors,
and branches upward, a lineage of species evolving toward the human capacity for thought
and language, you can also read the implied sentence from the bottom up: “I am; therefore,
I think.”
“I am; therefore, I think.” I can’t help it, you can’t help it, there’s no use denying it, and that’s why we’re all here. So here’s the same idea, drawn a little differently:
This is the Simon’s Rock logo. It’s a sapling. If Darwin’s sketch is the Tree of Life,
I think of our sapling as the Tree of Knowledge. Simon’s Rock was founded in 1966
by Elizabeth Blodgett Hall, who grew up on this property, and as a young person she
used to sit on the Rock – yes, there is an actual Simon’s Rock – and look down through
the pastures that are now woods, and she would watch distant people walking up and
down the road and make up stories about them. And when she decided to start a college
for younger scholars, she wanted it to be a place that celebrates just this kind of
inventive spirit, where imagination meets observation. I recently had dinner with
several members of the class of 1966, who came here 50 years ago, and they really
remind me of you, or you remind me of them. They are writers and artists, teachers,
and scholars, and they’ve led interesting, exciting, unbelievably entertaining lives. And they all said the same thing: coming to Simon’s Rock was the start of
it all. There was something about taking a daring step at a younger age, a step out
of the lock-step chronology that everyone said they were supposed to follow, and finding a community of similarly awesome peers and professors who took
them and their ideas seriously – it changed their lives, became part of their identity,
and 50 years later they are still practicing the values they learned and acting with
the agency they discovered at Simon’s Rock.
The sapling is a pretty obvious metaphor: it’s about being young and reaching for adulthood and knowledge. But at Simon’s Rock we like to look at things from different angles, and like Darwin’s diagram, I think we can read this one, too, from the bottom up. So here’s one more image:
Simon’s Rock is the nation’s first early college, and we used to be the only one, but we are also now at the root of an idea that is spreading. In coming here you are participating in an idea that is changing American education. It’s an important lesson, I think, for every new student here. You’re extraordinary. I know this about you. I have the stats on my desk. But as your work in the world, which starts whenever you want it to start, begins to have an impact in the world, you may begin to notice that you have an influence on others. Extraordinary is often interpreted as weird. It’s important that you never try to be less weird. Instead, ask the rest of the world to be weirder. The same applies to Simon’s Rock. There’s no place like this. But over the years, other places have begun to ask how they can become like this.
So what does that mean? What is this, after all? Three things:
One: our students start college early, which I think you’ve grasped.
Two: we offer a curriculum in the liberal arts and sciences, which ask us to think across branches of knowledge, to allow ourselves the room and time for a broad and abundant education, rather than fixating on one thing, or treating education only as a path to a paycheck. And don’t worry: I believe there will be paychecks in your future. I say this mostly to reassure your parents. But the liberal arts are not only about preparing for later; they are about discovering our world now, because it’s too exciting and interesting and profound to wait.
Three: this is an inclusive college community. It exists equally for everybody here, and everybody here has a responsibility to include everybody else. We are a diverse community in race and ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, language, and religion. It can sometimes feel, when we’re in a new place, and this is similar to something I said a minute ago, that we need to change or hide or make apologies for parts of ourselves in order to fit in. It’s true that this is a place of learning, and every time we learn something we change a little bit. But we want you to bring all of who you are, and Simon’s Rock will change a little bit because you’re here. That’s something we welcome and celebrate, as we welcome and celebrate you.
Here’s what you can expect of us:
We will respect you, and take you seriously, and listen to you, and always support you – academically and emotionally.
When you ask a question that your professor doesn’t know the answer to, the response won’t be annoyance or dismissiveness. Instead, you’ll hear: “That’s a good question.”
We will give you feedback, constantly, on your work.
We will maintain a safe campus, with people around all the time to help.
We know that a challenging academic program needs to be balanced by rest and humor and movement and fun, and we will create spaces for these, and we will try to put our own books down from time to time and join you.
And here’s what we expect of you:
We expect you to respect each other. Respect in our view is active, not passive. We expect you to make a sincere and daily effort to understand each other’s perspectives, to make room for difference, and to be excited that not everyone her is the same.
We expect you to help each other. Competition is not the goal at Simon’s Rock. The goal is collaboration and mutual support.
We expect you to try things you didn’t already know you were good at, and we expect you to get really comfortable with the idea that, if you are truly daring, you will sometimes struggle and sometimes fail. And we expect you to trust that we know this, too, and we are here to help.
We expect you to remember that everyone here – your professors, your residence directors, the deans, the librarians, the good people in the dining hall, the maintenance staff – are putting everything they have into making the best possible place for you, and a thank you always goes a long way.
We expect you to call us by our first names. That goes for everyone.
Today is your first day of college. As I said, I have your stats, and I’m already impressed by you. I look forward to being as impressed by the strength of the community you build together.