President Dye’s Remarks at Oberlin's All Campus Convocation
Wednesday, September 12

View the Convocation Program

Yesterday every one of us witnessed a tragedy of heretofore unimaginable dimensions. As we gathered around radios and television, we tried to find out what happened, and why. We were in shock. I suspect that I am not the only person who at some point yesterday morning just about convinced myself that I was having a bad dream. We were--and are--grief-stricken and scared. Within the space of a few morning hours, the world changed, suddenly and horrifically. And we know with utter clarity that the world, for us, will never be the same. This new knowledge makes us feel very vulnerable. As The New York Times editorialized today, "yesterday morning was one of those moments in which history splits, and we define the world as 'before and after.'"

Today and tomorrow and for many days and weeks to come, we will learn about the as yet unfathomed depths of this tragedy. Many of us call the New York metropolitan area and the Washington, D.C., northern Virginia, and Maryland regions home. Many of us have family and friends who were directly affected by yesterday's catastrophes. We come to Oberlin from every part of the globe, and are anxious and uncertain about what this tragedy portends for America and the rest of the world.

But yesterday and today, despite our jumble of feelings and fears, Oberlin students and staff and faculty are living up to the ideals of this community. Everybody helped. Within hours of the bombings, students organized a blood drive. Many students, staff, and faculty immediately came to the assistance of our campus-wide communication efforts. Most important, people all over this campus held and comforted and listened to one another.

Our need for consolation will go on for some time. Consolation for loss of loved ones. Consolation for the new anxieties that we are feeling and can't understand. And even consolation for the fate of being human. I find myself thinking of the great Latin epic, The Aeneid, Virgil's universal story about what it means to be a human being. There is a line early in The Aeneid that reads, "Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt." Specifically, the text reads that Aeneas cried--sunt lacrimae rerum--as he looked at the Carthage temple murals depicting the battles of the Trojan War and the deaths of his countrymen. But Virgil is also saying that as Aeneas cried, he experienced with all his mind and soul--"mentem mortalia tangunt--the futility and waste of human warfare, and the fragility and suffering that define being human.

As we look forward from this day, we have many more tasks ahead of us. We need to continue to listen to one another, and to care for one another. We need--each of us--to strive to live up to the kind of supportive community that we aspire to be. We need to be mindful that our friends, neighbors, teachers, students, and colleagues will be affected by what has happened in many different ways, and those members of this community see the world in many different ways. And we need to take special care and responsibility to act in ways that support and are consonant with this inclusive and diverse community in which every member, regardless of religion, ethnicity, race or nationality is valued and can be safe.

We will have many opportunities in the days ahead to search for meanings--personal and private, collective and political--in what has happened, and to make sense of our reactions. We will also have many opportunities to talk about people's responsibilities and nations' obligations in a highly interdependent world. This will require our best thinking and reasoning. It will require refusing to give in to what may well become a national chorus of ignorant and bigoted blaming, scapegoating, and fingerpointing. We must and we can continue to muster our empathy and compassion for one another, as together we go about living and working and loving on this campus, and on this small blue and green planet.

Nancy S. Dye,
President