To
all of our incoming First-Year Students (and transfer students), welcome to Hamilton. In your time here, you will be challenged, both inside and outside of the classroom. If you come from a city, as I do, getting used to rural living will be a challenge. If you’re used to living alone, dealing with one, two or maybe three roommates could be a difficult transition to make.
In our hyper-partisan era, politics can often serve as the ultimate challenger and as a dividing line. Rather than engage with those on the opposite side, we tend to self-segregate ourselves in order to remain comfortable.
While it may be difficult, I would encourage all of you to take advantage of Hamilton’s intellectual diversity and to engage with what you may see as the other side. For those of you from a liberal enclave, interacting with many of your more conservative colleagues may also be a challenge. The opposite will also be true.
College, at its core, is a place to grow and to prepare yourself for the real world. As indicated by the last year and primarily the last week, the world is not a safe space. The world is a place rife with divisions and the anger attached to them.
In the real world, conservatives and liberals work for and with one another. Partisan divisions, however strong, are overcome daily in pursuit of an organization’s goal. Hamilton will provide you with an opportunity to build this skill.
Hamilton’s motto is “Know Thyself.” In order to do so, one must interact with and face difficult ideas. You may enter college as a die-hard liberal and leave as an Ayn Randian Conservative. The opposite may also prove true.
Colleges, particularly a small liberal arts school like Hamilton, are a place to leap outside your comfort zone. Liberals, take a Conservative Thought Class. Conservatives, maybe take a history of the Progressive movement. Outside of the classroom, I would urge you to attend events featuring campus speakers whose views you may find detestable. I would also urge you make friends with those throughout the political spectrum.
When coming face-to-face with differing ideals, whether in the classroom, in lectures or in casual conversation, do not shout them down. Do not label folks with a qualifier simply in order to denigrate them and invalidate their argument. Say a friend or a Professor disagrees with the concept of affirmative action. Rather than scream “racist” and write the person out of your circle, find a way to present and defend your views. Maybe you change their views. Maybe you don’t. Regardless, the only way to both know yourself and prepare yourself for the difficulties of the real world is to engage with these so-called scary ideas.
Hamilton, with both the lightside and darkside, is gifted with members of every political party — Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and maybe even the occasional Socialist. Rather than cloister yourself amongst your selected tribe, I’d urge you to make connections with both professors and students throughout the political spectrum.
Have lunch with a Socialist and dinner with a Libertarian.
Take a class on Conservatism and attend an event with a Liberal speaker.
The opportunities to challenge your assumptions about others and yourself are there. It’s your job to take advantage of them. If you do so, you will leave Hamilton both better knowing yourself and what you stand for, as well as prepared to take on the challenges of the real world.
