Wescoe bids seniors farewell
(Editor's note: The following is the text of outgoing Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe's commencement address given June 2 to more than 1800 graduating seniors. At the end of the speech printed here, the Chancellor sang another song. That song is reprinted on page 4.)
I have often talked from this place before
And the platform always stayed beneath my feet before
But tonight am I
Sev'ral stories high
When I think of the hill where we've lived.
Here was the Lilac Lane in the heart of town
You could here this Clarke in ev'ry single part of town
Here excitement poured
We were never bored
Here on this, on the hill which we love.
But oh, the saddening feeling
Just to know tonight is the last
That new and saddening feeling
That all our fun together quickly will be past.
People stop and stare. They say Chancellor
That's a title I won't have for many moments more
All my time's gone by
I don't care cause I
Lived with you on this hill which we love.
This was the year, in which, as I sat down to write my farewell remarks, I wondered whether or not it would be appropriate to sing, as has been my custom. I thought there might be those who would take it amiss. Last year I had promised that I had done it for the last time. During the year, however, a number of you told me you were looking forward to song; a few of you recently wrote me to that effect. I remembered a lament written by a favorite author of mine, Oliver Wendell Holmes, like me a physician — a lament for those who never sing but die with all their music in them. That settled it. My life in the University has been filled with song, with cheer, with pleasant associations, with affection. I hope that your life within it has been filled in the same way with the same things. We cannot and should not crush those wonderful memories because recently we were troubled. I want your commencement to be a pleasant memory; I want
6 KANSAN
Jn.10 1969
you to know me as I am naturally, and now you do.
You listen to a man by nature lighthearted, confirmed in that light heart by his professional training - no one wants a physician with other than a cheerful countenance.
There was a song, heard more and more frequently, that I could have used tonight without a single change of word, and with great meaning. It is a song included in the most recent album of an obscure professor named Sinatra. I do not know its title but it contains the lines: "the time is here," "I face the final curtain," and, repetitiously "I did it my way." Quite appropriate I thought that song might be, but the words would not have been truly mine. I am one for whom the curtain falls tonight with finality. I am one, too, who despite sometimes inordinate pressures always did it my way, if my conscience and my judgment told me that mine was the right way. I hope that history will be able to record that most of the times that way was the right way.
My repetition of song, now on numerous occasions, is an indication of how easily one can fall prey to a habit, how easy it is to become preoccupied with "one's thing," how easy, having done something once, it is to do it again. That is a warning in itself; one should be careful taking his first step in anything, for the exhilaration of taking it may lead to continuous, conditioned (not thoughtful) responses. It indicates also how easily a reputation is built and, once having been built, how difficult it is to throw it off.
Some years ago a novel appeared with the intriguing title "The Ninth Wave." I never read that book but I did make it my business to investigate the allusion encompassed in its title. Its meaning has little context for Kansas. It refers to a legend or belief involved with the surf and with surfing. I know of no surfers operating anywhere in Kansas—and for obvious and sufficient reason. It doesn't require a higher education to explain that. The belief is that the ninth wave in a series is the biggest, the best, the most vigorous and powerful of them all. It is the wave for which the champions wait; it carries them higher and farther—it is the greatest challenge. It must have occurred to those of you who are still alert and listening that you, the class of '69, are my ninth wave. Retrospectively, I would say that you fulfilled the legend;
you were the biggest, the most vigorous of them all. I shall not experience another series; I am satisfied with one ninth wave.
Your years in the University were coincident with the perceptible change from the relatively silent generation (I refuse to say apathetic) to the generation of dissent. You have experienced the change from students passively accepting what was spread before them to students seeking in some measure the control of their own educational destinies. You have experienced and been a part of a fluid movement, the questioning of the values and methods of education and of society itself. That movement stands now at the point of being discredited by the excesses and irresponsibility of the few. The means used to advocate causes often are a manifestation of the irrationality involved. There is no place among educated people for irrationality and certainly not on the university campus itself. The idea truly valid, a concept which will result in the most good for the most people, will always prevail on its merits if properly presented. Techniques that endanger the very mechanism of change itself, that give rise to violent counter reaction, play recklessly with the future. Anarchy and chaos, and we have those who are dedicated to them, have been tried before and have miserably failed. Fanaticism and cynicism are not to be trusted; the former believes one thing only and says so; the
latter says anything and believes in nothing.
A persistent complaint is one about the increasing dehumanization of society, its increasing complexity, its increasing materialism. To be sure, it is complex, and its very complexity denotes that the answers to its questions will not be simple ones. It is easy to think one holds the answers when one has never addressed himself conscientiously to all the questions. As I look around me, I cannot match
the complaints with reality. Although there is much to be improved, and the world looks to educated men and women like you to effect that improvement rationally, I see greater opportunity, greater diversity, more chances to succeed than man has ever known. I see great social legislation in the process of implementation and a nation committed to implementing it completely—with your assistance.
Certainly the large university (Continued to page 7)