Fall Convocation Speech

Fall 2020 Convocation Speech by Dr. Jeffrey Reeder

Greetings, Sonoma State University,

Here at your service, on your screen, I am Jeffrey Tadór Reeder, he/him/his, Professor of Modern Languages… I teach Spanish, Portuguese, and Native American Studies. As Chair of the Faculty, I have this chance to welcome you to the 20-21 Academic Year. This will certainly be an exceptional year, and I am proud to be part of an exceptional faculty.

A su servicio, me da muchísimo gusto poder darles a cada uno de ustedes esta bienvenida al nuevo año académico aquí en la Universidad Estatal de Sonoma… Como bien sabemos, va a ser un año bastante especial, pero como también sabemos, haremos lo posible para que sea un año exitoso.

Fellow Faculty, Students, Staff, Administrators, and Community Members,

Sonoma State University’s Convocation is an occasion during which we gather together to acknowledge the beginning of the academic term. This Convocation coincides with the annual meeting of the Academic Senate and is our occasion to welcome the entire campus community to the new academic term. Today we will hear remarks from President of the University Dr. Judy Sakaki, Provost Dr. Karen Moranski, President of the Associated Students Melissa Kadar, Staff Representative to the Senate Katie Musick, and California Faculty Association Chapter President Dr. Erma Jean Sims. I will follow their welcoming remarks with a few words of my own.

President of the University Dr. Judy Sakaki, Provost Dr. Karen Moranski, President of the Associated Students Melissa Kadar, Staff Representative to the Senate Katie Musick, and California Faculty Association Chapter President Dr. Erma Jean Sims

Okay, so before I get into my address, I want you to think about the university catalog. Look at all the courses in there, have you ever taken the time to just skim through and look at all those course titles? We have around 2,000 different courses in there! Look at the incredible diversity of learning opportunity we have, topics and subjects all over the place! Forensic Anthropology Methods! Marketing and Sales Strategies for Wine! Scriptwriting for TV! Identity and Agency for Socially Just Classrooms! Love and Desire in German Literature! Physics of Semiconductor Devices! Fascinating!!!   Now… Can y’all guess how long it would take for one student to take every one of those courses, carrying a full load both semesters and summer school on top of that? … Something like 167 years. So, Mel, don’t do that, I know you’re a very eager learner, but don’t try that, stick to the plan you’ve developed with your advisors!  

The theme of my address centers around four words:  Convocation, Connect, Confront, and Compassion.

Let’s start at the beginning, with the etymology of the word “Convocation”, which is not a term used very often outside academia. “Convocation”, what we are all participating in right now, comes from Latin, “com” and “vocāre”, meaning “to call together”, as in the context of a group being called together for a specific purpose. So here we are, together, at the beginning of our academic year, in the midst of a very strange reality that has been dramatically ushered in with the thunder and lightning that we had this weekend, joining together in the specific purpose of beginning our new year and moving boldly forward in our mission to educate. In our current reality, here, now, August 2020, we find ourselves facing challenging and unprecedented times as we strive to serve students, maintain scholarly research and creative activity, and work together to end racism, anti-Black actions and structures, and harmful othering. During these times of turmoil and isolation, we recognize how important it is to work together, to remain connected to one another, and to remain firmly grounded in our core mission and values – hence the very real importance of a convocation, our “calling together” that is part of the literal and metaphorical theme of this talk.

Back to the word “Convocation”. When we say we all come together, united in a common purpose, that doesn’t mean we all agree on everything all the time…we can - each and every one of us - have disagreement with each and every one of our colleagues, but we should also take the time to acknowledge and recognize our individual and our collective good intention and purpose. This is true of every one of us who works here at the university, regardless of status. Nobody is here to do harm, and everybody is here to make this endeavor a successful one. Look at who we are, where we are from, how we got here, what our individual experiences are, how we identify, how we present, and it is clear that we will have very different ways of viewing and expressing our goals and our work, we will have different ways of expressing agreement or dissatisfaction, and we will have very different ways of engaging with students and colleagues. We may even find it hard to acknowledge some of those ways when they are so dramatically different from our own. But our strength as an institution comes not just from our diversity of culture, experience, and thought, but also from valuing and fostering that diversity. That diversity means we’ll have differences - differences of opinion, differences in approach, and differences in outlook. And that leads to the second word out of the four, which is Connect.

CONNECT

Connect means join together, to bind. “Con” comes from Latin “with”, and “nectere” is Latin for “to join”. Joined together, all of us.

(The word COMMUNITY would work here just as well, so feel free to interchange the two)

…You know that alloys of metals are stronger and more useful than single elements by themselves like iron, copper, or zinc, and you also know that you can make enormous, strong, long-lasting structures out of concrete and steel rebar together when concrete by itself would crumble and steel by itself would sway and buckle, and we know that a meal of fruits and vegetables and grains and nuts and wine is a lot better than a meal of just a loaf of bread...  Similarly, we recognize that our diversity makes us stronger, better, more interesting, more useful as a university. But that doesn’t come easily or automatically. It takes more work to make metal alloys than single metals, just as it takes more work to braid cables or ropes rather than using single strands, or a balanced meal. In our diversity, we find strength and purpose. So, y’all, I want to put in a plug for the new weekly, recurring series called Sonoma State Chair Chats – Tuesdays at Two. A forum to talk about our community. Look for invitations in your email.

Our third word is CONFRONT.

Con (“with”) + Front (“Face”). To Stand in Direct Opposition To.

We have the duty to confront those ills in our society that tear us apart and make our society sometimes openly hostile to many members of our community. It’s 2020. Even today, we see racism, anti-Blackness, and harmful othering at all levels of society, and we must do our part to confront it. Maybe back in 1920, academics could immerse themselves in their disciplines without feeling compelled to connect to problems of systemic racism… maybe even in 1970 professors could convince themselves that the responsibility for change and action was outside of their subject area, in some other discipline, in some other course… But not now, not in 2020, we know that we all have that duty. Everything is connected - every academic subject, every course, every advisor, every professor, every administrator, we all have the moral and professional obligation to act to eliminate systemic racism and othering. Why is that? It is because of our students. You see, our students, in a few years, will become hiring managers who must NOW be made aware of the types of bias that should never be part of the hiring process, such as the study that found that fictitious job applicants named “Greg” were much more likely to receive call-backs than those named “Jamal” with otherwise identical resumés. Because our students will soon become urban planners who must NOW be made aware of how features of urban design can unintentionally exclude minority residents for decades to come, such as the low overpasses on roads in Long Island that prevent city buses from reaching the beaches. Because our students will soon become teachers, social workers, or police officers who must NOW learn the source and expression of individual and cultural practices learned in the home, some which stem from generational traumas passed down over the years. The application of biases such as gender bias, racial bias, and cultural bias could determine success or failure, or even life or death. Whatever your courses are that you are teaching and planning, I challenge you to update them for the needs of 2020 and beyond – I am sure that your courses are relevant to your students’ lives and careers, and therefore I contend that there are issues of racism and othering to confront in those courses and in how your students will apply that knowledge in the future.

And for the fourth and last word, we come upon…
COMPASSION

Compassion – “Com” (with), “Passus” (suffering). Meaning “To suffer together with”

Every one of our students is looking to us for leadership. Many of their lives have been upended, and some of the people, activities, and institutions they had relied on for strength, guidance, or identity may not be there for them now. So…our being there and providing leadership, our providing a safe space for them to explore, learn, and connect with others – that we can do, and we can do it well. We can provide them with a sense of purpose as they engage with our courses and their classmates.

Yeah, sure, this  is our first pandemic, and of course we’re all learning as we go along, and making mistakes along the way. ..And, sure, for most of us this may be our first time beginning a semester online. But remember, we’ve all been somewhere like this before, somewhere where everything was new and scary and different and totally unpredictable. For me, it was Fall 1991, my first semester teaching my own class, and I remember being terrified that I was supposed to teach and lead those 24 University of Texas students in Spanish 1. But it worked out. …And, sure, a lot of us right about now… we may have a serious case of impostor syndrome because we’re super confused about how in the heck do we connect our Canvas to our Zoom and integrate our Gmail and upload that image and convert that file to PDF and share that screen with computer sound turned on, and OMG, what is up with that stormwater runoff training module anyway. But all that…. – all that is not what our students see. What they see is that we’re leaders. They see that know our stuff, without question. They see that we’ve thought long and hard about how it connects to their lives and to their futures and to society. They aren’t expecting us to be perfect, so there’s absolutely no reason not to be vulnerable and honest and open, as we remember that our students are looking to us for guidance, consistency, and purpose… This is our leadership… This is our Compassion.  

This semester, beginning tomorrow, our students, most of whom are on that threshold of adulthood and who are just defining themselves and their place in the world, will come to see what we do and how we do it and that will inevitably imprint on them throughout their own future. We have a duty - establish and uphold academic rigor in a trustworthy, accessible, and compassionate way. We must acknowledge and understand our students, just as we must acknowledge and understand our colleagues. How we practice this compassion will shape our students’ and colleagues’ lives in meaningful ways, so let’s be aware of this duty and take responsibility to be understanding, flexible, and compassionate leaders.

OK…

Our thousands of students this year will collectively spend about 3 ½ million hours engaging with us and with their peers through their coursework, so our efforts are hugely consequential, and what we do, matters greatly.

So… here’s the TL;DR version. - It’s 2020 -. Yep, we have challenges, and yet we are positive and hopeful. We have it in us, and we can do it, because we’re amazing and because we care. In this convocation, we’re called together to Connect in Community, to Confront, and provide Compassion.

We are not alone in our efforts, we have each other. All right, we have vital and consequential work to do, and our students and colleagues look to us for our leadership, so let’s go make this a great year. We rise to the challenge.