News and Events
Founder’s Day Address September 15, 2004
By President Andrew Benton
T.S. Eliot wrote, “What life have you if you have not life together? There is no life that is not in community.”
Upon reflection, nearly all of us would agree with that statement. The life of a hermit is life, but just barely. We are creatures that were meant to live in community.
A University theme that we have been developing relates to community, to “A Distinctive Community,” and since this past May we have been concentrating on the idea of community, and especially the way in which our community is unique. This theme actually is the fourth of five major goals I enumerated at the presidential inauguration in the year 2000. In a message that day I said, “We must be about the business of strengthening our sense of community.”
I suggested at that time that we begin and continue a conversation about what our Mission Statement means for teaching and learning, for faith and purpose. I also suggested that a University Strategic Plan that embraces and implements the Mission Statement and the aspirations of our five schools is an important step toward choosing our own destiny. Identifying our role in higher education, rather than having it decided for us, is imperative. We must resist the demand that we choose to be either academically excellent or true to our faith. We must be both, or we will have failed.
We do not have to be identical to secular universities to be good, and we don’t have to be identical to other Christian universities to be faithful. Pepperdine has the right and the mandate to be distinctive and to resist that which crowds us toward the middle – what I often refer to as the “great gray middle.” Pivotal to that point is the fact that we are individual scholars and professionals, with our own talents, experiences, and dreams. But together — together — the sum is greater than the collection of the parts. Together, we become a remarkable whole in which all individuals are lifted to new heights.
How, exactly, is Pepperdine University a distinctive community? Allow me to offer six characteristics that, when put together, contribute a great deal to who we are:
First, we seek to promote a civil manner in conversation and interaction among our people.
Second, we seek to honor all members of our community, from the one who has the highest profile to the one who has the least.
Third, we offer freedom to celebrate spirituality and express individual faith, whatever that sincere faith may be.
Fourth, we unapologetically seek to foster an atmosphere that is healthy and moral.
Fifth, we place character formation and ethical training at the center of our mission.
And finally, we seek to promote service to humanity among our students, alumni, faculty, and staff. We agree with Marian Wright Edelman, who said, “Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.”
In considering the concept of community, we began to think about that quickly disappearing feature of the American landscape known as the “Town Square.” We considered how, in past times, the heart and soul of each small community seemed to be focused on a park in the center of town. In the park was the city hall or perhaps the county courthouse. Generally, one would find a canon or two (defending against what was never entirely clear). There were benches where men and women gathered to exchange greetings and news. The town “characters” gathered there – I intend to be one of those characters someday, an assertion that causes my wife some pain!
There was often a place for children to play. And almost always a monument to a soldier, a town founder, or some other hero. Surrounding the park were stores, banks, cafes, and churches. It was a place of local government, commerce, faith, and corporate memory. It was reminiscent of village greens and town centers in colonial America and in England, France, Italy, and towns around the world that clustered around a central market place.
A few decades ago, the Town Square was all but abandoned as businesses moved from the town center to shopping malls and strip malls out on the Interstate or arterial highway. The desire for more room and more business was understandable, but the result was a disconnected community. The local government, the houses of faith, and especially, the corporate memory — the statues, the honor rolls, the heroes — were left behind. Now, cities and towns are searching for ways to recreate that sense of community, and interestingly, they often are returning to the concept of the “town square” or something similar.
In this community called Pepperdine, we want to purposefully perpetuate something like a Town Square, a gathering place to which the community can go to interact. It, however, is up to each of us to build this distinctive community — by adding our individual loyalty, hard work, unselfishness, and excellence to that of others. Every part of the community is not the same, but every part contributes to the whole.
There is a real sense in which our community is never complete. It is always in the process of becoming, as each student, each faculty and staff member, and each alumnus adds a dwelling place to this distinctive community. What do you see in the future for Pepperdine? How will the University look in a year, or in five or ten years? Let me assure you that the University looks very different today than it did ten or twenty years ago. I am not speaking simply of our physical plant, or of our campuses here and around the world. As the University grows, it changes in attitudes, in processes, in spirit. It is up to us to decide what we will be in the future. What do we keep; what stays behind? I want to share some of my dreams for the future:
1. I envision a faculty of national and even international distinction. We are well on our way, but the University must redouble its efforts in identifying, recruiting, and retaining a world-class, increasingly diverse, faculty, each with a genuine faith commitment. Some say we are asking a lot, but I would like to prove to the world that we can celebrate faith and excellence at the same time and in the same place. To support our faculty and students I want to continue to press forward with a significant strengthening of our libraries.
2. I envision an unsurpassed level of student and alumni spirit. I cannot tell you how important that would be for us. I hope the University, our community, will create coordinated programs to take students from a beginning campus tour or graduate campus meeting, through enrollment and academic experience, culminating in a proud and spirited alumni base that supports its alma mater. I look forward to seeing alumni joining crowds of students at University events. Alumni who will hire and mentor graduates and who will encourage their children to work hard in order to attend their alma mater.
3. Pepperdine should be a widely known international presence. We already have strong international programs, some of the very best, but I dream of more expansive programs, especially in the Pacific Rim. Boldly, I believe we can prepare students, undergraduate and graduate, to contribute on the world stage, working with governments and multi-national corporations to make the world a better place.
4. I envision an increased commitment to dreams of faith and service. We should foster an atmosphere that resonates excitement, where people generate ambitious projects that will improve the human condition throughout the nation and the world. We already are attracting students with wonderful, creative ideas. Because of the nature of those students, our programs will address both spiritual and social needs of people, especially in underdeveloped nations. God is the God of the helpless, and if we serve Him, we will serve the helpless.
5. I envision a long-range commitment to athletics and student recreation. Our athletic teams have functioned at an exceptional level for many years. I believe we should move to a level of support for athletics, both in enthusiasm and in funding, that will match their high level of performance. We need support to sustain top coaching, to build adequate facilities, and to attract great student-athletes. We also need to act with determination to offer our student community recreation and intramural facilities to encourage health and fitness and to build community.
6. I dream of the reconstruction of the center of Seaver College’s campus in order to create a central gathering place for all students, faculty and staff, and visitors to the Malibu campus. It would be a project to “humanize” that area, from the chapel to the theater, with color and texture, with covered as well as open spaces. Within the Malibu campus community we need our own Main Street.
7. I’ll add just one more dream today: I envision a beautiful and functional “University Church on the hill,” near the Drescher Graduate Campus, that will minister to the needs of all students, faculty, and staff — and also serve the University as its largest lecture venue. I see a daycare facility there for the children of Pepperdine families. And I desire a place where people can find and then glorify God.
Those are a few of my dreams, not all of them, but just a few. Most are not new, but it is probably time to reassert them. What about you? What are your dreams? How will you help this distinctive community become both good and true.
Our community is built of wonderful materials: Not simply steel and stucco, but also honorable people with a strong sense of purpose, even destiny. Even destiny. And I am convinced that there are generous people who believe in our cause and will rise to support what we set out to do.
We will perfect our plans for the future and we will secure the necessary financial resources. I believe that. Throughout the journey, we will need courage, determination and faith. And those things, we have and have had for now some 67 years. May God bless this distinctive community in the future, as He has so generously in the past.
