EMU President addresses 'critical thinking' at opening convocation

Eastern Mennonite University

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Warm weather and warm welcomes were the order of the day as Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va., students, faculty and staff gathered Sept. 1, for a convocation service on the second day of fall semester.

New students, faculty and staff receive a "Shenandoah Welcome" en route to an ice cream social on the Campus Center Plaza at the close of the convocation service Sept. 1. Photo by Jon Styer.

"This community would be poorer without any one of us here ...  we all contribute to its vibrancy and vitality," EMU President Loren Swartzendruber told a packed audience in Lehman Auditorium.

Before the president spoke, other EMU administrators and student leaders extended words of welcome and admonition as the university begins its 93rd school year.

Swartzendruber based his remarks on a passage in the New Testament book of Philippians, telling students that they have "the amazing opportunity to spend several years thinking about what is noble, what is true, right, pure, lovely, admirable.

"Our dream is that the ideas that spread 'like a virus' from this place [EMU] are life-giving and full of hope, ideas that may even seem strange to the world," the president noted. “They may even seem completely absurd, like the words of Jesus when he invites us to love our enemies. One could wish that such an idea would become a virus so contagious as to infect the entire world.”

Swartzendruber closed his address by reflecting on two EMU alumni who lost their lives this summer “while modeling the kind of joyful living to which the Apostle Paul invites each of us in his letter to the Philippian church.”

Jason Marner, from Brighton, Iowa, graduated from EMU this spring, just two months before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident on  July l. He had recently returned from the New Zealand cross-cultural experience led by EMU faculty member Dr. Jim Yoder.

"By all accounts, Jason was a person who lived life with joy and energy, with a quick smile," Swartzendruber said.  "He had just obtained his dream job, as a pilot, and was just two days away from heading to the Gulf of Mexico to fly planes in the clean-up effort following the disastrous BP oil spill."

Glen Lapp, a 1991 EMU graduate, was among a group of 10 persons killed on Aug. 6 in Afghanistan while on a medical mission. "He died as logistics leader of a team which had traveled to a remote area of Afghanistan to provide eye care in several small villages.

"Glen was a lover of people all over the world, passionate about serving those in desperate need, ready to forsake material comforts in order to serve and lead in a global context," Swartzendruber said.

The convocation ended with a commissioning for an EMU cross-cultural group who will spend fall semester in Spain and Morocco. Twenty-one students will explore areas of both countries that were once the heart of the Moorish empire, focusing on the shared history of the two regions and the blending of their peoples, art and architecture. They will study modern standard Arabic and Spanish and live with host families.

Moira Rogers, professor of language and literature at EMU, assisted by Samuel Hernandez, an adjunct instructor of Spanish and a 2010 master of divinity graduate of Eastern Mennonite Seminary, are group leaders. They left campus immediately following the convocation service.

Returning students, faculty and staff gave new members of the EMU community a "Shenandoah Welcome" as they wended their way through a human "tunnel," with Appalachian bluegrass music playing, to the Campus Center plaza for ice cream and fellowship before heading off to classes.

EMU's fall semester runs through Dec. 17.