News > September 25, 2008

By Lauren Dayton | Staff writer

The new school year officially began onThursday, Sept. 18 with Opening Convocation, presided by President Nathan O. Hatch. The ceremony, which took place in Wait Chapel, was, in Hatch’s words, to “honor what is best about our university” this year the ceremony was “dedicated to the arts at Wake Forest.” The program consisted of a song by the university Concert Choir, the presentation of three awards to university faculty and alumni, recognition of the university Debate Team’s win at the 2008 National Debate Tournament and an address by David Lubin, Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art at Wake Forest.

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The arts were the main topic of discussion by David Lupin at opening convocation. (Kelly Makepeace/Old Gold & Black)

Provost Jill Tiefenthaler presented the Donald O. Schoonmaker Faculty Award for Community Service to Paul M. Ribisl in recognition of his 34 years of service to the university and the surrounding communities. Ribisl is the Charles E. Taylor Professor of Health and Exercise Science. He chaired the health and exercise science department for 16 years and is currently serving as interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Donald O. Schoonmaker Faculty Award for Community Service was established in 1988 by the Wake Forest Alumni Council to recognize extraordinary community service of a respected teacher-scholar from the College or the Calloway School of Business and Accountancy.  The award was posthumously named in memory of Donald Schoonmaker, a professor of political science at the university.

Hatch presented the Marcellus E. Waddill Excellence in Teaching Awards to alumni Wendy Bartlett (’97) of Winston-Salem and Katherine O’Brien (’01) of Austin, Texas.  Each receives $20,000 with the award, one of the largest monetary awards of any teacher-recognition honor in the country. The Waddill Award was established in 1994 in honor of Marcellus E. Waddill, professor of mathematics from 1962 to 1997.  The award is given annually to one primary school teacher and one secondary school teacher in recognition of exemplary classroom teaching in public or private schools.

Ribsl presented the final award, the Jon Reinhardt Award for Distinguished Teaching, to James T. Powell, associate professor of classical languages. Powell was nominated for the award by his students, and it is one of many he has received at the university.

The Reinhardt Award was established in 1986 in memory of Jon Reinhardt, a professor of political science at Wake Forest from 1964 until his death in 1984.  The award recognizes an experienced member of the faculty for his or her performance in the classroom, for exemplifying the ideals of a liberal arts education and for an enduring influence on his or her students. 

Lubin’s keynote address, entitled “Disturbing the Peace: Wake Forest and the Arts,” challenged the university community to move outside its comfort zone when it comes to art, but also to all kinds of ideas.

Lubin disturbed the peace right from the beginning, when he asked the university dignitaries to move from their seats on stage and into the audience. He confronted the audience early on in the lecture, “the sobering fact of the matter is that we usually don’t make up our own minds, we leave it to church leaders or campaign strategists or op-ed writers or talk-radio hosts or marketing experts to do that for us,” said Lubin. In his mind, the art that challenges the way we perceive the world breaks this cycle of mindless acceptance. Real art “pushes you outside of your shell or at the very least knocks a crack in that shell” Lubin said.

Lubin shared a personal anecdote that occurred shortly after 9/11, when he decided to show a film called The Battle of Algiers to his world cinema class. The film contains brutal acts of violence on the side of the Muslim Algerians and the French colonists during the Algerian struggle for independence against French colonial rule in the 1950s.

The film’s painful similarity to recent events disturbed one of Lubin’s students, who abruptly left the class. Lubin recalled how he encouraged that student to discuss his views in class the next day, and how that resulted in a fiery two-and-a-half hour debate about the responsibilities of the artist in times of national crisis.

This is art’s power, Lubin posited, its ability to “pose profound questions about society.”

The address ended in a challenge to the entire university to both “periodically work your way through challenging prose about art as well as expose yourself to art that is challenging” in order to become a genuinely educated citizen of the community.

Kristen Binz, a freshman, described the Convocation address as “good food for thought and an impetus for change at the university.”

Paris Furst, a sophomore, called Lubin’s lecture, “a breath of fresh air. I thought (the lecture) would be about appreciation of the arts. But it was a charge to the university, to be more artistic and to intentionally make ourselves uncomfortable by considering ourselves and our studies in ways that are intentionally unsettling.”