New lit'oiniiiiios

Lori Axviso Alvord '79,

geon and current associate dean of student and minority affairs at Dartmouth Medical School, delivered the main address at the College's 230th Convocation.

Recent author of an autobiography, The Scalpel and theSilver Bear, Alvord brought words of encouragement to the newest members of the Dartmouth community. "I was poorly prepared and easily intimidated. I fled from the sciences after my first attempt: when I received my first 'D' in calculus. And yet, when I went back after college to take premed courses, I found that a Dartmouth education had trained me how to learn, and I had better success with my second attempt.

"I tell you these things to encourage those of you who come from different worlds. You may doubt your abilities, like I did. Every step was a straggle for me to learn to believe in myself. But here you will find a community of people passionate about learning and teaching. Don't underestimate yourself."

Drawing on her Navajo as well as medical background, Alvord prescribed steps to achieve the harmony and balance between self and community that are essential for health. If we focus on our own needs, she said, we "become the architects of our own misery." She urged students to look outward. "Rather than focusing on our own happiness, people actually become happiest when trying to help others, their community or their environment (which the Native world also calls family)."

Alvord also suggested that students draw on the Navajo idea of ceremony to build community. "Ceremonies, in my tribe, are events of power and healing," she said. "Ceremony invites change, it prays for growth, harmony, order, balance.. .Dartmouth is like a tribe in many ways, and its elders have said, 'lt is time to create a better community. It is time to move past certain primitive rituals that damage our children.' Ceremony, or something very like ceremony, may help. It will close one door as it opens another."

And although a brass ensemble sedately played Henry Purcell music for the ceremony, held in Berry Center's Leede Arena, the main theme of the opening of the academic year was straight out of Dylan, Bob Dylan that is. More than once the '03s heard that the times, they are a-changin'.

"The Trustees' residential and social life initiative promises to bring broad changes to the school," Student Assembly president Dean Krishna 'OO told the class of 2003 and other members of the Dartmouth community. "Over this next year, you will hear a lot of ideas. Some you may love, some you may hate." He challenged students to make their voices heard. "Don't ever stop, even if you're being ignored," he said. "To the Trustees, administrators and members of the faculty, I issue you a challenge as well: to not only listen to us, but entrust us as students with real power—with an institutional voice."

President James Wright, wearing the robe of his office but the mantle of a historian, traced the major traumas and advances of the century. Building on the past, he issued a call to the '03s for the years ahead: "President John Sloan Dickey used to tell Dartmouth students each year at Convocation, 'Your business here is learning.' This purpose has not changed, and I enjoin you to be more than merely passive observers in the process. I urge you actively to seek out and to engage the questions of our time. None of us would pretend that this is an easy assignment. You need to find a way to fit into an institution and its intellectual assumptions, even as you challenge those assumptions and as you challenge this institution itself."

On a more personal note, he told students, "Dartmouth has an enviable reputation as a place where students are happy. I have two caveats about that I would like to share with you: being happy does not have to mean being content. Second, it is fine for you to feel frustrated and unhappy at times. It really is okay! That does not make you an outlier. Rather, it makes you an adult grappling with questions about who you are and what you will be."

Convocation speaker Dr.Lori Arviso Alvord '79linked personal andcommunity health tobalance and harmony.