Honor's Breakfast Remarks
May 2, 2009
Northern Michigan University

Misplaced Definitions, A Much Needed Reality Check
Dr. Leslie E. Wong
President

I want to congratulate our Honor students and their families today. What a special day. While we often speak of the financial sacrifices families make to educate their college student, I think a far more important emotional investment is made. The patience exhibited by parents, spouses and siblings is considerable. I hope many of the Honor students here today didn't shock your parents and families by unloading all those big, complex ideas, controversial or not, at the dinner table. I hope you eased your family into your new consciousness. Perhaps, coming home bald, pierced or with a new colorful hairdo may have been easier to accept. Kidding aside, honor students, you've done well. You represent the best of the best and the only barrier to what you can do is your own sense of self. Good luck to you.

It is not often that I get the bully pulpit to address something that has been bothering me for some time. Let me share with you a line of thinking about the state of our culture here in the U.S. And no, it will not be about the economy, the budget or anything as simple as that. I credit and thank the Northern student body for helping me think about these ideas. My concern and worry about what I see you do and what I hear when you speak may need more attention than what I, alone, can offer. I am convinced that each of you will grapple with some component of the following ideas. And, if I'm right, you'll do better than me or my generation at solving this conundrum.

The media phenomena and success of television's reality shows is very disturbing if not provocative. What is it about watching ordinary people embarrass themselves, flaunt themselves and generally look bad and moronic that so compels us to tune in unfailingly week after week. And how many of you, if you miss an episode, go to the web to fill in what you missed? The various versions of locking a group of people into a house for a month are watched far too often to give me comfort about the future. So the silliness compels me to chuckle and ask myself, what do you think you'd see if you locked up 20 existentialists with one nihilist? Imagine a college president and 10 legislators? Okay I'm being silly. What is going on? But don't feel bad or insulted. When TV was new, my generation had its reality shows too. "The Price is Right" and "Candid Camera" led a long list of television shows in my house. And when I think more deliberately about it, there isn't that much difference really. Good, ordinary people doing weird things. But why so popular today?

Clearly no improvement in TV programming is evident. In fact, isn't it odd that so many new shows and movies are remakes five and six times over. How old will Sylvester Stallone have to get to retire the Rambo franchise? And by the way, I was disgusted by the remake of my favorite movie, "The Day The Earth Stood Still". Micheal Renne is still my prototype of an exceptional visitor from space who frightened the daylights out of me and yet made me think about the atom bomb that Russia was supposed to drop on me. Maybe he was right: We, meaning humanity, have to get our act together. Clearly in 2009, we haven't. That death ray comes soon to a neighborhood near you.

There is a common denominator to all this insane if not zany media, epitomized by reality shows. We need to think more deliberately about why our culture at this point in time facing considerable internal and external stress is so infatuated with these shows. It does make me think of my classics professor who lectured at length about how cultures inevitably face periods of decadence and decline prior to collapse. Is it any coincidence that these shows reflect a general selfishness and personal indulgence? Is it the same kind of selfishness and personal indulgence aka "greed" that brought down the economy of this country and others?

So we have to consider a fairly serious question: have we forgotten the purpose of a public, affordable, high quality university education? Why after all, do we want to be educated? Think about it. Most of the producers and creators of these shows are all highly educated, very smart individuals. They are, sad to say, one of us. None of them attended Northern Michigan University and I am very proud of that. But these educated people only did what we, as a culture, asked them to do. After all, how often have you heard that making more money, owning more things, being a celebrity on television or in the movies is "success"? Isn't that the message of reality shows? Do whatever it takes to get something you don't have, to attain something you want badly, to win some ludicrous contest in front of millions of people so that you feel better than the person who lost? How did their education, our good senses and training get so derailed?

I urge today's honor students to re-visit the motives driving the creators of this country and today's American public higher education system. The reason that drove fellows like Thomas Jefferson and others like him, to create accessible and affordable university education, was to create an informed and intelligent citizenry, an educated citizenry. Through this informed and intelligent citizenry, the common good would be improved. We could work toward "that more perfect union". Being educated was the cause and means to improve our culture, and it remains, as my parents said often, "the only way out of poverty". Don't get me wrong. I like the link between an education and getting the right job for you. Doing what you want to do is a whole lot better than doing what you have to do. Greed and selfishness has been a part of all of us for some time. But to have it and its nefarious forms institutionalized at a time when getting an education is so important and available, just flat out confuses me. Why after all do we get a college degree? Why do students accept the debt and the pain? Why bother with an education if the product of your work disturbs our senses? Why isn't television and the media reflecting the culture of an educate population?

Our misplaced messaging about getting an education has for too long connected a college degree with the slippery slope of getting a better job, making more money, owning more things, becoming more powerful. This idea mistakenly links key messages never meant to be together. This misplaced definition of being educated elicits strange desires. The more success you crave, the more attractive you have to be so the more baubles and trinkets you had to have? Think about the legion of studies surrounding gender, self perception, and body image. With so much attention driven by these reality shows, perhaps like me, we need to worry about why they are so popular. Perhaps, you'll become less entertained as you notice how unhealthy the shows are to the individuals involved and for purposes of my comments, the viewers who watch.

My own parents were not special by any means. Were they alive, they would be proud today less by what I accomplished than by how good and decent their grandchildren and great grandchildren are. See, for my parents and I suspect for many of the parents and grandparents here today, they understand the relationship between what you own, who you are, how big your dreams are and the purpose of your education. And that understanding isn't based in what you own or how rich you are. Your dreams are and should be driven by the kind of person you are and the effect you have on others, especially your parent's grandchildren. An educated person must care about how our thoughts and actions impact others and ourselves. Your educational achievements are ultimately not about you. As an educated person you're going to disturb a larger universe that is not measuring nor does it care about your assets. And it is here that your education enables you to focus on you, your thinking and the broader context of how to make a difference in this culture. Because whatever relief or satisfaction you may feel by earning a lot of money or buying a lot of things, it is short lived and superficial. Your educational achievements will enable you to make a difference not only in your life but in the lives of others. That is why you are so critically different from the mis-educated. Being educated means you are more responsible and more committed to a set of values upon which your life and the lives of others will depend.

I'm confident a Northern education helped you address those critical personal values. I hope it helps you define prosperity as it was meant to be. But it isn't over yet, you are still young. There is still much to learn and much to do. Get started, don't be misled, find your own path. Be aware of the power of your education to make a difference, to be so influential to others. And so, before I sound like an old fogey, please make that path free of reality shows. My best to you as you engage the world. All of you make me quite proud to be a part of Northern Michigan University.

Thank you.

Dr. Les Wong
President
Northern Michigan University