Wabash College - Class of 1991

Rising senior running back Brock Graham is featured on the cover of the NCAA's quarterly Champions magazine. Here's the online story and a photo gallery. (Read about Brock's trip to Botswana, the photo shoot, and how this happened.)

I'm constantly amazed when our little college gets national recognition and exposure.

Pretty cool indeed.

First off, I apologize for the dwindling and sporadic blog entries. (Some of you guys could take a moment to help me out by sending us an update on what you're doing. Hint. Hint.) That said, I'm looking out the window of my office at the snow that's falling and feeling that wonderful feeling I'm sure we all feel this time of year: Bring on Spring. Now!

Several Wabash students have managed to flee the wintry climate of west central Indiana this week as they venture forth on Spring Break. And it seems an greater number of them are doing it with a purpose on several immersion trips. The College does an excellent job of encouraging these guys to journal their experiences, and it proves a nice respite to take five and live vicariously through their experiences as they discover a broader world.

It's certainly good to broaden your mind while being hold up in your office on a wintry day.

Where in the World are Wabash College Students?*

Time was that if Wabash students wanted to experience off-campus learning, they would go overseas or to NYC or Philly for a semester their junior year. They used Fall Break to rage at Fall Bash (or as freshmen they would catch up on some much-needed sleep in their beds at home). And during Spring Break, they would migrate down to South Padre to do keg stands on the beach trying to impress women from Amherst or UT or IU. They used summers to get well-paying construction jobs or lifeguard at the local pool.

But an increasing number of our students are participating in immersion learning trips. They provide real-world support to classroom or book studies and many times provide a more intense and rich experience than a semester abroad.

For example. Junior Andy Chelton took pictures and video of his trip to Ecuador last summer as part of an immersion learning trip. It's fast becoming one of the more popular immersion trips, and still gives our guys enough of the summer to intern or earn some money. Check it out.

Wabash College Immersion Trips 2007-2008

You can check out some of the places and experiences our Wabash men have traveled here.

Your generous annual contributions to Wabash make spectacular experiences of concentrated learning like this possible.

It's just one of the many things that your gifts to Wabash help enrich for our students.

You can make a gift to Wabash in one of three easy ways:

• By phone: 877-743-4545

• On the web: www.wabash.edu/alumni/egift

• By mail: Wabash Annual Fund, PO Box 352, Crawfordsville, IN 47933 (Checks payable to Wabash College.)

He's up for the Gagliardi Trophy, presented annually to the outstanding football in NCAA Div. III football. (Full story here.) Kelley House sent me Adi's stats.

2007 Season Stats through 11 games

• 150 tackles
• 23 tackles for loss
• 7 quarterback Sacks
• 3 interceptions
• broke the career tackle record of Jim Kilbane '84

You can help vote for the winner of the Gagliardi Trophy either on D3Football.com or at USAFootballNews.com.

For me to be silent on this blog for almost a week should speak as much as my lengthiest post. Forgive me, faithful readers to this blog. I have felt much over the past few days following the tragic loss of freshman Patrick Woehnker, I have seen much, and I have much perculating in my head.

But those thoughts just haven't coalesced into constructive thought yet.

Until then, I leave you with a superbly delivered eulogy of his memorial service in the Chapel on Tuesday by Assistant Coach Kyle Dunaway and a very personal and heartfelt entry by his teammate Phillip Towne.

I pray that Wabash will never again bury another of its students.

I weep for Adonais--he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

Opening stanza from "Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

I ran across a new blog that has been set up for parents of college students. Check out the name of the blog...

I bet the other ideas to title the blog included Apron Strings, The Worry Wort, and The Overprotective Times. I guess as someone of our generation whose parents actually let us play outside unsupervised in a century-old barn with rusty nails and creaky boards, I have a lot of trouble understanding how this college generation will ever learn to navagate their own way through the perils of life. How do colleges and businesses even begin to deal with so many in a generation who feel such a great sense of entitlement? With many who seem unwilling to pay their dues and work hard for respect, recognition, and accomplishment?

Believe me. As someone who resented the Baby Boomers labeling our generation as "slackers," I am very keen on any epithets I throw at those our junior. But I do see a huge difference in the aggregate characteristics of those who now attend college. But then, I do see examples that break the stereotypes and perceptions. Here, and here, or even here.

Maybe that's where schools like Wabash come in: to teach the Nintendo Generation how to think for themselves, how to deal with adversity, and how to lead.

Man, I feel old sometimes. 

You may remember back in April that I wrote about a kid named Brent Kent that Matt Hanson and I helped get to Wabash. (Here’s the story.) He’s now a sophomore and had quite an extraordinary summer. I thought it would be nice to give a little update, courtesy of the Bachelor.

Finding America on Her Backroads

by Brock Johnson '07
December 7, 2006

Brent Kent knows the Cookie Lady. He met her in Afton, Virginia while biking across the contiguous United States.

Brent Kent reaches the Continental Divide in Colorado. Directly after taking this photo, he built a snowman.

Moments after completing his last final of his freshman year, the ambitious student from Martinsville, Indiana set off for Yorktown, Virginia, to begin his 49 day trek across varying terrains of the US. Armed with three outfits, running shoes, a tent, Chunky soup, essential bike tools, a small propane stove, a mapped route, and a journal, Kent’s trip westward began with a ceremonial back tire in the Chesapeake Bay.

Kent’s idea for the trip sparked after volunteering to help with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina during his freshman year. He thought biking across America would be a great way to raise money for the clean-up. He sold his laptop to buy a suitable bike and found a company sponsor to pledge money. Unfortunately the company bailed out after hearing Kent’s plan, thinking he would not be able to make such a journey.

But the company obviously didn’t know Brent Kent.

"I told everyone, including myself, that I was going to do this trip. I was determined to do it. I sent the company two postcards—one from each coast."

But the trip did have its rough points. Already by day three, a severe cold and bad weather made for "the worst day of the trip." But once this far, Kent was not about to give up.

"The Appalachians were the hardest part. I thought my legs were going to explode. But after Berea, Kentucky I was home free. The Ozarks are barely a mountain range, and the Rockies are a gradual climb."

But people like the Cookie Lady made the arduous terrain fascinating and manageable. Since 1976, the Cookie Lady, June Curry, has been assisting cyclists by offering food or shelter in a barren part of Appalachia. Her current log book has over 11,000 entries with people from every state in the US and over fifty countries. And visitors often return her generosity with Christmas cards, letters, money, or random crafts. Kent sent her cowboy figurines from HobbyLobby to assist with a model she was creating.

"Her life revolves around this. The world came to her!" Kent said.

The rest of America turned up many interesting encounters, too. Like the internet faith-healer in Missouri that offered Kent shelter from a tornado. She was kind enough to offer Kent a TV dinner and a shovel to guard against snakes and rats in her barn where Kent slept. But rats and snakes were a minor hurdle in comparison to cougars and scorpions in the desserts of Nevada.
Kent found lodging in places such as parks, fire departments, churches, picnic tables, deserts, and junkyards. Kent said people were surprisingly hospitable, offering lodging and food, simply because he was cycling across the country.

"They open up and tell you everything because you are never going to see them again."

Kent ended the trip at the Golden Gate Bridge on June 23, earlier than expected. His goal was to average at least seventy miles a day—he averaged eighty-three. His only problem now is finding a way to top this trip next summer.

But through this experience, he took comfort in and began to understand the words of Steinbeck: "You will finally begin to enjoy the trip when you realize that you’re not taking the trip, the trip is taking you."

Johnson '07 is Bachelor Photo Editor. Each week he takes one or two pages for an essay or photo essay.

Question: What's wrong with this picture?
Answer: This year, apparently nothing.

When you visit campus this fall, you may think that the Phi Delts did an especially productive job on rush with all the freshmen wearing pots. Through efforts of the Sphinx Club and a newly formed Senior Council, rhynies in six other fraternities (Betas, Delts, FIJI, Sig Chi, Theta Delts, and Tekes) have elected to wear pots this semester. Now, you can even buy pots in the bookstore for about $10. The Bachelor details how the little green beanies with the red bills and buttons came back in vogue. (story)

According to my inquiries, the tradition of freshmen wearing pots was officially discontinued in 1970 after the dissolution of the Senior Council. Beginning in the fall of 1972, Phi Delt freshmen have voted to continue this tradition and have continued to do so for the past 35 years. Over those years, some other houses have carried on the tradition in their own way: Beta rhynes made their own pots and only wore them inside their house; Delt pledges wore baseball caps with their letters on them.

When I wore a pot, it was always good to have alumni from other houses come up to me on campus, and say, "It's great to see the Phi Delts carry on the tradition."

It's been a little distressing to see the lack of decorum with which some of these freshmen have been wearing their pots (on the back of their heads, sideways or backwards, inside campus buildings, or off campus) or not tipping properly. Thank goodness for religion professor and alum Dr. David Blix '70, who devoted part of his Chapel talk to provide an instructional primer on proper pot etiquitte. (You can read a review of his speech and even hear his full speech here.)

I have learned that several houses are not requiring their pledges to wear pots on the weekends. Perhaps this is so that they won't be forced to tip Phi Delt alumni during football games!

I saw his profile in the zoned section of the Indianapolis Star almost exactly one year ago now. Brent Kent was class president at Martinsville High School. He maintained good grades. He went to Hoosier Boys State. He ran track. He headed swimming programs at the local YMCA and youth programs for the county republican party. He moved out of his parents house the summer before his senior year and was living in an apartment by himself. He was holding down two jobs outside of school.

Most of all, he wanted to go to college.

He should go to Wabash, I thought.

To find out more about this kid, I contacted Matt Hanson, who is a classmate and judge for the Morgan County Circuit Court. To facilitate a last-minute application, I contacted Wabash Admissions.

Long story short, Brent Kent is a freshman at Wabash College this year. He competed in cross country. He went down to Mississippi over Fall Break with other Wabash students to help out after Hurricane Katrina. He works for Admissions telling the story of how he came to Wabash.

One year after seeing the story about him, I met Brent in person last week. He’s a great kid.

Yes, I do a lot for my alma mater. But referring this kid to Wabash was the easiest thing I did for my college last year. And it just may turn out to be one of the most significant.