Wabash College - Class of 1991

Tom Kilbane sent me this item from the Michigan City News-Dispatch. (Hey, I used to write for this paper in grad school.) Looks like we got the right kid!

Knee Doesn’t Slow Him Down

Michigan City’s Ryan Sosinski

Nick Dettmann
Staff Writer

MICHIGAN CITY - Ryan Sosinski wondered: Is it worth it?

Is the pain, the rehabilitation, worth enduring in order to play a sport
he has loved since he was 7 years old?

Yes.

Absolutely.

No doubt about it.

The 6-foot-1, 200-pound tight end barely has a left knee to walk on. In
the third game of his sophomore year - his first on the varsity roster -
he tore his medial collateral ligament. Hoping to contribute as a junior
after missing two-thirds of his sophomore season with a knee injury, he
tore the anterior cruciate ligament. The following spring, he tore his
patellar tendon. And, this year after the football season, he discovered
he tore his meniscus.

“It was a struggle,” he said. “… There were a lot of times I thought
about giving up. Sometimes you thought, ‘Will it be back to normal?’ It
probably never will be, but it’s as close as I’ll ever get it.”

The closest he came to quitting? It came Aug. 31, 2007, against
Chesterton, when his ACL was torn.

“I thought about (quitting) a few times,” he said. “But I never really
thought about going through with it. I love football so much.”

The injuries, he says, have molded him into the person - the player - he
is today. They either make or break you, tough to come back from.

When the thought of quitting came up, it was brief. Only during the
surgeries. Once through that stage, Sosinski worked to get back to
football.

His passion wouldn’t let him quit.

“There’s something inside me that won’t let me give it up,” Sosinski
said. “… A lot of times, your greatest success comes from what, at the
time, looks like your greatest failure.”

He’s a walking success story.

On Wednesday, Sosinski announced he would attend Wabash College in
Crawfordsville, Ind., to play football. He wants to study biology and
pre-med, ultimately becoming a team doctor.

He joins classmate Garrett Payne, a wrestler at City, with the same
aspirations.

As a senior this year - his first full varsity season - Sosinski caught
19 passes for 383 yards and four touchdowns. He will play in the
East-West All-Star game during the Sports Fest 2009 this summer in South
Bend.

He was also a News-Dispatch All-Area selection this past season.

“Ryan had an outstanding senior year coming off ACL surgery as a
junior,” City coach Craig Buzea said. “Wabash is getting a very good
pass-catching tight end and, most importantly, a quality
student-athlete.”

Sosinski will join a Wabash football team that went 10-2 last season and
won its fourth consecutive North Coast Athletic Conference championship
with a 7-0 conference record. The Little Giants advanced to the NCAA
Division III playoffs, defeating Case Western Reserve, 20-17, in the
first round before losing to Wheaton College in the second round.

Wabash finished the season ranked 18th by D3football.com and 14th the
American Football Coaches Association.

“When I visited them,” Sosinski said, “I saw their work ethic, and how
hard they work to win to win and in academics, and that’s a place where
I wanted to be.”

Sosinski said he visited the campus four times, including attending two
games - Oct. 25 against Wooster and Nov. 15 against DePauw.

The DePauw-Wabash game, or the “Monon Bell Classic,” is college
football’s oldest rivalry west of the Alleghenies. It has been played
since 1890 and the series is tied at 53-53-9.

“They have a lot of fan support, which I really want to play for,”
Sosinski said. “The DePauw game was nice because there was like 11,000
people there. It was pretty loud.

“It was crazy. I would not have expected to see that for a Division III
team.”

Sosinski considered many schools, including Valparaiso, Indianapolis,
DePauw, St. Xavier, Ohio-Northern and St. Joseph College.

“They’re all good schools, academic wise,” Sosinski said. “I felt I fit
in better (at Wabash) with the football program.

“… Every time I went down there, I got that strong tradition feeling
like you would see at Notre Dame. … I’m looking forward to possibly
playing for a national championship. That’s one of their goals. They
want to take the next step to win a national championship.”

Sosinski says it has been worthwhile.

Definitely.

Contact sports writer Nick Dettmann at ndettmann@thenewsdispatch.com or
874-7211, Ext. 447.

Chalk this up in the “Cool” category.

Last year, seniors Nick Roudebush and Kevin Wasie created a replica of the famous campus landmark that some of us were instructed never to walk under. Dubbed Critical Arch, it stood on the southern path that crosses the Mall and challenged the Wabash perception of tradition.

For an encore, Nick teamed up with senior Mark Turpin to project submitted text messages upon the Chapel itself. Here’s the full story.

It’s nice to see Wabash students taking art outside the gallery space and out into the heart of campus. Nice job, guys!

The discussion continues, both on this blog,on campus, and in today’s New York Times:

Rift on Indiana Campus After Student Dies

November 28, 2008
By DIRK JOHNSON

CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ind. — A sort of philosophy class in a frat house, the students at Wabash College milled around a pool table in the Phi Gamma Delta house, exploring the dimensions of choice and consequence through the prism of tragedy.

“When something terrible happens, people want answers,” said John Bogucki, a lanky freshman with arms folded across his chest. “But I’m a big believer in personal responsibility.”

This was no theoretical discussion. An 18-year-old freshman, Johnny Smith, died last month while drunk at another fraternity on campus, Delta Tau Delta. In the aftermath, the college ordered Delta Tau Delta disbanded and took over the lease on its house.

Since then, Wabash, an all-male school of about 900 students known for academic rigor and a pugnacious libertarian streak (“Wabash Always Fights” is its motto), has had some contentious meetings between school officials and students over the fairness of punishing the entire fraternity. The police have filed no charges in the case, but they say the investigation continues.

“Some of the students are very upset with me,” said the college’s president, Patrick E. White, who has been holding meetings with students, alumni and parents.

Both sides in the dispute draw heavily on the college’s chief governing principle, known here as the Gentleman’s Rule. Wabash students are expected to act as gentlemen on and off campus at all times. No other rules are said to be necessary.

In Dr. White’s view, the presence of a severely intoxicated minor in a fraternity house clearly qualifies as illegal conduct that violates the behavior code. But the closing of the fraternity, he acknowledged, has been regarded by some students “as an attack on the Gentleman’s Rule.”

As some students see it, the closing of an entire fraternity before the police have even completed an investigation punishes innocent students.

To Mr. Bogucki and many others at Wabash, who say the college has always prized treating students like men, not boys, the fraternity’s disbanding without discussion with student groups “left students in the dark” and came off as patronizing.

Founded in 1832, Wabash has long enjoyed a reputation as a place where students can speak their mind, though in a respectful manner. But on this woodsy campus, set in a charming little Main Street town that could pass for the setting of a Frank Capra tale, students lately are skittish about talking about the frat house drinking episode.

Kevin Andrews, the president of Phi Gamma Delta, spoke up for his friends at the shuttered Delta Tau Delta house, saying they had been put through torment as they tried to cope with the death of a fraternity member. While younger students were allowed to stay in the house, the college evicted those 21 and older.

“They had to drop everything they were doing to find another place to live,” said Mr. Andrews, 21, who intends to go to law school or divinity school after graduation. “They had papers to write, tests to prepare for. But they were left almost unable to function academically.”

Some fraternity members, staggered by Mr. Smith’s death, complained that closing the fraternity deprived them of solace. “When they took that away it stopped us from healing,” one member, Stevan Stankovich, told the college newspaper, The Bachelor. “Instead of losing one brother, I’ve now lost 20 brothers.”

The death also provoked talk here about heavy drinking among young people.

Rick Warner, an associate dean of students, who stopped to hang out briefly with the fraternity brothers at Phi Gamma Delta the other day, said there could be little dispute that “binge drinking has increased all over the country” and that even Wabash, known for its studious, earnest student body, was not immune.

The problems of binge drinking prompted 130 college presidents this year to sign the Amethyst Initiative, calling for a discussion about whether to lower the drinking age to 18, since, they said, “21 is not working.” As it is now, said the initiative’s leader, John M. McCardell Jr., a former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, “students lock themselves in dorm rooms and do shots.”

But Dr. White, who did not sign the Amethyst petition, said events like the death of Mr. Smith showed that 18-year-olds were not old enough to handle alcohol. Lowering the drinking age, he said, “isn’t going to fix the problem.”

Since last year, alcohol has been prohibited at fraternity houses at Wabash, even for students 21 or over. But inside the Phi Gamma Delta house, many made clear that rules, laws and lectures were unlikely to stop young people from drinking.

“Teaching us that alcohol is bad,” said one student, Brian Casey, “is clearly not going to change our behavior.”

Dr. White, meanwhile, welcomes the discussion, even among detractors of school policy. He said it reflected the Gentleman’s Rule.

The Wabash man,” he said, “values the ability to think critically,” as well as act responsibly.

In all the talk about policies and laws, however, many students said they wanted to make sure one thing did not get lost: His friends miss Johnny Smith.

With all the hand wringing going on at Wabash these days, this article from senior Brent Kent in this week’s Bachelor should remind us all what’s important. I still really don’t know what to say except that sometimes small actions reap great rewards.

A Responsibility to the Future of Wabash

To my friends who already know the things I will discuss in this article this may seem out of character. To my friends who do not, I am sorry, but I am the least sentimental and nostalgic and until recently it has been irrelevant to discussion.

For the past three and a half years I have avoided conversations about home. I wanted to spend my college career anonymously and not to be known for my past. So it is my hope that I have not spoken too soon in sharing with you today my journey to Wabash.

I was an emancipated student in high school. My twin brother and I were born to a single mother with four other children. She was only my age when child welfare and foster homes first separated us from the impoverished young woman, my mother. Use your imagination and fast forward fifteen years or so; I am seventeen. I had a homeless twin brother and a family whom I still have not seen in as many years. I lived on my own, held several jobs, and was trying to find a way to college.

That was when Mike Reidy came to my high school to recruit me and another student to Wabash. He asked us what we did in school. Tim said, “I’m the captain of the basketball team, in the National Honor Society, volunteer at the [Insert all Lilly scholar qualifications].” When he turned to me I shrugged my shoulders and said indignantly, “Nothing.” My guidance counselor, Mrs. O’Neal, kicked me under the table. “He is the president of his class.” I really did not want to go to Wabash.

I wanted to be at IU. I could not come up with the thirtysomething a year Wabash price tag. IU was a state school so I would be able to make it there I decided. After all there were no girls at Wabash and my best friend had left to DePauw the year before.

Spring came with my acceptance letter to IU. Unfortunately my financial aid award letter came soon after. There are many things an emancipated student must consider outside of the traditional “cost of education” but, unable to even apply to traditional scholarships without my parents’ signature or information, my award letters would not cover my tuition. I also had no idea how to fill out those FASFA forms without having them sent back to me “Incomplete,” requiring my parent’s information.

As my friends’ started planning their open houses, it was becoming increasingly obvious that I would not be going to college with the rest of my class that August. With each passing week, appeal letter to college boards, and meeting between my concerned high school teachers and college financial aid staff, I was giving up.

But I was told not to pass up a private school based on the tuition cost, so out of sheer desperation I made a trip to a private university not very far from Crawfordsville. I had no idea how to approach applying to college, so without scheduling a visit I skipped school and drove to the campus one morning, walked in to the admissions office, and sheepishly asked to speak to someone about admissions.

After telling them my story and my test scores to convince them that I was not a criminal or a runaway, that I deserved to go to college like everyone else, they said something I had heard half a dozen times before with a look that still puts knots in my stomach; “I don’t know how to help you.” The meeting finally ended when I was told to consider a technical school and walked out of because I could barely hold it together.

The year progressed. My commencement speech was written and classes were almost over. I had decided I was not going anywhere that fall and that I would not make the mistake of getting my hopes up again.

Luckily for me, something truly life changing happened. The kind of thing that is not untypical of this place. The Indianapolis Star wrote an article about my senior project, a mentoring program for elementary children. It caught the attention of someone I had never met, Hugh Vandivier Class of ‘91, who called the college on my behalf. Everything happened very quickly after that.

That same day a voice on the intercom called me out of math class. Mrs. O’Neal was at her desk and smiling through her tears; Mike Reidy from Wabash College was on the telephone.

The very next day I missed class again. This time a Matt Hanson, Class of ’91, was driving me to the campus of Wabash College. It was almost May. Schools including Wabash had stopped accepting applications, and a freshman named Josh Harris gave me a tour, explaining that everyone was busy for finals week.

I can remember it clearly. Matt Hanson ’91 and Josh Harris ’08 were both brothers of Phi Kappa Psi. They seemed to share something though they did not know each other, and I marveled as they walked me around campus sharing with me everything they loved about this sacred place.

I sat down with Clint Gasaway and told him my situation, but he did not ask for legal documents. I did not need my principal or track coach to vouch for my story or my integrity. He spoke to me with an honesty that I had not been met with in other college offices, that things would work out and that this place would be my new home.

It will be four years ago this May that I became a Wabash man, but my story is not unique in our history or even the 2008 class. Lately, however, I have found I need to remind myself of how I got here and the difference it made for me.

This place is special. The people here, the people who were here before us, they are what makes it so. My father and his did not build this college, but I was still given an opportunity to a life they could have never dreamed. Now I too own part of its legacy.

I was also given a responsibility. We stand on the shoulders of great men; as benefactors of their love to these sacred halls, we also owe an obligation, to protect the integrity of this college and to pass on to the generation that precedes us something just as special and just as hopeful as we received it.

Let us remember in these troubled days that this is our obligation to the college as students and as alumni, and that this burden does not belong solely to those who manage it. It belongs to us and to our sons who will fill these sacred halls when we are gone.

I ask you today and hope that it echoes hereafter, what will you leave them?

I was up on campus this weekend and saw this flyer taped to a door in the Phi Delt house.

I asked one of the Phi Delts, “Who is running this meeting?”

“The Senior Council,” he replied. “No faculty, no administration, no alumni, just us students.”

Feeling the shock of the Wabash administration’s removal of the Delt chapter last week and with Bell week approaching, they called this meeting to discuss how they can be better gentlemen and more responsible citizens.

It’s a serious conversation that is long overdue, and it took a tragedy to bring the campus together.

Student led. United in the cause of a stronger Wabash. I wish them all the best.

Marty Tuohy and Mark Kosior sent me the following e-mail, confirming our worst fears in the wake of the tragic death of a Delt freshman and suspension of the chapter.

November 6, 2008

Dear Mr. Tuohy,

This morning, Dean Mike Raters, Associate Dean of Students Rick Warner, and I informed the students living in the Delta Tau Delta fraternity that the College has decided to withdraw its recognition of the Beta Psi chapter and terminate the lease of the property at 603 West Wabash Avenue. Further Delta Tau Delta activities of any kind are strictly prohibited.

This decision was reached after considerable investigation and conversation. From recruitment to the beginning of pledgeship and through traditions and ritual, we have discovered at Delta Tau Delta a culture and practice of ungentlemanly behavior and irresponsible citizenship, which are inconsistent with Wabash’s Gentleman’s Rule, mission, and core values.

Effective immediately, we shall use the property at 603 West Wabash Avenue as a College residence hall.
We have decided that students living in the facility who are under the age of 21 may continue to reside in the residence hall, move into alternative campus housing, or seek off-campus housing. Two residence hall advisors will move into the facility immediately.

Students who are 21 years of age or older will no longer be allowed to reside in the facility. We have arranged for them to live in alternative campus housing and we will assist them in their transition.
All students will now take their meals at the Sparks Center.

We understand and value Delta Tau Delta’s storied history at Wabash, and I hope you will realize that we have made these decisions based on the best interest of the students and after painstaking review.

Sincerely,
Patrick White
President

This is pretty cool.

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?*

Link	Course	Location
Blog	PoliSci: Politics of the Middle East	Tel Aviv, Israel
Blog	Div1 277; Hist. 350; Hum. 277; Spa 277: Astronomy and the Mayan World View	Villahermosa, Mexico
Blog	Spanish 477-1. Master Novelists of the Hispanic World: Don Quixote and Garcia Marquez	Madrid, Spain
Blog	PoliSci 311: Congress and the Presidency	Washington, DC
Blog	German 202: German Language and Culture	Berlin, Germany
Blog	Bio 213: Ecology	Everglades, Florida
Blog	Marketing	Indianapolis, South Bend
Blog	Service: Post-Katrina Cleanup	New Orleans

* with apologies to Carmen Sandiego

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

Dates	Course	Location	Prof. or leader
Oct 10-13	Career Services: New York Networking Trip	New York, NY	Scott Crawford
Feb 29-Mar 8	PoliSci: Politics of the Middle East	Tel Aviv, Israel	Phillip Mikesell
Feb 29-Mar 8	Div1 277; Hist. 350; Hum. 277; Spa 277: Astronomy and the Mayan World View	Villahermosa, Mexico	Dan Rogers
Mar 1-8	Spanish 477-1. Master Novelists of the Hispanic World: Don Quixote and Garcia Marquez	Madrid, Spain	Gilberto Gomez
Mar 1-8	PoliSci 311: Congress and the Presidency	Washington, DC	David Hadley
Mar 1-9	German 202: German Language and Culture	Berlin, Germany	Brian Tucker
May 5-16	Classics 212- Crete, Mycenae, and the Eruption of Santorini	Athens, Greece	Leslie Day
Summer 08	IS 270- Evolution Ecology Module/Teacher Education	Quito, Ecuador	Dan Rogers

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

Here he is making a monster stop at the end of the half during this year’s Bell game.

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