Deep Cuts Monday

In this Issue:

• Pro Humanitate at the NC State game
• Leadership and Character discussion groups (second half of the semester)
• World Cultural Festival video
• AI podcast Daily Deac – this blew my mind
• For P’28s: weekly message, and your ’28s Letters So Dear
• Deep cuts from the Commencement speech archives

The weather news this morning was not encouraging: Hurricane Milton has strengthened and looks (at least at the moment I write this) that it will hit Florida in the Tampa area. We have a lot of Wake Foresters who live in Florida, both alumni and families alike. May all of you be safe during this storm.

Pro Humanitate at the NC State game

I did not make it to Raleigh for the Wake-NC State game on Saturday, but celebrate our Deacs’ road win.

Besides the win – which is worth celebrating for sure – there was a wonderful moment where the NC State marching band, The Power Sound of the South (some 409 people strong, including my ’27) and the Wake marching band, The Spirit of the Old Gold and Black, performed together on the field. The Today Show covered the playing of “Amazing Grace” by the bands; it was a musical tribute to Western NC and everyone who has been suffering the ravages of Hurricane Helene.

It was a lovely moment. Hope you enjoy watching the full performance.

There was also a nice article in Southern Living about it. Their closing line brought a tear to my eye: “It’s moments like these and countless others taking place all over Appalachia right now that remind us who we are and that we will always be better together.”

Leadership and Character discussion groups (second half of the semester)

Today I received an email about discussion groups from the Program for Leadership and Character; these discussion groups will take place the second half of the semester. There are three topics:

• Men We Reaped: A Leadership and Character Reading Group of Jesmyn Ward’s Memoir
• Spirituality, Religion, and the Quest for Character
• Press Start: Leadership and Character Lessons from Video Games

The email indicated that “discussion groups will begin during the week of October 21 and will meet once per week for one hour each time over the following four weeks. The deadline to sign up for a group is Wednesday, October 16.” Students can sign up here.

Particularly if your Deac is still trying to find their people this semester, encourage them to sign up for these. Most of us make close friends through deep conversation and meaningful engagement, so these discussion groups might open doors to wonderful friendships in addition to opening students’ minds to important ideas.

World Cultural Festival video

If you want to see a glimpse of the World Cultural Festival, some of my colleagues who attended took this great video, which is worth a watch.

AI podcast Daily Deac – this blew my mind

The team I work on in University Marketing and Communications tries to stay abreast of all the new things in technology and communications so that we can do an ever better job telling Wake Forest’s story. One of my colleagues was playing around with Google’s AI podcast generator and shared an example of some Wake content he’d converted to podcast form. The AI podcast tool converts your content into what sounds like a dialogue between two podcasters (a bit like public radio hosts chatting).

I was naturally curious to see what the Daily Deac would look like, so I took the October 1 Daily Deac and loaded it into the AI podcast generator. I did not do any clean up of the original, or add any notes or clarification. It took less than 5 minutes for the AI program to generate the podcast. Listen to how it came out here.

My mind was blown. What was interesting to me (beyond the fact that AI doesn’t know how to pronounce “Deac,” – they say “dee-ACK”) is that while it gave a pretty factual recount of the items covered that day, it did add some editorializing: for example, I didn’t have any language in the original text about how the Family Weekend schedule might impact families who live far away from Wake. But the AI podcast version talked about that.

Anyway, give it a listen if you are interested. And here’s an article on the tool, in case you want to play with it.

For P’28s: weekly message and your ’28s Letters So Dear

This edition of our P’28 weekly message is a continuation from last week’s message about midterms: today we discuss Grade Expectations (pardon the pun). Your ’28s also got their weekly edition of Letters So Dear this morning, as well as Life in The Forest from the Office of Residence Life and Housing.

Deep cuts from the major speech archives

There have been a lot of heavy things on my mind lately: there are many profoundly distressing things going on in the world; I fear my eldest dog is destined soon for the Rainbow Bridge; and yesterday I was at a memorial service for a great older Wake Forester who I dearly loved.

At the service, I saw many of the elder statesmen/women of Wake Forest. The wise words and strength of character of some of those cherished folks have been on my mind, including some from the president of Wake Forest when I was a student (and for the first part of my career at Wake Forest): Dr. Thomas K. Hearn, Jr.

I heard Dr. Hearn give many speeches during our overlapping tenures, but there are two that always stuck with me. So I am bringing you a couple of deep cuts (if you will) from his speeches.

The first deep cut is just a section of a speech, but when I first heard it, it hit me like a ton of bricks. This is from his remarks to the campus on the evening of September 11, 2001:

“There were moments of epiphany in my undergraduate years, when I acquired lessons never lost. I want to share one such moment with you.

Our Shakespeare class was two semesters long. In the first, we studied the comedies, the tragedies in the second. The professor was a man I knew well, having taken several of his courses. In the first session of the second term, he remarked, in an off-hand way, that Shakespeare’s tragedies were generally regarded as superior works of art to the comedies.

‘Why is that?’ I asked at once. Mr. Ownby started to reply, but then paused. That pause lengthened into one of those compelling silences, louder than shouts, which seem to last an eternity. The room was utterly still.

Mr. Ownby paced the floor and looked out the window. Finally, he turned to me with an expression on his face which revealed that these were words from his heart and soul: ‘Because, Mr. Hearn, life is more tragic than comic.’ There was another pause before the class continued. It was a moment I shall never forget.

It is important that you rightly hear what Mr. Ownby told me from his heart. For many years I mistook his message. He did not say that life is tragic rather than comic. He said life is more tragic than otherwise.”

The second deep cut is from his Commencement speech in 2002, our first Commencement after 9/11. He talked about a trip he and his lovely wife Laura had taken to Normandy, and the impression it had made on them. I, too, had made that trip (as a college student at Wake) and it was a transformational moment. Dr. Hearn of course talked about 9/11 and the uncertainties of our new normal. But he ended on what struck me as a beautiful, hopeful note:

“You are the children and grandchildren of those who died at Normandy. You are the brothers and sisters of those who died in the terror of 9/11. From them you are given your challenge. I am confident in your character. We must strive for a world in which the motto of Wake Forest becomes the guide of men and women everywhere. Using all the weapons of your minds and hearts, go and bring that world to pass.”

I am grateful to Dr. Hearn for his ability to share hard concepts (like the world being more tragic than comic) while also finding a way to point us to the call to action that is Pro Humanitate.