In welcoming new students on Sunday, 5 February 2012, Vice-Chancellor, Dr Saleem Badat said, the first year students begin a new life journey – a voyage that is centred on higher learning and the making, sharing and spreading of knowledge and at the same time a voyage of self-discovery.
He told an audience comprising of students, parents and guardians, that it’s a great opportunity for the first year students to discover who they are. “It’s said that ‘you are who you are’. That’s not entirely true. You are also who you learn to become. We at Rhodes University are here to support you to learn, and to learn to become.
“We want to kindle in you the desire to question, to discover and to wonder, and to pursue knowledge as a way of freeing yourself from wonder,” said Dr Badat.
“Our goal is that you acquire not only knowledge, expertise and skills, but you also become a sensitive, cultured, caring and ethical intellectual and citizen – a person who thinks about questions of social justice, democracy, and the common good.
“At Rhodes, we value diversity as a well-spring of intellectual and social vitality. We are always excited when we have students from schools and towns from which we have not previously had students.”
This year, Rhodes also welcomed the very first graduates of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. Dr Badat said the University was especially pleased that 21 of the 62 students from the Oprah Winfrey Academy, the largest number to attend a single university, chose to come to Rhodes.
Dr Badat urged the new students to pay particular attention to the following five messages:
- First, you are a generation that has by and large been spared the brutality and painful horrors of apartheid. You are the future: it is to you that we look to help build a united, thriving, just and humane South Africa.
- Second, as a young adult with great independence and freedom you must now rely on your own wisdom and inner strengths to guide you in navigating life and its pitfalls. As a university community, we are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS as any others in our society, and it is you young adults who are most affected by HIV/AIDS.
- Third, it has been observed that ‘many Grahamstown residents have a love/hate relationship with the students’. ‘They love the students because they spend a lot of money in the shops and make a massive contribution to the economy of this town. On the other hand, they make a lot of noise, take up parking places on High Street and drink too much.’
- Fourth, our natural environment is hugely important to our quality of life and that of future generations. We must be deeply concerned about how we are damaging our natural environment.
- Finally: be warned that reading for a Rhodes University degree is demanding. You must take your academic studies very seriously. If you don’t perform and meet our academic requirements, you will be warned in June and inevitably excluded at the end of the year.
“To you our new students: you have chosen us but, equally, we have chosen you. Ours is a partnership of mutual commitment to learning and knowledge. I wish you a great, great year of wonder, learning, discovery and fun,” he concluded.
Dr Saleem Badat O-Week Speech 2012