Kim Johnson – The freshmen have arrived, the upperclassmen are trickling in, and classes are about to begin. Campus is bustling with energy once again!
 
I have said it many times before and will say it again, my favorite time of the year is move-in weekend. When I started here almost two years ago, the semester was nearly half over so I missed move-in. Last year, my daughter was born on Freshman Saturday so I was a bit preoccupied and missed it again. But as it approached this year, I was first in line to “sign up” for my turn to cover the action.
 
Seeing my excitement, Jim Amidon bestowed upon me the honor of writing the “Ringing-In” story! I made sure to find my seat in Pioneer Chapel long before the students and families arrived and have my camera lenses and notepad ready to go. I took a few dozen shots of the families filing in and pictured the wide-angle shot I wanted of the entire place alive with the sounds of “Old Wabash.”
 
The National Association of Wabash Men President-elect Greg Castanias spent only a few minutes at the podium but set the tone for the entire day for me. He spoke mostly of his time as a freshman sitting in the very same Chapel seats as the Class of 2013. He recalled not remembering much of what was actually said or what he was thinking that day, but he said, “What I should have haven thinking was ‘Wow. This is where it all starts.’ For me, that was the time and this was the place that my world opened up to me.”
 
That’s what it is about move-in weekend that I love so much – the world is opening to all these men – and do they even realize it? Do they know how special they are? They are at Wabash where their faculty are top-notch and they and their peers are the cream of the crop. Not everyone gets to come to Wabash – they are among the 250 chosen for those seats.
 
The opportunities are limitless – service and sports, study abroad and immersion trips all over the world, engaged and high-achieving alumni brothers right at their fingertips. Not to mention a diverse student body… where it may seem other campuses have more diversity, more international and/or minority students, I challenge them to find any other campus where the interaction with students from a background different than their own is so inherent and expected in the culture like at Wabash.
 
The faculty and staff are involved – they’ll jump off a bridge into the freezing Yellowstone River with their students, they invite students into their homes and lives, they wrap their arms around the men, and guide them to learning they never thought possible.
 
Castanias spoke of all the Wabash men who had come before and after him who went on to outstanding accomplishments. “I’ll bet that none of them – all of them your brothers – had any clue about what waited for them on the road ahead,” Castanias said.
 
It makes me think about that scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas where the girl with “naturally curly hair” is complaining about Pigpen, and Charlie Brown does a little monologue about carrying the dirt of King Nebuchadnezzar or something like that. While it’s meant to be funny, it really blows me away when I stop to think about it.
 
Same with the bell… these Wabash men are at the beginning of great things. These men will go on to invent new medicines and cure diseases. These men will discover new species. They will go on to write new literature, new music, new software and mathematical theorems. They will be doctors, lawyers, and maybe even a Supreme Court justice. They will be politicians who challenge ideals. They will become faculty who care and nurture another generation of great thinkers.
 
Regardless of their paths, they will become teachers, they will lead, they will ask questions, and they will be a cut above.
 
That’s what I heard as I looked across the beaming faces of the 18-20-year-old men while the Caleb Mills bell rang and officially inaugurated them as Wabash Men.
 
Men of 2013, your bell is ringing.