{"id":2603,"date":"2015-09-08T11:39:04","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T11:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=2603"},"modified":"2015-09-08T13:21:22","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T13:21:22","slug":"bryant-15-hsc-weekend-opportunity-for-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2015\/09\/08\/bryant-15-hsc-weekend-opportunity-for-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"Bryant ’16: HSC Opportunity for Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Bryant ’16<\/em> – Since it was announced prior to the 2014-2015 school year, the Gentlemen\u2019s Classic has been pitched as being more than just a football game between Wabash and Hampden-Sydney.\u00a0 It was about the all-male education and how we can draw from one another and learn from one another in the education of young men.\u00a0 This past weekend, Fabian House \u201916, Scott Purucker \u201916, and I traveled with the Little Giants football team to engage in a discussion with members of H-SC\u2019s student leadership.\u00a0 I walk away proud and thankful for all we have by what I witnessed, yet inspired that we can do better.<\/p>\n

\"FBwalkout\"<\/a>Fabian, Scott, and I met with Hampden-Sydney\u2019s Student Body President, the chairman of their Student Senate (which is comparable to Fabian\u2019s role), the president of their Inter-Fraternity Council, and the president of their honor court.\u00a0 The notion of having an honor court has deep roots in the history of Hampden-Sydney.\u00a0 Although our Gentlemen\u2019s Rule and their Honor Code are very similar, we don\u2019t have that sort of infrastructure here at Wabash.\u00a0 I admire their student leadership for taking a stand, often times against friends and close classmates, for the sake of upholding that honor code.\u00a0 That can\u2019t be an easy task.<\/p>\n

I spent a good majority of the first half of the game talking with Josh, the chairman of their Student Senate.\u00a0 Despite having closer to 2,000 students, Josh was surprised that we have the funding dollars that we do to put towards clubs, activities, and student programming.\u00a0 Some of the events he outlined at Hampden-Sydney were a formal ball that they hold for the student body, faculty, staff, and alumni, and also a large philanthropic event they put on each year.\u00a0 That was two thought-provoking \u201cgaps\u201d for us as student leaders to consider.\u00a0 The notion of having a campus-wide formal at Wabash isn\u2019t a new one and it\u2019s something that\u2019s been discussed in my time as Treasurer and now President of the Student Body.<\/p>\n

The idea of having a philanthropic event is also very interesting to me.\u00a0 Our financial policy says that student funds cannot be directed to a charitable organization.\u00a0 The idea is we want to subsidize costs for groups that want to \u201cdo\u201d philanthropy, but we don\u2019t want to allow a free-for-all in allocating funds to various organizations.\u00a0 That said, I think it would be a great idea that we put our manpower and energy behind an event.\u00a0 Prior to coming to Wabash, I spent four years on the Executive Committee for our high school\u2019s Dance Marathon, raising $1 million over four years for Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis.\u00a0 Philanthropy is an area for growth and I come away inspired that we can do better as a student government in helping students \u201clive humanely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HSC-Students\"<\/a>The weekend was a great one and the opportunity for me to interact with our D.C.-area alumni and trustees, interact with their student leadership in-person, and participate in the radio broadcast during the second half.\u00a0 It was a great game day atmosphere at Hampden-Sydney, but to see the apathy of their student body to the game and their failure to wear their school color, showed me that we have a lot to be proud of and thankful for in Crawfordsville.\u00a0 You can look at any photo from any game day at Wabash and find a full crowd emblazoned in scarlet.\u00a0 Not so at Hampden-Sydney.\u00a0 Instead lots of blue blazers with their backs turned to the game.\u00a0 Wabash cares and proof can be found no further than in the crowd that supported our Little Giants this past Saturday.<\/p>\n

Sunday was a day I won\u2019t soon forget.\u00a0 I\u2019ve traveled twice before to Washington D.C. and twice made the trip to Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown.\u00a0 Moved to tears doesn\u2019t begin to explain it.\u00a0 Without discrediting our players in anyway, I think you can ask any of them about what that Tomb means and any football game pales in comparison.<\/p>\n

When I look back on the weekend, I was asked a number of questions by members of the H-SC community and it humbles me to think I was an ambassador for our student body.\u00a0 When I explained our campus, our culture, our way of life, I quickly realized that I could sum it up my pride as a Little Giant by a lot of the actions off the playing field that I witnessed this weekend.\u00a0 Everywhere we went, whether at a hotel, a restaurant, or on our flights, the behavior of our players was noticed by just about everyone who came into contact with them.\u00a0 I heard countless times \u201cplease\u201d and \u201cthank you\u201d and \u201cbless you\u201d when someone sneezed, I saw doors being held, guys pitching in and grabbing bags for one another, I saw so much of that in anticipation of and return from a 35-3 thrashing of the Tigers.\u00a0 I can\u2019t tell you if it\u2019s a product of a single-sex education or a small school, but there\u2019s something special here at Wabash.\u00a0 Although it didn\u2019t take a trip to Hampden-Sydney for me to realize that, it gives me a great deal of pride that the people we came in contact with at H-SC and along the way, may have a sense of what it means to be a Little Giant now too.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick Bryant ’16 – Since it was announced prior to the 2014-2015 school year, the Gentlemen\u2019s Classic has been pitched as being more than just a football game between Wabash and Hampden-Sydney.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2015\/09\/FBwalkout.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2603"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2608,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603\/revisions\/2608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}