  Convocation Speech 2001 Since my late-September posting of the speech I have at the University of Denver's 1999 Convocation, some folks, knowing I was President of the Graduate Student Association for three years, have asked what became of the other speeches. Well, there was no 2000 speech, because the Powers that Be decided that not enough students came to Convocation, so they would no longer be invited. Yup, the 2000 Convocation was basically a glorified staff meeting, with about 10,000 students, a giant segment of the community, left off The List. How d'ya like them apples?! Well, President of the All Undergraduate Student Association Tony Ryan and I didn't think much of them at all. Due in part to our grousing, a new Convocation concept was introduced in 2001. It was more of a showcasey outdoor thing with booths than it was an academic event.
I wanted to call it "D.U. on a Stick", but nobody went for it. So, in short, there was no speech for 2000 because there was no Convocation that year to which students were invited. However, I was reminded of my 2001 speech just today, so I'm posting it here. I gave this speech about 3 weeks after the September 11th attacks.
I'm pleased with how it came out, and it even reflects a sort of patriotism that I was experiencing for the first time, having been born during the Vietnam War. Ocean Journey, by the way, is Denver's aquarium. It's new and struggling, rather overpriced and with very few exhibits. Since many of Denver's area businesses are generous and into charitable giving, some of them had been trying to help Ocean Journey stay, er, afloat. This has resulted in a glitzier look and a proliferation of corporate logos, but at the time of this speech, nothing substantive.
Odysseus of Many Devices (Address to Student Convocation, October 1, 2001) Two years ago today, I stood before some of you and delivered a speech about the coming of the year 2000, and what it had come to mean in my generations collective imagination. In keeping with the theme of years, I tried to come up with something related to 2002, or even 2001, but the only thing that comes to mind is, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Why are you applying to graduate schools, Dave? just doesnt work as a tie-in. It is my opinion that 2001 will instead be remembered as the year when the world changed, when global considerations took our minds away from visually stunning movies and dreams of the stars.
As we begin to try to make sense of the horrific events of September 11th, our thinking is more like that of the original Odyssey than of a science fiction movie. The rhetoric of battle comes to us on a daily basis. We face struggle as we try to journey home to safety, although in our case, safety at home is a state of mind disrupted by the explosion of passenger aircraft and the massacre of citizens, and Ocean Journey is a haven for giant otters and corporate logos.
Odysseus is a special kind of hero. Like most heroes of legend, he is big and strong and courageous and has a beautiful yet functional home and a desirable and faithful lifepartner with a gift for entertaining. What is special about Odysseus, though, is that he is clever. He is often referred to as Odysseus of many devices.
Odysseus of many devices, he is frequently asked by his crew, What are you doing? Clearly, he is constructing some kind of device, but he always patiently explains his plans to his crew, who then give him a hand with the implementation. Ultimately, it is not Odysseus brawn or his bravery that gets him home. It is his persistence in his hearts desire to return and his cleverness.
He escapes captors, he creates tools and weapons, he calculates his way past the prototypical rock and a hard place, and he even identifies himself to his wife upon his return by passing her verbally administered tests. Odysseus is a particularly pertinent hero today because the nature of human conflict has again changed, even if our tendency toward it has not. The battle lines of the current conflict exist less in territories and among states than they do in our hearts and minds. The eastern front of this conflict is not a heavily-armed line of sandbags and barbed wire; it is conceptual. It is wherever in the world we expect to find a small band of men responsible for the attacks. This is already a war of cleverness. The attacks of September 11th were as well-planned as they were deadly. The attackers took into consideration Americas greatest strengths and turned them against her: total faith in homeland security, wealth, size, freedom of movement. A few men armed with knives and a corrupted ideology accomplished what an entire military could not.
In a terrain of ideological battle, a strong infantry is no substitute for a powerful intellect. If we are fighting hate and the very concept of terrorism, strategy and creative thinking are the keys to victory, and howitzers will not be particularly useful. Cleverness, not firepower, will bring an end to this conflict with the least amount of grief and loss.
The best way, then, to strengthen our respective countries at this time of change and conflict is to strengthen our minds and examine our hearts, to seek to be ourselves masters of many devices. The very path we are on as students, working to train our minds and increase our knowledge, is the path of the victorious, in the current conflict and beyond it. Two years ago today, I stood before some of you and predicted a networking of graduate students on this campus using the devices of technology and electronic [intelligence], and it has come to be. I predicted larger gatherings between us that would serve to break down the barriers between interdisciplinary discussion and interaction that we might share our ideas and devices with each other, and that, too, came to be. Even as a few aspects of the larger Universitys growth have occasionally created unforeseen disagreement, graduate students are coming together in greater numbers and with a greater sense of community and singularity of purpose than they have in this universitys recent memory. GSACs mission remains to continue to foster that coming together, that community, that purpose. We believe our voice contributes to the Universitys future in important ways.
Most of us are here, after all, because we are in love with ideas. What greater pleasure could there be than offering up our ideas, the devices of our own construction, and watching them improve our own community and our own experience, even in small and subtle ways? GSAC would like to thank all the members of the University community who have drawn upon our perspective over the last two years. It is a statement of faith in the University of Denver itself that we all believe in its ability to select and train good thinkers. We look forward to further collaboration, and to the construction of many more devices for the greater benefit. May we all return home to safety soon. 
