A Status Report Address to BYU-Hawaii University Faculty and Staff
August 18, 1999
Eric. B. Shumway
DRAFT
Aloha and Aloha again. On July 1st of this summer I concluded the fifth year of my tenure as President of BYU-Hawaii. As always, I am aware of the truth spoken by the old sage Rabbi Ben Ezra who lamented the "petty done and the undone vast" in our lives, our tiny accomplishments compared to the work remaining to be accomplished. But as I ponder the last five years my overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude and appreciation for all of you, for the Brethren of the Church, their interest and support, for my close friendships with people such as Lester Moore, whose support of this campus is of inestimable value.
Likewise, I am increasingly in awe of the work and the faith of our predecessors, the men and women who laid the foundation and built upon that foundation in bringing this University and the Polynesian Cultural Center and the community to what they are today. I am especially conscious that as wonderful and auspicious as our beginning was as a University and the subsequent establishment of the Polynesian Cultural Center, both the University and the Center, in their synergistic and symbiotic relationship, have become much bigger and have played a much more profound role in advancing the cause of Zion, and in building significant relationships of trust in the world than anybody saw in the beginning, except perhaps for President David O. McKay himself.
Never before have I felt more urgency that all of us, every employee, students and full-time, on both sides of the fence have both a vision of what mighty thing "the Lord has wrought" in this place, and a profound sense of mission, our mission to influence for good the generations of the world to come. In my moments of introspection relative to the last five years, my feelings are affected by the recent loss of Dr. Lance Chase, as a close personal friend, a sterling teacher and one of the treasures of the University and the community. As in life, Lance has become in death and memory one who triumphed through adversity; who to the very end was an excellent teacher and helpful colleague. He thought, prepared, taught, and contributed to the intellectual and spiritual life of this campus to the very end of his life. We will miss him greatly.
Before I speak of the opportunities and challenges of this coming year, I want to declare how happy and proud I am of the efforts so far to respond positively and creatively to the Charge given to us last February, to initiate across the board efficiency measures that will increase our productivity with wiser use of our resources.
A good example is the dramatic reduction of and refinement to our curriculum, making it possible to graduate more students in a timely manner and at the same time hold fast to and even improve the quality of our offerings. In a recent meeting with the Executive Committee of the Board, the Brethren, especially Elder Eyring, could not have been more complimentary about the strides the BYU-Hawaii faculty made universally this past year to bring all academic offerings into the hundred and twenty hour graduation requirement, including general education, major programs, religion, and in most cases with over twenty hours for free electives. As you know, this careful, in some cases painful, effort will help us to double our graduates annually during any four year period and save millions of Church dollars over time.
Doubling our graduates will reduce the cost of the Church per graduate from one hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars to sixty-four thousand dollars over four years. In the meantime, the Brethren have given their unqualified endorsement to Brigham Young University-Hawaii as a baccalaureate degree granting institution. The value of a BYU-Hawaii education is unassailable, particularly as we leverage our extraordinary relationships with the Polynesian Cultural Center and with Provo. Now our Board expects us to do what we have promised to do within the charge without increasing the number of Church dollars being invested. Besides the marvelous things being done with the curriculum, I want to report on certain other accomplishments of this last year. I think it is always good to see the previous year in review. I should like then to outline some of the tasks ahead of us, and finally offer some counsel by way of conclusion.
• The Hawaii Studies program has begun to bloom in a significant way, thanks to the sterling efforts of Bill Wallace and Kamoa’e Walk, their team of students, the Polynesian Cultural Center specialists, and the community advisory group, our kupuna. You know the highly prestigious W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in an unusual expression of confidence and generosity, gave the university a major donation to launch the program over two years ago. The first year featured curriculum development, the second Hawaiian agriculture. In the coming year we will refine those two activities and also launch a canoe building program.
Two weeks ago members of the Kellogg Foundation, with a number of other native American guests, made a site visit to evaluate the progress of the Hawaiian Studies program. Frankly, they were amazed at the way the program is organized. They all had an opportunity to visit the area where Bill and his team are creating a plantation for the growing of taro and other native plants. After a very moving chant by Larry Ursua right on the field, each member of the visiting group had a chance to plant one taro after a prayer in their own language. They were later given a Powhiri presentation at the Maori village where speeches and gifts were exchanged and other discussions took place. They were thrilled to see that the special relationship between BYU-Hawaii, the Polynesian Cultural Center, and the community have come together in the kind of system of cooperation and synergy that the Foundation is trying to achieve in projects they fund around the world, cooperation that affects lives for good beyond the boundaries of the campus.
I believe they also sensed the spiritual dimensions of our program, the true concern of our leaders for students, the ultimate goal of preparing students who will in turn lift and inspire a new generation of Hawaiians. The Native American presidents and other delegates who were present felt a close kinship between the Hawaiian culture and their own native cultures. Their speeches, their songs, and their gifts expressed their appreciation in a very moving fashion. There seemed to be a union of hearts and minds which I believe will bear fruit in the future. Most significantly, they sensed that our program is not political or militant. Our leaders and students are not driven by a rhetoric of victimization and recrimination, but rather by a true spirit of ho’oponopono and aloha. I thank Bill and his people for their leadership in this grand enterprise. We are grateful for the leaders of the community and the Polynesian Cultural Center who also foster this preservation and portrayal of culture.
• Our jazz band and frontline singers successfully toured Samoa and Australia. The high moments were beyond anyone’s hopes, including those of the Saints who lavished attention and hospitality upon our students. The students were the featured group at a major jazz festival in Sydney, and if you will pardon the pun and the "understatement" from Dr. Jeff Belnap, they "blew everyone away," even the other ensembles present, which included several professional bands. Kudos go to Mike Siggard, David Kammerer, Vicki Nicholes, and the performers. It wasn’t just the brilliance of the musical performance that made the impact. It was the character, personality, and the spirituality of our young people that left a lasting impression.
• We congratulate the quality of our athletic programs in our first year as a member of the NCAA Division II Pac West Conference. The teams competed well, the women’s volleyball team was undefeated and ranked #1 in the nation until we lost in the regional finals to HPU. Our women’s tennis team won the national championship by the largest margin of a previous tennis program. Our other teams were competitive and by the end of each of their seasons the men’s soccer team and women’s softball team were beating the best teams in the league. The Pear Harbor Basketball Classic was very successful. It opened the door to what we think will be an annual tournament, bringing in top Division I schools to play here in Hawaii. The two media guides for men’s basketball and women’s volleyball won first place national honors.
• We are proud of another triumphant effort by students from the School of Business in the international SIFE competition.
• We graduated our largest senior class this past year. Our graduates these days seem to move easily to the graduate schools of their choice across the nation or into the work force. In the last two graduating classes we have had larger percentages of students who have chosen to return and find work in their home countries.
• Publications were significant this past year, three issues of the Pacific Studies Journal, the TESOL Reporter, two issues of Profile Magazines, another excellent yearbook, a video documentary on the Royal Kava ceremony in Tonga, and a beautiful compilation of 30 years of David O. McKay lectures, thanks to the editing skills of Jesse Crisler who this year is on exchange here from Provo. We also congratulate Susan Barton, Sonoma Goodwill, and Debbie Hippolite-Wright for completing dissertations and receiving doctorates. There are others who are in the pipeline whom we encourage and congratulate.
• I am pleased to report major progress in upgrading our admissions office and functions. As you may recall, this was the number one recommendation from the Strategic Planning Committee as well as the President’s Council. I need not rehearse here the past blight on our credibility and image because of complaints in this area from parents, students, Church leaders, and the general public. But thanks to new leadership and an infusion of desperately needed resources, including an FTE, I believe we are restoring the functions and our quality image despite the many difficult and high pressured demands of this office. We will also be positioned to respond better to the direction of the Brethren to recruit more international students and move them through our academic programs in a timely manner. Let me assure you who have asked about the likelihood of losing FTE from the academic side to the administrative side, this FTE was reallocated within the administration. Conversely, three administrative FTE have been reallocated to academic areas in the recent past. I’ll say more about these resources later.
• We are delighted with the appointment of Wally Thiim to the LDS Foundation staff and his assignment to our campus. He will work with Barbara Velasco as a donor liaison. Wally is a former senior officer of the US Army and a former executive with HMSA. He is presently the President of the Honolulu Stake. Wally’s experience, personality, and connections will greatly bless the fund raising efforts on campus.
• Nine new University housing units will be completed this fall. Renovation of the auditorium is now on track with final plans being drawn. Bids will be let out next semester. We are also told that working drawings for a new stake center on campus are being completed as part of the third step in a three step approval process. The two campus stake presidents have been the point persons on this project from conception to justification to approval. Frankly, I have been holding my breath on this one, because, as with the auditorium, the timing of our need and the "opportunity" for such a building came right at the moment when many of the Church resources were being heavily drawn from due to President Hinckley’s vision on new temples, with the attendant moratorium on academic space increase and new FTE at the Church universities. I want to thank all of those here who have remained focused and unflappable on what might have been seen as frustration comedy in bringing the auditorium project to its present point.
• Another significant event this past year was the selection of a new Dean for the college of Arts and Sciences, following a new selection process initially recommended by the Faculty Advisory Committee. Namely, that a faculty search committee would solicit applicants and nominations for the position, interview them, and then recommend a short list of three for final interviews and selection by the BYU-Hawaii president. Because of the importance of the Dean’s position, before his selection, I requested and received approval for the three short listed candidates to be interviewed by President Bateman and again by Elder Henry B. Eyring, Commissioner of Education for the Church. After their input, Dr. Jeffrey Belnap was selected and the full Board of Trustees confirmed his appointment, replacing that of Dean Jack Johnson who did yeoman service over the last three years.
I want to report to you here something that Elder Eyring told me after he interviewed the three candidates, Jeff Burroughs, Jeff Belnap and then Randy Day. He said, "President, I’m profoundly impressed by these men. If they are indicative of the quality of people you have on your campus, then you are strong indeed. You always told me how good your people are, but I thought you might be beating your drum a little hard." Elder Eyring also said something I’ve heard him say before, that generally speaking there seems to be among our faculty at BYU-Hawaii an easier, more natural flowing together of the spiritual and the academic; a sweeter, more seamless effort to embrace the things of the mind and the heart, of faith and intellect than at other Church institutions. I believe that to be true.
• This last year I traveled more extensively than in previous years of my presidency for the purpose of meeting the goals of the capital campaign, strengthening alumni, building friendships for the Church, cementing ties with our new NCAA Division II Conference, producing a documentary on Tongan culture, and increasing the visibility of the campus with government, educational, and Church leaders, not to mention the trips to Salt Lake city for discussions with the brethren about BYU-Hawaii’s future. President Moore and I also took a group of students working at the Polynesian Cultural Center to a major diplomatic event in Washington, D.C. There our student performed and mingled with Ambassadors to the US from countries in our target area. President Moore and I were both able to address this group. The event, I believe, will bear fruit because it is in keeping within the mission of the two institutions and our specific objectives to make friends among people of significance in these countries.
As I give this brief report on some of last year’s highlights, I am aware that other significant moments could be mentioned. I also acknowledge that the very best things we did and must continue to do is to teach our courses excellently, meet our classes, mentor our students. This so-called day to day routine is routine not because it is unimportant or boring, but rather because it is so significant and can be depended upon day in and day out. Our greatest achievements will always be the ever present, ongoing nature of nourishing and sustaining students on site.
Now as to the tasks ahead of us this year, I want to emphasize several.I do not have the time to develop all, but Dr. Keith Roberts has distilled from the strategic planning documents and faculty advisory committee recommendations, the tasks, timelines, and stewardship responsibilities for those tasks and timelines into a master plan matrix. This matrix will be our chart and compass for this coming year.
We will capitalize on the momentum already generated in our responses to the Charge given to us last February, including the very significant curricular changes. Considerable tweaking remains to be done, in the major and in the general educational offerings. For example, one of the most powerful concepts in the refined general education program is the notion of writing and speaking across the curriculum; and the use of computer assisted efforts to enhance learning through technology. In a way that means all of us who teach GE courses become speech teachers and writing teachers, who will leverage technology in a way that will help our students learn how to use the vast resources of technology in the learning process.
We all stand pledged to improve the climate of customer service on this campus. Thanks to Keith Roberts and Paul Freebairn, we have distilled from a number of student surveys, surveys of graduates and alumni, and reports from a number of focus groups what the areas of general frustration are to our students. These surveys have identified sore spots and sore heads, suggesting that complex interaction between systems and people. "It is clear," says Dr. Roberts in his summary of the surveys that we must address these problems at both levels. The systems must be reviewed in order to minimize or remove errors. This may mean a thorough review of all the systems that interact with students to determine where they break down and why.
We can no longer blame Datatel. There already is a group reviewing encumbrances on students with the goal of reducing the possible encumbrances from 89 to 5 or less. There then must be staff training so that the staff can aid the students in removing the encumbrances . . . there’s agreement everywhere that customer service must be improved. Simple customer service training is not the solution. We must change the culture of the university. This can only be done if the majority of the university family buys in to the change. This can be accomplished with developing training from the bottom up and example form the top down."
By this statement we do not trivialize in any way the very commendable efforts of many of our administrative staff and faculty who extend themselves unceasingly and cheerfully with great patience to help students. On the other hand, a smile and a courteous response in that interface between administration and student are not enough. Courtesy and a bright countenance only lead to greater frustration in the customer when an issue needs to be resolved. Of course, this does not suggest that students cannot be incorrigible or just a general nuisance. But I think we all sense the need for all of us to be more customer oriented beyond being courteous and friendly. Although courtesy is a good place to begin. We are grateful to Arlene Andersen and her team who will initiate custom tailored customer service training for students and staff this fall.
After several years of conceptualizing we are now ready to tackle the enormous task of integrating our academic programs with work experience at the Polynesian Cultural Center. That will entail defining each student job as an internship or field experience that will provide cooperative training and supervision and produce academic credit. As an extension of the BYU-Hawaii, Polynesian Cultural Center is an incalculably valuable learning resource center, a training ground that makes our partnership with them unique in the world of education.
To be sure, the Polynesian Cultural Center has always brought our students into key leadership roles, but the intent now is to formalize every student position as a supervised and evaluated work experience. This program will require even closer cooperation and coordination between BYU-Hawaii and the Polynesian Cultural Center with all of the professional and collegial trust which that relationship implies. President Moore will chair the internship/field experience task force with Dean Jeff Belnap, Bill Neal, Jeff Burroughs, and Keith Roberts making up the BYU-Hawaii side of the committee. There will be others selected.
Perhaps I need not remind us all that this grand educational package could never get off the ground without the kind of support President Moore gives BYU-Hawaii as and academic institution. As much as anyone else, he recognizes the educational and long term training value for our students in this program. I do admire very much his constant efforts in giving our students an opportunity both to learn and to shine. For example in every board meeting President Moore will schedule two or three students to report on their activities and bear their testimonies to the entire board. Here students are allowed to present before the likes of a Richard Marriott and a Mark Willis of Times Mirror. What a wonderful opportunity.
One of my academic dreams for this campus is for each major at the university to have a majors club or some sort of viable majors organization for their students to identify with, an organization made up of the majors, faculty, and interested others. I am continually amazed at the number of students who are at or near junior status, who still do not feel connected to their major either to the program or to the faculty. To me, once a student declares a major, he or she should be picked up immediately, oriented, indoctrinated if you will, assigned a faculty mentor and brought into a circle of communion with friends who have mutual interests.
I believe a formal majors organization manned by enthusiastic student leaders who have an agenda of activities will provide the network of support and interests many of our students desperately need. The organization could provide a kind of social and service outlet for the students as well. I am not talking about an extensive agenda. I heartily applaud national fraternity organizations connected with majors, but in many cases these are not enough. They are too loose and they cater more to bright self starters than to all the students in the major. Some major organizations on campus do a superior job while others do little at all. Students need a little drum beating, a little hoopla, a sense of belonging and a professional pride resulting from that belonging.
Last year there was considerable concern expressed over small majors, low upper division enrollments, and low graduation rates in certain disciplines. That concern was healthy motivation for us to look carefully at programs that might be merged, consolidated, or eliminated. I was greatly pleased with the creativity and vision that went into the responses to the request for great efficiency and the application of resources where the needs and interests of students are the greatest. Frankly, the Board has clearly directed us to address all low yield programs. And I quote here from the minutes of the recent Board meeting June 1999. "Counsel was given by the Executive Committee for BYU-Hawaii to continue in the evaluation, reduction, and streamlining efforts, as well as to capitalize and to put emphasis on the business degree operations as well as the development of a base of students from the Asian Rim."
This minute entry, while summarizing the general direction given to us, does not in any way put certain liberal arts majors, for example, in jeopardy. It does mean, stewards who are student need oriented. They are also serious about our getting along with what we have. In the instructions given to us relative to the university budget for the new year, we are told that there will be no program improvement funds approved for this coming year for any Church school. While I wasn’t particularly amused by this stark announcement, I was somewhat amused by what followed. There will be no exceptions to this directive of no program improvements, but if you insist on an exception then you may run it through the regular channels. This does not mean necessarily no.
It just means we’ll have to find money internally to do these projects. It’s interesting that these directives come at a time when President Moore and I are working closely to come up with a new mechanism that will assure an adequate flow of scholarship money from the Polynesian Cultural Center beyond student wages. Again, thanks to his total commitment to BYU-Hawaii, the financial struggles the Polynesian Cultural Center has gone through over the last several years has not affected its financial commitment to the University. Clearly, in the future we will have to be more creative, more visionary on how that flow of financial support will continue. Old mind sets, old loyalties to old ways of doing things will no longer serve in the new financial environment we find ourselves in.
We will aggressively move ahead in our recruitment efforts that will increase Asian student enrollment and decrease US mainland enrollment and in so doing change the mix of mainland students from a typically freshmen contingent who treat us as a junior college staying only a semester or two and then going elsewhere. We will recruit more that mature returned missionary, junior college transfer type of student. The US mainland student will always be the key to our international mix of students. We will simply favor those who statistically will come and complete their education.
Our commitment to graduate more students in quantitative terms is that we will progressively graduate about 70 students more each year until we reach the goal of around 550. As we mentioned before, the radical changes in curriculum have removed the major impediment to our students graduating in a timely manner. The next step is to make sure we implement and execute a program of mentoring and retention that will target the good student as well as the at risk student; that the system of transferring credits, encouraging students to utilize the educational opportunities as much as possible in their home countries before they come to BYU-Hawaii, an early warning system for students who are confused and bewildered or otherwise unprepared, will be part of this retention.
For example, this coming semester all teachers will be asked to report by the end of the third week the attendance and the general status of students who are struggling in the class. Alerted early to these struggles, a team of faculty, counselors, mentors, and advisors will go into action to locate these students immediately and provide the kind of support and encouragement they need. We will also institute a university course designed to help students learn how to learn and succeed in their classes. These courses will capitalize on all of the experiences, past and present, which we have garnered on this campus or have learned from other campuses.
There will be an emphasis this year on computer assisted learning. The simple fact is that technology has changed the landscape of education and everything else for that matter. It changes the way we communicate, the speed with which we communicate. There are simply more learning opportunities that come from close and speedy communications with each other. There is little doubt that computers are the learning centers of the future. To be active and fluent in the learning possibilities of this developing technology will likely become a requirement of every person who teaches at an institution of higher learning. We must anticipate the Internet user. Students must be tied to each other and to the instructor through e-mail.
Change is swift beyond belief. Talk about being torn out of one’s comfort zone. What an exhilaration when some one is able to do thorough technology and achieve a better academic result than ever before. The President’s Council is already involved in a number of Computer based training programs that will make us more literate and effective in our roles. We are hoping that department chairs and supervisors will convince all of us to be as friendly to the computer as it is supposed to be to us. computer based training and computer enhanced learning are not so much a paradigm shift as an entire culture shift.
We will also be preparing this year our interim report to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Our next full accreditation self-study and visit will not be for another five years, so this interim report is very important. In it we will detail the steps we have taken to respond to the recommendations of the 1996 self-study and the visiting team from WASC. It will also be valuable to us as a record of the conscientious efforts of our faculty and staff to improve the university through the self-study and the re-accrediting process.
Another major task is to concentrate on ways and programs to allow our ASBYUH to function more effectively as a service organization for our students. These efforts will be in the spirit of the charge and I believe will lift us to a new level of student involvement socially, culturally, and academically.
I would now like to offer some counsel to the university as the chief steward responsible for the campus including its spiritual dimensions as they affect employees. Every year somewhere in my opening remarks at this meeting, I remind us that we are all high profile examples of gospel living, models of morality and integrity. I have plead for us to be people of honesty and integrity not just in our public behavior, but especially in our private moments when we think no one is watching, but someone always is. In an institution like ours where in many important ways we are all teachers, where teaching and learning are essential to our mission, and where our stewardship constitutes a sacred trust, could we please remember Alma’s stirring words to his people, "Trust no one to be your teacher . . . except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments." (Mosiah 23:14)
Now that is poignant counsel. We cannot expect our own students to trust us nor can we trust each other unless we are people of God walking in his ways and keeping his commandments. Unfortunately, in an environment of trust, the temptation to be dishonest or to rationalize dishonesty or to ignore little cheats and manini lies is always with us. We trust each other so we are not always on our guard nor are we willing to give up the easy position of giving everyone else the benefit of a doubt. The temptation to give in to cheating a little and lying a little and pilfering a little affects everyone, especially those who handle cash or are responsible for university property.
Every year the violation of our standard of honor results in tragic consequences among our people. These consequences may be anything from a tainted reputation to dismissal from employment. Or as happened this year being convicted in a federal court and sentenced to do time in a federal prison for acts of dishonesty committed on this campus. Of course, the saddest part is that when dishonesty is found out, it results in such disruption and humiliation to families and individuals, not to mention the disillusionment and bad example to those who will use such behavior as justification for their own dishonesty. What are the typical excuses we offer in our minds to rationalize our dishonesty:
These are rationalizations some people tend to use to silence, or at least soothe, their conscience. Soon dishonesty becomes an unthinking habit, a way of life. It becomes so much a part of the person that when he/she is ever confronted or counseled about it, they feel hurt, get defensive, even angry. Their favorite response is "don’t you trust me?" or "Hey, I’m as honest as the next guy" which could mean he’s as dishonest as the next guy. Others are eye witnesses or ear witnesses to acts and words of dishonesty but remain silent. They neither warn, confront, nor report the offender. They may even consider it a matter of honor not to "rat" on others. Or worse, they enter into a sort of unspoken alliance of "I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me."
I remember part of a story [I’m not sure I have it right] recently told by President Faust of a young medical student in his first exam in medical school where everyone was committed to a strict code of honor. However, when the test proctor left the room a number of students started to bring forth their cheat sheets and crib notes. They were almost cavalier about it. The young medical student sat confused and indignant, not knowing what to do when a forceful, determined voice spoke from the back of the room. The speaker said, "I came to medical school at great expense and sacrifice to me, my wife and kids. And I’m not going to let any dishonesty jeopardize my standing as a student. And I will turn in any person here I see cheating on this test, and you had better believe it."
As you can imagine, the cheat sheets quickly disappeared. Integrity is honesty with courage. I’m asking all of us. If you have taken property from the university, please return it. If you use a computer or computer software, be conscientious about the laws and propriety connected with it. If you deliberately hit pornographic sites, stop it, repent. If you are on a time clock, be fastidious about keeping your time.
Years ago in a different setting, an exasperated supervisor called and told me he had six employees under him, all priesthood brethren, who would regularly disappear from their individually assigned areas. After a search you could find them stretched out somewhere talking story, laughing, sometimes with their tools in their hands. Spotting the group one day, I walked up to them and just asked, "What’s up?" They jumped to their feet looking a little nervous and sheepish. But one of them said, "Oh, we’re just building a little employee morale." Morale indeed! I’ve thought about that response. That’s as sweet a rationalization as ever crossed a devious mind bent on work avoidance. Could we repent?
Having said this about some forms of dishonesty, I hasten to add I know that the vast majority of our people are honest, capable, and hard working. But the few who are not I am asking to repent, to change. Those who have supervisory responsibilities over them, I am asking you to teach, train, confront and encourage these people, especially when their dishonesty and lazy behavior affects students. There is another kind of integrity deficiency that is all too prevalent on campus. It’s the deficiency that President David O. McKay warned us about in Laie. I mention it because its seemingly harmless ripples become tidal waves as they gather strength and momentum from gossip mongers. It’s called character assassination.
Character assassination is often accomplished in the casual yet malicious ways we speak of another’s misfortune or mistake or weakness, real or imagined. Even when we speak the facts or what we think are facts, we tend to exaggerate for spice. We pass on a destructive comment caring little about proportion or who we hurt. Sometimes we go public with a private frustration and infect others with our grievance. E-mail carries more than one kind of virus. I have known people who have such a demanding sense of justice that it overwhelms any generous or merciful impulse they might have. They insist on their pound of flesh. And if they don’t get it one way, they’ll get it another. This does not mean there aren’t legitimate grievances. There are legitimate procedures to handle those, but gossip, backbiting, language calculated to hurt, sniping, grousing, ridicule, mocking, are like poisoned darts and stinging scorpions.
In conclusion, Brothers and Sisters, and close colleagues in this wonderful enterprise that we call BYU-Hawaii, I pray, and I ask all of you to pray, that we will continually be able to keep in our minds and our hearts the vision of this place and its importance to the kingdom of God on earth. We are all distracted by what I call little intensities, "the details which are constantly crying out for our attention in this petty pace from day to day." I pray that we can see ourselves as builders of the Kingdom as we help build the lives of usefulness and testimony in the students who come here. I pray that we can confront and conquer any tendency in any of us to just get by, to do just the minimum, to ignore the opportunities and the challenges to learn and improve. I pray that we will all determine to do our jobs better this year than ever before, that deans, directors, and supervisors will clarify performance standards and evaluate employees against those standards.
I pray that we can overcome, indeed forgive and forget, any animosity or resentment within our university family, that each of us will take care of our own morale. I pray that we will all see our students as the Lord himself sees them, not in terms of their present struggles and adolescence, but in the maturity and competence that they will achieve as leaders in this world. And even more than that, that we see them in the glory of their eternal possibilities. I also pray that our eyes and our hearts will be keen to recognize instantly and sympathetically students who might carry unseen baggage from dysfunctional families, from unresolved personal problems, just as Christ felt the timid touch of one desperate woman within the press of a multitude of people anxious to get at look at the Savior, pushing and shoving, perhaps even jostling the Christ himself.
But he felt the touch of a single person and recognized the need of this woman. So many of our students are apt to get lost in the crowd, particularly the crowd of students who vocalize their needs or who compete for the attention of the teachers or church leaders. I pray also that we will determine to keep up the pressure on ourselves to meet the opportunities and challenges articulated in the Charge given to us last February. We have done some good things. Many things remain to be done.
As you know in my office hangs my favorite art piece which shows the Savior himself in an attitude of embracing our campus and by extension embracing the world through our campus. I pray his spirit will radiate in every classroom, in every dormitory, and in every course offered on campus.
That is my sincere prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.