Welcome, new students! You are now attending one of the greatest universities in the world, and I congratulate you as well as your parents.
You are English majors and engineers; you are Tennesseans and Texans; you are native Ithacans and international students. From all corners of the country and the globe, you have come together to this world-class institution. That is not an overstatement: here, you will receive a world-class undergraduate education; here, you will find a place for imagination, a place to explore your potential and your passion and a place to grow from the exchange of knowledge between fellow students whose ideas, upbringings and origins may be different from your own.
Every single one of us has a story: a home left behind; a teacher who inspired us to study; a feeling of apprehension about college. About Cornell. This New Big Thing. In the two years since I first came to Ithaca, I can honestly tell you that I have found a place that has furthered my dreams and far exceeded my expectations.
My dream is to take a leadership position in university governance in China. When I arrived here, I was very interested in speaking with students, faculty and administrators about the role students have to play in university governance. One day, an administrator suggested, “Mao, to move a step closer to your dream, why not run for trustee?”
My initial response was: What’s a trustee? I Googled the word and found out that it meant “the President’s boss.”
So I thought, “That’s good. I like the sound of that.”
I wanted to serve. But my chances looked dismal. I was a new student. I was a foreigner. I only had two Facebook friends and one of them was my wife. I decided to run anyway, and spent the campaign listening to anyone who was willing to talk. Things started to change for me. I didn’t just survive the campaign; against the odds, I won. And I even made 100 more Facebook friends. (Since I delivered this speech last Saturday at new student convocation, I have made 50 more.) After the results came in, my parents read about my victory in the most widely circulated newspaper in China — The People's Daily. I had become the first Mainland Chinese person ever elected as a trustee at an Ivy League school.
My story demonstrates that there is no limit to what you can achieve here. Ezra Cornell established this University with what was a radical notion in his era. He wrote, “I would found an institution … where any person can find instruction in any study.” And even today, we continue to work to build a Cornell where any person can tap their potential, independent of their backgrounds. We are all representatives of Erza Cornell’s dream once we arrived here
Last year, I was preparing to be interviewed by the Chinese Central TV station, the biggest TV station in China. I struggled with how to best express Ezra's dream to millions of Chinese audience members. At last, I came to an epiphany: I could use two famous quotes related to the ancient Chinese thinker Confucius.
The first one is called You Jiao Wu Lei , meaning, “In education, there is no class distinction.” Confucius developed and followed a need-blind admissions system, accepting students from different backgrounds so that education would not be a privilege reserved for only a few people. The second saying, Yin Cai Shi Jiao, stated that students must be educated based on their strengths, interests and passions.
These are the overarching goals to which Ezra dedicated our University. Although Ezra and Confucius never met, each man dedicated his entire life to the same goals.
I then realized that as human beings, although we may have different genders, religions, nationalities, sexual orientations and skin colors, we have 99 percent in common. I first came to Cornell to meet people from different backgrounds. Yet, ultimately, I realized, we are all very similar. All of us share the same dream. The only difference is in the way we express that dream. I believe that human understanding is a process of self-help as much as it is one of empathy. Understanding people of different cultures helps to understand our own; in respecting people from different backgrounds, we learn to respect ourselves.
Our world is far different than when either Confucius or Ezra Cornell were alive. From the furthest reaches of geography, background and understanding, we are able to come together — to study, to live and to form a community called Cornell. Your experience here will provide unique opportunities for you to appreciate different cultures, and more importantly, to discover the links and connections between them. While we reflect on what has been achieved by those pioneers, it is far more important for us to think about what we can do to shape the future. In this sense, we are one university with one dream.
I wish you all the best, my fellow students.
Mao Ye is a student-elected trustee. He can be contacted at my87@cornell.edu. Trustee Viewpoint will appear alternate Wednesdays this semester.