First student speaker at Honors Symposium
Internet age has changed how people relate to one another and knowledge shared.
by Kathryn Hopper
Senior honors student Preston Swincher, an entrepreneurial management and musical theater double major, won a $2,000 honorarium in the first Honors Program oratorical competition.
Faculty, administrators and students donned full academic regalia today for the 47th annual Honors Convocation, where they got to hear the sounds of a jazz trio, classical piano and a speech that dealt with the horror of being busted by parents who google.
Senior honors student Preston Swincher became the first student speaker for the event, winning a $2,000 honorarium in the first Honors Program oratorical competition.
A entrepreneurial management and musical theater double major, he gave a combination speech/performance that started off with telling the story of hosting a birthday bash while his parents were out of town. He worked hard to clean up evidence of the party and thought he’d gotten one by his parents.
“My Dad suddenly turns to me and says, ‘So, how was the party?’ And I got that feeling I used to get in my gut when I was six and my parents would call me by my full name and I knew I was in trouble but didn't know why.
In order to not make the same mistake twice, I turned and asked, ‘How did you know?’ Do you know what he said?
‘I googled it.’ Seriously! My dad googled my party! Welcome to parenting in the 21st century.”
Swincher also told how his generation had been carefully protected by their parents and warned not to talk to strangers, but now they open up to total strangers on the Internet all in search of human connections.
“Every hour we spend on FaceBook shows we still care,” he said, receiving laughs from the audience.
“Swincher closed by saying our wired existence fosters bounds between people all over the world. He noted that his grandmother was friends with a Swedish women she met playing bridge online and he’d come to love two adorable British tykes watching the YouTube video
“Charlie Bit My Finger.”
More seriously, he said the web gives a human face to mass tragedies such as genocide in Darfur.
“The Internet is drawing tight the wire that connects us all, and when we are all shoulder to shoulder we will not be able to ignore the problems of humanity.”
Also at the Convocation, O. Homer Erekson, John V. Roach Dean of the Neeley School of Business at TCU, was presented with the 2009 Honors Alumni Award, which was also named in his honor.
Scott Williams, associate professor of German, was awarded the 2009 Honors Faculty Recognition Award. He told the audience a brief story about his two daughters finding one of his old report cards.
“My straight-A daughters were fascinated that their college professor dad had a received a much wider array of the alphabet,” he said. “But I had a lot of help along the way including from one professor who told me ‘You have a fine mind. Use it well.” Now I’m going to say the same thing to you. You all have fine minds, use them well.”