Morning Briefing
For February 15, 2013
1. Peddling Tolerance
Twenty years after I arrived and sixteen years after I graduated, I returned to my alma mater,Mercer University, to deliver their Founders Day address yesterday. It was a wonderful experience.
Founders Day started in 1891, twenty years at Mercer moved its campus from Penfield, GA to Macon, GA. During the 1960′s the event declined in prominence until it stopped altogether. The year I started Mercer the Student Government Association restarted Founders Day, which made it kind of cool that I was the speaker on the twentieth anniversary of the restart.
The Student Government Association at Mercer is an exceptional organization that has long had the respect of the faculty and administration. I spent three years as Parliamentarian of the student government and two as the University’s Chief Justice. As always, the SGA hosted another excellent event.
As exhaustively reported in the local media, my presence caused some controversy, though clearly the press was disappointed the expected protests and walk outs did not happen at the event. Southern manners typically override everything else.