About 6,000 students left Convocation at the RBC Center Monday night after having participated in a number of “playfair” activities and listening to various University speakers, including the keynote speaker, Da Chen.
Chen, the author of Colors of the Mountain, the recommended summer reading for incoming freshmen, spoke about his experiences with two different cultures, American and Chinese.
“In addition to ‘Go Wolfpack,’ go east,” Chen said. “Go to China. And if you are linguistically inclined, study Chinese.”
According to Chen, America is a great country, but students should prepare to deal with Chinese culture, as “Chinese is going to be the English of the next generation.”
In addition to his speech, Chen played a Chinese song on his flute for the audience.
Tyler Johnson, a freshman in soil science, said he enjoyed getting “pepped up” with Wolfpack pride and thought Convocation was informative, overall.
“It gave me a better [perspective] of other cultures growing up and how coming from other cultures, you can be very grateful for other countries,” he said.
Chen emphasized that the student attendees needed to prepare to become world leaders. He said Americans have 75 percent of the world’s resources and therefore, had 75 percent more responsibility to produce world leaders.
“You are here to learn to be a world leader,” he said. “Not just a leader in North Carolina, not just a leader in the United States, but a leader of the world.”
Chen told the freshmen that their work at the University would become very important to them later in life.
“What you will do here,” Chen said. “Is what you will become.”
Joe Fortunato, a First Year College freshman, said he enjoyed Chen’s speech.
“I liked his book, and it was good hearing his story [firsthand],” he said.
Chen told the audience to continue being grateful for what they have.
“You guys are really privileged,” he said. “You guys have it good even though you may not think so.”
Fortunato said the overall atmosphere of convocation and the playfair was a good way to meet people.
Chris Nunalee, a freshman in meteorology, agreed.
“[I liked] the enthusiasm of everything,” he said. “It was interesting and fun.”
Several past and present student leaders presented to the crowd the different traditions at the University, including Homecoming, Founder’s Day, Wolfpack Welcome Week, the Ram Roast, tailgating, service events and Service Raleigh, weeks of celebration, the class ring, the Halloween Bash, and the Free Expression Tunnel.
Despite that it wasn’t part of the original list of traditions, organizers of this year’s fourth annual Krispy Kreme Challenge, presented it as “N.C. State’s next tradition.” The Challenge, running from the Bell Tower to Krispy Kreme, eating a dozen doughnuts, and running back – all under an hour – gains more participants every year with last year’s attendance at 1,341 competitors.
In spite of Chancellor Oblinger’s continued appeal to freshmen to concentrate on studying, student leaders encouraged freshmen to get involved and have some fun.
