President delivers powerful, passionate message ...

Just as the HYPE Career Ready First-Year Common Experience on Sunday and Monday, President Rob Huntington set the stage for a successful Heidelberg journey for 346 new and transfer students at Opening Convocation on Thursday.

With strong messages to students that they will be supported, learn from dedicated, talented and passionate faculty, meet interesting people and thrive in a community that values kindness, compassion and inclusivity, he officially launched Heidelberg’s 168th year.

“Our focus in on your education excellence and your student success. That is what we care about,” President Huntington told the new students. “We want you to succeed academically and in all other ways here.”

In light of recent national events, he took the opportunity to help the Class of 2021 understand the core values of the Heidelberg community they have joined – a community that is imperfect but striving to become more perfect, a community that embraces the democratic principles of freedom of thought, religion and speech, and a community whose educational vision, philosophy and values “bind us together in our shared respect for diverse cultures, religions and lifestyles.”

“We want to be a welcoming, open-minded, open-hearted, honest, humble, diverse, inclusive and equitable community to our best ability and greatest extent in bringing people together on this campus respectfully and successfully,” President Huntington said.

At every turn in the Heidelberg University road forward and upward, we will always choose kindness, compassion, peacefulness, understanding, inclusiveness, love and humanity over meanness, cruelty, violence, bigotry, racism, hatred, and supremacy. Period."

Read President Huntington's full Opening Convocation remarks.