Anna Bialkowski & Emaretta Branham
Editor-in-Chief & Staff Writer
Sept. 10 kicked off a new initiative by FSC President Dr. Jeremy P. Martin. Rather than just once a semester, Dr. Martin will be going back to FSC’s roots by hosting Convocation on the second Wednesday of every month. The hope is that more frequent Convocations will allow the student body to gather the FSC community to talk about values important to the school.
The first Convocation of the school year, “Cornerstone Kickoff,” was a rousing success, and the immersive themes will continue throughout the semester. In October, convocation will be held in Brandscomb Auditorium with the theme “Wellness Reimagined.” The November convocation will be for Kindness Week, and the December convocation will be in Brandscomb, highlighting the music department to prepare for the holidays.
Martin shares that the monthly convocations will be a slight mix of pep rally and assembly structures, being a completely unique experience for students.
“A little bit of both [pep rally and assembly], but less pep rally than assembly,” Martin said. “When you say assembly, sometimes I think back to unfulfilling gatherings of the entire student body in a high school or even a middle school or something like that. I think [convocation] may actually be a new experience to students.”
“One of the motivations behind this year is literally doing the experiment of saying, ‘Let’s do convocation differently,’ which instead of saying ‘We’re going to ask someone to come to us,’ what if we said convocation is about us?” Martin said. “We’re going to gather as a community once a month … and talk about topics that we think are important in the Florida Southern community.”
Martin explains that FSC was put in a unique situation where the institution had an hour held in the academic calendar for convocation. Getting rid of this hour, however, would mean that FSC would not get it back. Because of this, Martin decided to restructure convocation in the hopes of reinvigorating the event.
Martin explains that his favorite part of convocation is the conversations between students following the event.
“My favorite thing about convocation is actually the sidewalk encounters that happen after,” Martin said. “The ceremonies are great … but we exist at a college that’s human-in-scale. I love to describe it that way. So to be able to gather people together and say, I’m fascinated to know what people talk about on the sidewalks on the way back to their corners of campus, when you’re suddenly around people that you likely know as acquaintances, but you may not run into each other because you’re doing your own thing.”
Martin encourages students to show their school spirit during these convocations.
“Wear your Greek letters. Wear your club t-shirt. Let people know who you are and what [your organization] is on campus,” Martin said. “You should show up proud of the things that you’re doing and let others see in the crowd.”
