Dr. Joseph Chandler ’03, associate professor of psychology and director of grants and special projects, was selected by the senior class as the 2022 Capping Speaker. Chandler delivered his message to the Class of 2022 on May 19 during the Capping Ceremony, a unique tradition at Birmingham-Southern during which seniors choose a mentor or family member to place the mortarboard on their head and honor the influence they have had on them. Read Chandler’s speech below.

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Hi everyone! First, I want to thank the seniors for inviting me to talk today. It is an incredible honor. There are a lot of smart, wonderful folks you could’ve chosen to come and talk today, but you chose to listen to some Grandpa Joe stories one more time. When this is over, I want you to remember that this was your choice.

So, let’s start with something light. I love you. Each one of you. Let me tell you why.

I have a picture in my office that I treasure. It’s from graduation 2019. I’m standing on the quad with Dr. Allen and a student, Ellie Schafer. We are all smiling with the warm glow of Ellie’s remarkable achievement. There is pride, relief, happiness, and hope in that picture. And I felt every one of those things. As soon as the picture was taken, I walked across the quad, down behind Harbert, and to my car. I sat in the driver’s seat for a full minute, steeling myself for what I was going to do next. I drove to Jacksonville, Alabama, to a nursing home, to see my dad. For the previous year, his health has been in serious decline, and he had rapidly moved from home to hospital to nursing home and, just a bit after that, to hospice care. Parkinson’s disease had progressively robbed him of his ability to move, then speak, then recognize those who loved him. My dad was my template for how to be. He was a college professor and a journalist, a seeker of truth with a capital T. He did everything for his family. And I, along with my mom and siblings, was watching him waste away. This context was pervasive for me in May of 2019. But that photograph gave me a true gift – it took me out of my own head, my own self-pity, my own suffering, and allowed me to share in a moment of true joy. And Ellie didn’t even know it.

Daddy died that August. I was walking into a meeting on campus when I found out. My mom had texted all the siblings (there are a lot of us) rather than having to call one by one. In that bewildering moment I wondered what to do. I had a commitment to keep, conducting an interview. I was literally at the door of the room. So, for the next 15 minutes, that is exactly what I did. I conducted the interview. I still have no idea if that was “right” or “wrong” or – what. But there was a student rep on that interview panel, and they were amazing. In 15 minutes of strange despair, I delighted in the talent of that student. It was a gift. And they didn’t even know it.

When I told people on campus that my dad had passed, I was immediately met with care, concern, kindness, and a whole lot of folks who had also recently lost a parent. In a way, I joined a club. And the loneliness I felt from now flying uncovered was tempered. I started teaching in the fall semester just days after my dad’s funeral. And every raised hand, every excellent paper, every lightbulb that went off in the eyes of my students that semester worked as a balm. I had students come to me and talk about their own losses, their own struggles, their own bewilderment, and strange despair. And every time, my love for them grew. I started to see random people in the grocery store as brave, knowing they were walking around with wounds I might never know about, and some that I likely shared.

Two months after we lost my dad, my wife had a miscarriage. We were cracked open, laid bare, bereft. And as we shared what had happened, we found an entire community of people who had walked through that singular sorrow. We also saw that, for some reason, people didn’t talk about it. But once we did talk about it, we found that we were not alone.

Last September, Tonya and I welcomed our third child, a daughter, into the world. She was born with Kagami-Ogata syndrome, an incredibly rare genetic difference that left her chances for survival slim. Eight months later, she is still in the NICU, but still with us and fighting. (She’s a redhead, so the fight is kind of built in.) Every day is a literal miracle. And she has given us the great gift of stark perspective. Some things are important. Most are not.

The daily kindness of this BSC family – of you extraordinary people – has gotten me through some incredibly dark days. More than once, you all gave me the reason to get out of bed and try again. I love you because we are all carrying something heavy today. Each person is bound up in some struggle. Every one of us. And yet, we persevere. That deep connection transcends whatever differences we may have. That deep connection exists with everyone in this room, city, state, country – everyone in the world. And it has taught me four lessons I want to share with you today: be vulnerable; be kind; be courageous; and lead in all these things.

(1) Be vulnerable. In Greek mythology, Pan was a pastoral god who lived in the woods and mountains on the outskirts of villages. If you strayed too deeply into the woods on accident, and happened to come upon Pan, he was said to be so terrifying that people would simply freeze and die. But if, instead, you sought him out on purpose, he would give you gifts of wisdom and abundance. He was still terrifying, but the difference came in the choice to seek him out. When we hold our own sorrows and shortcomings to ourselves and do not share them, we risk wandering into the woods and having them overtake us when we are least prepared to handle them. But if, instead, we choose to face the things that scare us by sharing them, openly, with others, they can bring great gifts. A caution – vulnerability is not the same thing as an excuse. It should not serve as an “out”; it should not be comfortable. It should be, like Pan, terrifying. But the reward for that terror is the deep connection with others that we’re talking about today. You may worry that this vulnerability is unprofessional or unseemly, or even weak. Be vulnerable anyway.

(2) Be kind. Vulnerability inevitably leads to kindness, as you realize how many other people have suffered the same things you have. Unfortunately, the structure of our society is inherently divided, designed to split us into neat, marketable groups by forgetting the ties that bind us, by quantifying and empowering our devils and hushing our better angels. This age is filled with echo chambers that serve as an unthinking paradise. TikTok wants you to adopt an impossible morning routine (4:30 AM – wake up! 4:32 AM – make artisanal coffee, purchase link here! 4:35 AM – high intensity interval workout while working on your side hustle and positive intention statements for the day; and so on until you just drop dead, I think?); Instagram wants you to buy impossibly stretchy dress pants and a new photo filter to slim that waist and highlight those cheekbones; Facebook wants you to join benignly named interest groups designed to feed you all the political Turkish Delight you can stomach – and accept a friend request from a Bot disguised as your grandma. And because anger and outrage sell, none of it is designed to create kindness. It is designed to make you look at people and see lesser (or much, much greater); to see “other” and to be scared or shamed by it. Beware those who deal in hate. Resist the seductive ease of labeling others. Labels fail in the face of lived human experience. Instead, do something that is greater for others than it is for you. Here is the magic part: if everyone is living for everyone else then you have the biggest team in the world. If you are just living for yourself, then you have a team of one. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Yes. Yes, you are. Listen to who people really are, not who you think they are and not who you wish them to be. Meet them there, share your vulnerabilities, and be unrelentingly kind. Now, folks might question the wisdom of this type of kindness. They might mistake it for manipulation. Be kind anyway.

(3) Be courageous. Ok, psych students – I want you to recall the concept of diffusion of responsibility. Ah! You thought tests were over! The test is never over. Just kidding. Sort of. Anyway, this is the idea that when something needs to be done in a group, the first thought that everyone has is, “someone else will do it.” Especially when the thing to be done is risky. But if everyone thinks that someone else will do it, then nothing will get done. Be the person who breaks diffusion of responsibility. Lean into your leadership; show the world the deep value of living a liberal arts life, informed of, and not scared by, multiple perspectives. Speak up when others are afraid to; reach out when others retreat; practice active listening when others jump to outrage; give genuine apology you are wrong. One of my running buddies is, like me, an Alabama native raised in a conservative Christian church. Many of the challenging conversations of the last decade – marriage equality, the recognition of selfhood beyond the binary, the lure of nationalism, gun violence, racial profiling, the recent Supreme Court leak set to overturn Roe v. Wade – these are nearly taboo talking points in my friend’s family; indeed, in many of our families. They love one another but disagree vehemently. The other day, she wrote a beautiful, brave post, on Facebook, with vulnerability and kindness to open the door to conversation beyond the party lines. We talked about the post on a run before she wrote it. She feared how it might anger some folks in her family. She worried that it would shut down communication rather than foster it. But more than that, she worried that her silence amounted to complicity with actions she felt were wrong. So, she embodied courage – she was scared, but did it anyway. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the strength to be afraid and do the right thing anyway. One of her family members posted a response that started a real conversation, offline. When you feel the pull of your convictions, but think you should maybe shut up, sit down, or mind your own business – be courageous anyway.

(4) Lastly, I want you to lead in all these things. You didn’t come to BSC just to get a degree and a job; this hasn’t been just a checklist. You came here to learn to think broadly, to care deeply, and to lead others. That is exactly what we expect of you. Lead others in authentic vulnerability. Lead others in simple, direct kindness. Lead others in informed courage, guided by the strength of your convictions but tempered by the knowledge of your fallibility. In short, lead with love.

And when you fail, when you fall, when you think you’re not ready, when there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to what’s happening, when life in all its power and beauty and pain pushes you down into the dirt – get up and lead anyway.

Forward, Ever!