How we ‘Show Humanitate’

Across the academic year, I meet regularly with the President’s Aides, a group of undergraduate students, to hear their perspectives on the life of the University and their experiences. Over lunch recently, I asked them to go around the room and share a piece of good news from their semester so far, and I was struck by how they responded. 

Nearly every student chose to share “good news” about someone else — a friend, a roommate, a family member, a classmate — rather than about themselves. 

The rest of our conversation covered a variety of topics, but experiencing that “good news” moment has really stayed with me. In the rush of everyday life, in a busy semester, it’s easy to forget why we are here and what makes this community special. That impulse to highlight others over self, to care about others, is echoed across campus in so many ways by so many in our campus community. The President’s Aides’ demonstration of our ethic of care is but one recent and heartening example. 

While this commitment to others is a beautiful hallmark of Wake Forest, it is also needed now more than ever. Yes, here on our campuses; but, society also needs us to take that ethic of care out into the world. 

Nowhere is that need clearer this past month than in the western part of our home state and the surrounding regions. Hurricane Helene has devastated so many communities in western North Carolina, and the bordering areas of Tennessee and Virginia — and they need a continued outpouring of support from all of us. 

In these moments, our motto is a verb – we need to show our care for communities through actions. 

At Wake Forest, how we ‘show Humanitate’ in response to Hurricane Helene has taken on many forms. At the institution level, it means taking care of our people who have been affected directly. It means responding to calls from impacted institutions when they need help and being as generous as we can be in extending care through mutual aid agreements. It means coordinating and communicating about efforts already underway across campus and being creative and innovative in thinking about how we can do more together. It means donating, volunteering and engaging in the recovery through the work of organizations like the United Way of North Carolina and the NC Disaster Relief Fund. 

I am so proud to share just a few examples of how our community is already putting our motto into action: 

• Athletics is teaming up with Proof of the Pudding – their official concessions and catering partner –  to produce 36,000 boxed lunches per week for five weeks for emergency workers and residents in need.
• The Facilities, Real Estate and Planning team collected seven pallets of cleaning products and 1,400 cases of food. 
• The Anthony Aston Players launched “From Forest to Forest,” making blankets, shirts and pins to be sold in support of the North Carolina Disaster Relief fund. 
• Young Life College and Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) took students to Boone to unload food donations and purchase supplies. 

Many other individuals and groups are donating their time, money, and other resources to support the Hurricane Helene relief efforts, and I am inspired by the immediate outpouring of energy and compassion from the Wake Forest community. If you would like to get involved and keep up to date on outreach opportunities, visit outreach.wfu.edu. 

While addressing immediate needs in these communities is of critical importance, if we are to live up to our motto, it will be especially important that our participation in response, relief, and restoration efforts is not just a flash in the pan. The magnitude of the storm’s destruction requires engaged, meaningful, and long-term endeavors. Wake Forest is and will remain in conversation with other institutions of higher education in the state, along with regional and national nonprofits and the state and local government – listening to the voices of the affected and responding. 

Our hearts are with those who are in need, and I am grateful to our Wake Forest community for continuing to demonstrate its commitment to an ethic of care.