Lincoln University honors its best students

Lincoln University presented 211 achievement awards and scholarships Thursday to its best students.

Marshall Crossnoe, a 16-year history and religion professor at LU, thanked the students for caring about their own education, for going to classes, paying attention, asking "questions and then you turn around and answer questions" and for "learning to look at our world and all of its challenges, from different points of view and through different lenses."

He said the students have become the experts at taking "crash courses" on "intellectual juggling ... mental gear-shifting and critical thinking," as they take different classes on different subjects each semester, two semesters each year for at least four years.

"These academic ways of being human are not only basic to our identity - they're necessary to the continuation of human flourishing on this planet," Crossnoe said. "Our future help (and) survival depends on it."

An ordained Episcopalian priest, he noted people who flaunt religious and racial differences in today's society seem to be showing an appalling lack of imagination about what society should be. "In our world, when it comes to forging political solutions to ancient and tragic conflicts, too many of us still demonstrate an appalling and tragic capacity to those old, tribal, competitive binary ways of thinking," Crossnoe added. "And too many of the rest of us are dying because of people who think that way."

Admitting some could see that comment as "a bit dramatic," Crossnoe told the students he'd stand by it because "people like you need to be leading the rest of us in finding workable, just solutions to the major problems that face us today."

He applauded the students for their hard work in academics, and said it appears the future will be in good hands.

LU's Education department presented the most awards, 55, among the 10 departments.

Some students also received awards from fraternities, sororities and other groups.

The Honors Convocation came a little more than four weeks before graduation on May 16.