Inauguration - President Rex E. Lee
- President Howard W. Hunter - Installation of and charge to the President
- President Eric B. Shumway - Inaugural Address
- Elder Neal A. Maxwell
- Elder Henry B. Eyring
- President Rex E. Lee
From our other campus, located 3,556 miles to the east of here, and presently enduring much more inclement weather, I extend to our new president and to each of you, a warm "aloha." As I told the students yesterday, I love that word "aloha." I love its many meanings, and I particularly love the spirit of unity and dedication to a common cause that it inspires in each of us who occupy two campuses of one university.
Both personally and also on behalf of our entire university, with its two campuses, I extend congratulations and appreciation to President Eric and to Carolyn on this magnificent new responsibility for which they are both so eminently qualified. Janet and I have known the two of them for many years, and I have had the opportunity to observe Eric's work and his spirit in many settings. It is as though his entire life _ not only the past almost three decades that he has spent in this part of the world, but also the preceding years _ has prepared him for and pointed him toward this pinnacle experience of his life. The only fair way to describe the impressions that I have formed from these associations with our new president is: I have always been impressed, never disappointed.
In short, our eighth president of BYU-Hawaii is the ideal fit for his new position which these inaugural ceremonies celebrate. I know the man and I know the job. They are the perfect fit, one for the other.
The task that lies before us, working under President Shumway's leadership, is to build further on the magnificent progress that we have made under our beloved President Wade, and raise the component of Brigham Young University that is located here on this beautiful island to new heights of spiritual and academic excellence above and beyond what we have ever experienced in the past.
In addition to raising our spiritual and academic accomplishment to new plateaus, I would hope also to see progress toward another goal, which I regard as inseparably connected to our achievement of a combined excellence of the spirit and excellence of the mind. The goal of which I speak, and for whose achievement I invite all of us to strive, is to bring our campuses even more closely together than they have been in the past, and to take fuller advantage of the natural synergistic opportunities that exist between the two. Paul spoke of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." Our paraphrase is, "one Lord, one university, two campuses." To be sure, the two campuses are quite different in size, very far removed from each other, they serve student bodies that are different in some respects, and the Provo campus plays Division I-A football with players from Laie. But the similarities far outweigh the differences.
At bottom, the reason for the very existence of our university is that it is an integral part of the restored kingdom of Jesus Christ, and there are things that a really good university can do to carry out the objective of kingdom building and the perfecting of the saints in unique and more effective ways than can be accomplished by any other component of the Church. We exist because of our capacity to assist the sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father to become more like Him and to return to His presence. And in that respect _ the most important feature of our university _ there is no difference between our two campuses. I appreciate the cooperation that we have enjoyed in the past with President Wade in bringing us all closer together into one single university, and I look forward to joining hands now with President Shumway and all of you toward this end.
Yesterday I reviewed with your President's Council and your newly organized President's Roundtable some of the opportunities, through our capital campaign and others, that this can be done more effectively. I love the scripture in the first chapter of Isaiah that exhorts us, "Come now and let us reason together." If I may be permitted, in closing, to paraphrase the words of Isaiah as I did earlier the words of Paul, I would say, "Come now and let us reason together and work together as we take our complete university to new heights of excellence." That this may indeed come to pass is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.