We recently held the 97th Anniversary Dinner for Representative Student Leaders of the University of Iowa, more commonly known as the Finkbine dinner. Each year, I speak about one of the three qualities honored at the dinner, learning, loyalty, and leadership. This year, I took a moment or two to think about loyalty.

Doesn’t loyalty seem an almost old-fashioned term? It seems to me that we hear less about loyalty then when I was a child. That impression is actually born out by data. According to a search of the books that Google knows about, the use of the word “loyalty” peaked somewhere around 1960.

I suspect that the concept of loyalty may have taken a hit in the 1960s and 1970s as people of my generation were castigated by older generations for not showing loyalty to our country as we protested our government’s policies in Vietnam and elsewhere. A popular slogan of the time was “my country, right or wrong.” That sort of blind loyalty still strikes me as fool’s gold, but genuine loyalty is precious to me.

Our relationships with each other, and with the institutions in our lives can be fragile. Loyalty is what keeps them from fracturing under transitory or inconsequential forces. Loyalty is what helps us recognize the people and organizations that we support. We support them not because of what’s happened most recently, but because we’ve decided, for deep reasons, that these are the people and organizations that deserve our loyalty.

People on the mailing list for this newsletter all made important contributions to the University of Iowa as student leaders. I hope the urge to support the university and your fellow students that led you to your leadership role lives on as an enduring loyalty today. Most importantly, I hope that we earned that loyalty and that we can continue to earn it.

I hope to see you at the annual Past Student Leader Reception after the Homecoming Parade on Friday, October 10th at the Old Capitol Museum.