Name as true identity

When people in a small town say something good about their town, proud of its smallness, they often say, "Everybody knows everybody here." But with more than 38,000 students on our Bloomington campus, can we ever say that about IU? Have you ever felt lost in the midst of all the hubbub? I did.\nA few years ago, I attended a public forum about a racial discrimination incident on campus. In the forum many attendants spoke up, representing various student organizations. "As a ( ... ), I strongly feel (…)." They presented their speeches as a member of their respective affiliations. \nActually, each speaker was required to state his or her affiliation. If I spoke up, I would have felt obliged to speak as a foreign student or an Asian. But that was the last thing I wanted to say at that time. I had been fed up with the institutional expectation that my primary identity would always be my ethnicity or nationality. So I did not speak.\nBut if I did, how should I introduce my speech? As a human? No, too abstract.\nI got lost in identification. \n"What is your ID number?" We are constantly asked this in our daily lives. When you log on any computer on campus, you are required to type it in. Those numbers become a part of our identities. \nOf course, that number is far from the solution to my identity problem. However, one day, when I was sitting in front of a receptionist at some office, she checked my ID number, then confirmed the sequence by asking, "Hi - sa - to?"\n"Yes," I responded. At that moment, I found a subtle, yet warm smile on her face -- a smile I didn't see seconds before. \n"Hisato?" \n"Yes." \nA similar smile came to my face. \nWhen asking yourself who you are, you might list your affiliations: your social status, gender, ethnicity, nationality, height, weight, etc. But no matter how detailed this list of your identifiers can get, it cannot decipher who you are. Each of those identifiers is a category in which you can be replaced by any of its constituents. They don't represent the core of your human identity -- that is, your irreplaceability. \nBut your name does. \nUnlike all the terms for category, such as man, dog or cat, your name is non-translatable, meaning it remains the same wherever you go. Your name has been with you since your birth, growing with you throughout your entire life. It will remain as your legacy after your death. Aside from its highly personal character, the name is originally given by somebody else in a certain cultural-historical context. Thus, your name is a cornerstone of your individuality as well as sociality. It connects you to your culture, society and tradition (history), which is unique and irreplaceable to your true identity. \nThe small town quality of "everybody knows everybody" and the competitiveness of a big research institution -- how can these bipolar objectives be actualized at IU? \nWalking on our beautiful campus, you can see many buildings and places have particular persons' names on them, names that have the same irreplaceable quality as yours. The naming committee was led by our legendary president, Herman B Wells. \nWhen I see names of our campus buildings, besides name holders' achievements, I see the legacy of Wells' struggle to preserve small town humanism in a big research institution. "… because, in Andre Gide's words, 'Man is more interesting than men ... Each one is more precious than all.'" These were the words President Wells delivered in his final presidential speech at the 1962 commencement. That's the true IU identity to me, regardless of its size or national ranking. That should remain its foundation.