President Emeritus Dr. Robert G. Bottoms gave the keynote address for the 4th annual Undergraduate Ethics Symposium on Thursday night, entitled "Listening to Annoying Voices."
Bottoms retired at end of the 2007-08 academic year after serving as president of the university for 22 years. He is the founding director of the Prindle Institute for Ethics and is currently the President of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary.
His primary goal, Bottoms said, was to try and establish the conversations we hear in our mind when we're trying to make important decisions.
"Some of the voices we hear become annoying voices because they expose us to the tensions that we subject ourselves to when we have important to decisions to make," he said.
Bottoms began his speech with a discussion of what he feels to be the two voices we struggle with.
"We have a rational voice. We all want to be rational," he said. "Then we have our emotions and sometimes these voices are annoying because they tell us different things."
Bottoms admitted he is faced with all of these voices.
"I just hear all these voices, and they argue in my brain, and I try and decide what's right and what's wrong," he said.
At the speech's end, Bottoms added one more voice to the list.
"The other voice that is really annoying is wouldn't we like [to know that] after this big debate is over, that we were certain? That's the most annoying voice of all to me," he said. "We will never be certain, so how do we decide?"
The symposium is hosted by Prindle to encourage undergraduate scholarship and artistic work. This year, the selection committee encouraged entries focusing on personal mortality, ethics and diversity.
The selection committee consisting of faculty members chose 25 scholars — 5 of whom are DePauw students — to attend this year's three-day symposium. These students will meet in seminars led by one of the distinguished visiting scholars or professionals who will read the students' works and start discussion about them. Prindle covers costs for travel, lodging and meals for the visiting students.
Senior Rahul Abhyankar is one of the selected scholars and remembers hearing Bottoms speak during the opening convocation his freshman year. He enjoyed the opportunity to hear Bottoms speak again as his time at DePauw is coming to an end.
"[He] did a good job portraying the tensions we face when making decisions," Abhyankar said. "I face some of those tensions, and I'm sure others do as well."