Success without honor is an unseasoned dish: it will satisfy your hunger but it won’t taste good.” It’s a quote after my own heart. Honest and catchy- and even more profound when spoken by the same man who first said it.

Joe Paterno stepped into the academic area to celebrate along with the deans and staff of the Liberal Arts and Schreyer Honors Colleges the first annual Paterno Fellows Program Recognition Ceremony. This past Monday, 211- yep, I counted- students were raised from the status of “aspirant” to “fellow.”

‘Fellow’ is a funny word. According to my American Heritage Dictionary -let me pull this off my shelf now- it means more than “a member of a learned society” or “a[n] [under]graduate student receiving financial aid for further study.” For us, those definitions are obvious, but perhaps not obvious enough. ‘Fellow’ is synonymous with associate, comrade, partner. This struck me as I stood amongst the applause and the assembly of gray hooded sweatshirts (thank you, by the way). As diverse as we are, in our varied disciplines and dreams- we are still working for a common reason. Whether in a field study in Kenya or in a research lab on campus, we are working in unison to better ourselves, our futures, and that of this university.

The success we celebrated earlier this week may have been as delicious and as varied as the desserts on the side tables. But it’s all the same food group. One that, to me, tastes an awful lot like fellowship.