Assumtion College - Heights Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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In the warm and sentimental context of a college yearbook, it is a bit difficult to recall to mind the uncertainties that have challenged higher education since the Class of 1971 was launched four years ago. Hopefully, we, as a nation and a people, have learned and gained and are now well on the way to rediscovering the nature, the goals, and the imperatives of the American col¬ lege experience. The College was created by the American colonists, who were unprepared to establish genuine universities in the European tradition. It remains to this day a uniquely American institution. In the early days, American college Students were very young — boys went to Harvard or Yale or Pennsylvania at the age of twelve or thirteen — and they came, for the most part, from simple, unsophisticated homes. Colleges felt obliged, therefore, to assume a parental role in their regard and to lay out most carefully for them a plan of formal courses. When, in the 1860 ' s Americans created their first universities, these were established as a con¬ tinuation of the College, rather than a substitute for it. They were adapted to collegiate, rather than university, standards. Furthermore, since the United States, unlike most European coun¬ tries, did not have academies and other learned institutions to carry out the work of science or research, whatever society or government wanted done along these lines was entrusted to the University. This practice eventually led to the Multiversity, that is, the University that no longer confined itself to the traditional functions of professional training and research, but took upon itself a host of miscellaneous activities, academic and otherwise. Standards for higher education continued to be set by the Ivy League institutions of the East and by such state universities as Wisconsin, Michigan, and California. It was a struggle to main¬ tain these standards. There were just not enough qualified students or professors to go around. Then, almost overnight, with the great surge of enrollments produced by the G.l. bills at the close of World War II, the drive for excellence was on. Today the goal of excellence in American higher education has come under furious attack. A growing wave of anti-intellectualists deny that truth, and the pursuit of truth, should be essential preoccupation of higher education. The concern should be, they claim, not with basic research but, rather, with coping with life. The emphasis should be upon utility and experience. Many stu¬ dents today are not lifted or excited by scholarly pursuits. They demand that their education be relevant, both in content and in form, to their own experience and needs in life and that it be geared to help them to adapt to society, today and in the future. The American College was intended to teach character, as well as train the mind. It was meant to incalcate all the accepted values of American life. It was part of the Establishment, which was itself looked upon as sound, just, and enlightened. Most of today ' s students, however, are too sophisticated to accept the in loco parentis role of the traditional Colleges; and, far from looking upon the Establishment as enlightened, they repudiate it wholeheartedly.

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Is This The Dawning of The Age of Aquarius For Assumption? At its earliest beginnings Assumption College was analogous to a village with its priests. Then it grew into a town — a one industry town — with its intellectual and spiritual oligarchy. Now it is like a city of infinite interests, activities and problems. Today, we are being made more and more pain¬ fully aware of the crisis in our cities. So too, there is a crisis at Assumption. Will it learn to channel and control its diversities and conflicts or will it finally collapse from lack of an all encompassing and inclusive central structure based on the strength of its ideals? To attempt to answer the question might destroy or obscure the why and how we came to this point of uncertainty. With this thought in mind, I would like to focus the remainder of this article on one segment of this community of infinite variety — the STUDENTS. Today ' s student population presents some real challenges to a college trying to accommodate their wide range of interests and needs. It would appear that more students are pushed into our colleges by parental pressures, the growing necessity to present degrees, the draft, peer pressure or sheer apathy, than by intellectual curiosity. What do you get when you put such a heterogeneous grouping into a church affiliated institution that is striving to prepare men and women for life? As the Dean for Students, I have seen how quickly the student becomes disheartened and disenchanted. I have seen the speed with which learning in the classroom and learning out of the classroom become two separate worlds, each one hermetically sealed off from the other. The need for higher education to keep pace with the changing realities of the here and now is obvious. So is the fact that it is not doing this. The feeling that something must be done is almost overpowering here at Assumption. However, the question of exactly what it is we must do seems to be receiving little consideration. For me, the fundamental task for Assumption is to let the sunshine in again - to help, or forc e us all to become more responsive to the varied needs of students. We need to open up the system so that its most repressive and destructive characteristics are mitigated, if not eliminated. Further, we must remember that students, too, are human beings who deserve to be treated with as much dignity and respect as other humans. We must keep clearly in mind that our objective is the development of students, not the preservation of the institution. Yes, it would be a shame if Assumption had to close, but the real catastrophe would be the prospect of total moroniza- tion, dehumanization and the manipulation of the individual. It seems that deciding to save the world is much easier than deciding where to start the job. The Age of Aquarius lacks imaginative projec¬ tion: the capacity to channel the ideals of the world-savers to meet the needs of the individual. This is why we must find more permanent ways of preserving the stature of the individual and accept the challenge of this new role. The role will require us to teach students not what to learn, but how to learn and not solely what they would be committed to, but the value of commitment. The problems, tensions and diversities of life in today ' s cities are focusing the architects and residents to re-examine what they are doing. So too, it is time for us in higher education to stop tailoring the students to the system and to begin tailoring the system to the individual. Particularly as a church related institution. Assumption must not leave the consideration of the individual behind on the road to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, for we may sadly find that in attaining the Utopian Dream, we have destroyed our capa¬ city to dream any further. — Richard Wotruba Dean of Students

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Today ' s password is change. We are giddy from the increased pace of technological innovation and its many repercussions; but more significant yet are the changes that have taken place in our values and mores. No longer do we live in an apparently stable, controlled society, following pre- established and universally accepted rules and norms. No longer are the traditions and principles cherished down through the years held in reverence, or even readily accepted. We live today in a society in flux, determined largely by external circumstance, a society in which being has given way to becoming. Adjustment to change is the constant which underlies ail of today ' s problems - problems with which our colleges are necessarily concerned. We cannot insulate ourselves from society, nor should we want to do so. However, colleges should be vitally concerned, also, with tomorrow ' s problems and with educating students to solve them with intelligence. Our society is faced today with urgent cries and awesome challenges. These questions will be with us for some time to come. There are no easy answers. Let us distinguish, however, between training for citizenship and training for scholarship. Acti¬ vism and commitment to public issues can be an escape from the disciplines and boredom of serious study. The point to bear in mind is that American higher education is available to every¬ one and not just to the intellectually elite; and most American students are not intellectuals. Pre¬ paration for a life of accelerating change requires changing methods of education, true; but the waiving of academic requirements and lowering our standards of excellence in order to make higher education accessible to more of those who are not really prepared for it? Higher educa¬ tion should not be equated with longer education — that is, education beyond high school — or even with broader, or continuing education. Perhaps in our rediscovery of the nature, and the imperatives of a college education, we would do well to reflect upon the development of this American institution in the pursuit of excellence? Can we afford to ignore the rich store of wisdom past generations have left us; the treasure of worldly experience accumulated by keen and observing minds, aided in their observations by the greater simplicity and leisure of life around them? It is such minds who have taught us to specu¬ late and inquire boldly, to fell and enjoy deeply, and to create and communicate effectively. While there ought to be attractive alternatives to college, such as stronger and more diversified community college programs, it is essential that the private liberal arts college, with its commit¬ ment to civilization, remain an important part of our educational system. Lola E. Boyd Dean of Coordinate College