Delaware Valley College - Cornucopia Yearbook (Doylestown, PA)

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DELAWARE VALLEY COLLEGE To the Incoming Freshman Class of 1972 Sunday, September 15, 1968 James Work Members of the Freshman Class, Parents of the Freshmen and Members of the Faculty and Staff, I see I am on the program to extend a welcome to all of you and I want to do that first, then I want to make a few remarks. I know that you freshmen will be loaded up with plenty of information and advice in the next few days around here, so I shall touch on only a few subjects that are of interest, not only to you mcoming students, but, also to you parents. There are points in which I feel every parent should take a deep interest, because your sons are going to find that without your support in the right manner they will have a tough time breaking away from their mother ' s apron strings and going away to college. And very often we find that the mistakes of the boys are due to poor advice that they have gotten from their parents, par- ticularly in respect to several matters upon which I would like to touch. In the first place, we are here, the College is here, to educate the students, to guide you, to help you in every way that we can. To this, our faculty is dedicated. In many colleges the faculty is dedicated to research work, to writing books, or they ' re active as political and educational consultants. Around here our faculty is here for one reason, to teach. We have some research projects, but only those in which the student is involved. And we feel that the graduate is the end as far as this institution is concerned, and the building program, the faculty, the administration, and everything that you see around you is simply the means to the end, and that is to turn out a good graduate. Secondly, we insist on good behavior and good citizenship, and we attain these ends through the cooperation of the student government. So, we expect every student to support the student government. We wish to maintain the best of communications between the faculty and the administration and the student government, and through the student gov- ernment with the student body. Now, naturally we require certain academic standards. You only have four years here. We assume that you came here for an education and these four years are going to pass only too quickly. So, we hope that you take advantage of every day and every week and every month in these four years. And the next point in which you parents are interested is that we, at the College subscribe to the philosophy of in loco parentis. In other words, the College, within our ability and within our limitations, takes the part of the parents while your boy is away from home. Many colleges, and few right near us, I am sure you read the papers last week about one of our biggest universities in Philadelphia, have departed from this philosophy entirely. And they feel that a boy comes into this college, or any other college at the age of 18, fully capable of handling all of life ' s problems . They take no respon- sibility for his behaviour or for his actions outside of the classroom. We feel that we should take that responsiblity . This is a very old fashioned viewpoint. But, many of the things which we do around here, and which we insist upon, are proba- bly considered old fashioned by what is known as the new left or the liberals in education. I believe that one of the things that you parents want to know, and that I walways wanted to know as a parent, is where is my child? Where is he tonight? And today there are too many parents who do not know where their children are, and who care less. While the boys are here we expect them to conform to all of our rules. We expect to know where they are most of the time, and we expect you parents to help us in this program .

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CORNUCOPIA 1972 DELAWARE VALLEY COLLEGE DOYLESTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA

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Now, there are certain rules and regulations, several that I want to mention here, that you folks, and particularly you freshmen, may not take too seriously, even though they are in the College catalog and in the student handbook. Here, unlike some colleges, we insist that the rules set forth in the handbook be carried out. There is no drinking allowed on the campus. There is no liquor allowed on the campus, or any of our property. There are no narcotics allowed. Now this may seem strange for me to have to say that to you folks, but these two things are allowed in some colleges. Here they are not. And the quickest way for a boy to get a one way ticket out of this college, is for him to be caught intoxicated. To date we have not found any of the boys with narcotics. We don ' t believe that any of them have used narcotics, but this is get- ting to be a big problem and we want it clearly understood. Although I made this same statement last year at this time, there were four freshmen to whom we had to say good-by because they thought it was smart to get drunk, to come back on the campus drunk. Now only four out of about 260 was a very good record. This year we hope we won ' t have any. And I ' ll tell you the number one cause of poor citizenship and resultant troubles with a student around here, or any other college, is liquor. This is a positive statement to make, but it is the truth, and you boys, you freshmen, should know it. And I believe that that is about the only source of trouble that we have around here. In most cases when boys get in trou- ble we can trace it back to the fact that they probably went up town and took a couple of drinks, particularly if they are freshmen and are inexperienced in this sort of thing. These sound like an awful lot of don ' ts and a very negative talk, but understand that we have plenty of athletic, social and professional activities here to take the free time of the student and to allow him to have all the pleasure on earth without making a fool out of himself. We won ' t tolerate, not for one second, hippies, yippies, or those long haired speci- mens who try to tear down rather than build up, around here on this campus. You look around, particularly when you see our upper classmen come back, and you ' ll see just what we mean. We don ' t want any of that ilk around here at all . And with the above philosophies, which have been carried out in the past and will be carried out in the future, there ' s no need for me to discuss demonstrations or vandalism, or arson, such as you have read about in the papers, or seen on T.V., on other campuses. There are really only a relatively few campuses on which this occurs. I feel, and I think we all feel, that the press overplays it. Nevertheless, it does occur. But we ' re just not that kind of folks. We don ' t have the kind of people on our faculty who would even think of inspiring such actions among the students. And you may not know it, but if you look behind a great deal of the trouble on these troubled college campuses you will find a few, and more than a few is some cases, members of the faculty behind the demonstrations. The little uproar last Friday in Philadelphia at one of our colleges involving the Marine Corps was fomented and inspired by four faculty members. We don ' t have that kind of men around here, and we don ' t have that kind of students . Now, finally, if there are any of you freshmen who, after you are here for a day, or a week, or a month, feel that you cannot accept the philosophies and the programs which we have outlined to you, and which Mr. Fulcoly and Dr. Turner will outline to you, we will do everything we can to get you placed in a college where you may have the liberties and the privileges which you want, and without which you feel you are stifled, and we will help you in every way to get out of here. We want a boy to be able to express himself within what we consider the limits of decency and propriety. We will be glad to kiss you good-bye if you don ' t want to do this . Now in the past, and this is a true story, we had a professor here who when he was introduced to the freshmen class said, As I look at you fellows, three out of four of you won ' t be here on graduation day four years from now. He is no longer here, this man, and such a philosophy is foreign to everything that we try to do around this college. I hope every oneof you will be here in 1972 to graduate. We ' ll do all we can to help you. Thank you.