La Salle University - Explorer Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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FOREWORD Universities, like cathedrals and parliaments, are a product of the Middle Ages ... in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries . . . there emerge in the world those features of organized education with which we are most familiar, all that machinery of instruction represented by faculties and colleges and courses of study, examinations and commencements and academic degrees. In all these matters we are the heirs and successors, not of Athens and Alexandria, but of Paris and Bologna. — Charles Homer Haskins, The Rise of Universities, page 1. k It is a commonplace observation that mankind has undergone more changes in the past two hundred years than in the previous twenty thousand. The rate of change itself seems to accelerate by geometric progression. Future shocks, information explosions, unforeseen computer applications and energy depletions, rivet our keen attention on the immediate moment and the one about to succeed it. We feel fortunate if we can understand half of what is happening now, and we can hardly guess any of what is about to. Students especially, as questioning men and women with with their lives and professions mainly before them, naturally respond to this bombardment by concentrating on the here and now. Answering the demands of business and technology, they may study computer programming or statistical analysis. Aware of rapid and massive upheavals in the physical sciences, they may elect astrophysics. Knowing the need for clear, accurate communication in business and government, they may choose a course in effective writing. Intrigued or bewildered by modern and post- modern modes of expression in the arts, they may turn to classes in electronic music or concrete poetry. These students may not be aware, though, that by their choices they are following an academic tradition formed over a thousand years ago, when what we know as the liberal arts were delimited. Computer programming develops largely from the medieval disciplines of arithmetic and geometry; astrophysics builds on ancient and medieval astronomy; effective writing is no less a matter today of deploying grammar, rhetoric, and logic tellingly than it was a millenium ago; and music was an established curricular offering when the first universities opened. As for statistical analysis, at least applied to demographics, one of that science ' s most exhaustive triumphs — nine hundred years later — is still the Domesday Book, compiled under William the Conquerer in the eleventh century. Even the most contemporary of academic debate topics, the role of liberal arts education in preparing a student for a career, appears to have been a well-worn subject when John of Salisbury took it up in 1180. If today ' s college and university life continues many centuries-old traditions in any case, life at La Salle College represents an even clearer continuity thanks to the wisdom of Saint John Baptist de la Salle, founder of the Christian Brothers. He came of age during the famous Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, a cultural dispute that raged through Europe for decades, and nowhere more vociferously than in France, where St. La Salle lived. The question, simply stated, was whether tradition or innovation would dominate cultural life; he both symbolized and resolved this conflict through his mission. His social position as an aristocrat and his training as a priest made him look backward to his tradition. The very modeling of his seminary education, codified by headings like canon law and the systematic, dogmatic, and mystical branches of theology, was a tangible triumph of medieval Scholastic organization in full and vigorous action. And while St. La Salle, in his book The Conduct of the Christian Schools, specifically exhorted his Brothers always to rely on tradition as the living source of their work, he also laid great stress on the necessity for keeping tradition alive by looking forward, by being ready to discard the outworn in favor of new pedagogical methods and approaches fitting the needs of particular times and places. His whole life ' s work showed a brilliant gift for vivifying the old by applying it to the demands of the new. It is scarcely any wonder that the whole Church has adopted this great visionary as the patron of all teachers, for he was a man of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We on this campus can feel especially blessed by the work of St. John Baptist de la Salle as we attempt to further his heritage. If we can step the more confidently into the future, it is in no small way because he has helped us to feel Gratian and Albertus Magnus, Avicenna and Aquinas pushing us there. — Christopher Lucca and Vincent Kling Photo to Right: New College viewed from Hert- ford College Bridge. Photographed in England by Richard Gervson. (

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WANDERING BY THE HIDEAWAY Photo: View of New College from Hertford College bridge window. Photo taken by Rich Geruson in England j m • r-, . ' ' Eech sweete May, after fiials passe And pupils ende thyre laste classe Whenne pages in thyre booBeWurrte And typewryters cease plickinge f One ful seson and a dayel j+l ' : • Of which now for workelrecefle we paie, Thenne our masters, whojire sjtphe sages, Longen to goon on pilgrimai i» Befel that in that seson on a day • In Cat De La Salle as I lay Redy to goon on my pilgrimage To Hideaway with ful devout courage, Whenne I, with a compaignye of sondry fole yfalle Into felaweshipe, and pilgrims were we alle. Knyghtes ther were, and eech a worthy man, That fro the tyme La Salle first bigan, They would riden out to defend ones lyke me, In the Quad, the dorms, in Wister and Olneye: And in thyre smalish cars they would flee Attacke, so did they love securitie. A Cook ther was, a man whose wit and wisdom, Whose lerned tales were knoon in alle Cristendom. r M. At times. this wyse cook would speake of Shakespeare Amongst his scolers to teche them fear; But this only drove them from his bitter brew, And fro thyre schedules thenne they would hym hewe. And soe this cook would techen alle the day But alas! folk could clearlye see hys feet of claye. ' i With hym was Sir GTedy — about monie, noone knew more, But above all this world he cherisheti honour. In lectures, he spoke oft of Adam but ne ' er of Eve, Yet hys words, lyke spelles, made one too weak to leave. To his felawes and folowers he was a cog In operatioun of the lerned halles, despite his constant fog; Perhaps thys condicioun was paused by the dismal science In which he engaged, from honour and monie — an unholy alliance. I ■ I A Philosophour was, who teches in oure College, And from hys ancient bookes, he gives us unknowne knowledge; But of what sorte is knowledge that is not economics, History, or English? It is worthy metaphysiks! Such master of hys sacred subject is oure Dr. Merlin, That he can prove one day ther is, the next, ther is no heaven. By Socratick methods, he showes we knowe alle lore, Still, it seems thys wisdom does not keep us from failure.