Oglethorpe University - Yamacraw Yearbook (Atlanta, GA)

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THE PRESIDENT SPEAKS,., The theme ot the 1961 Tamacraw, Progressions — Variations on an Ideal, together with the organization of this book, suggests a musical development. A college experience is like an important movement in a large musical composition which could be described as a more or less pat- terned or organized life. This movement or progression involves the rela- tionships of the climactic synthesis or awareness of interrelatedness. In a sense, this is the ideal of the university. The importance of this progression lies in the fact that no subsequent movements in the whole living composition will be the same, because of the influence of the progression and variation in the college movement. A senior once told me that in his senior year his courses, his intellectual experience, his reading, his relationships to other students, and his un- derstanding of himself seemed to fall into place in a sort of stable structure or synthesis. That is to say, the college experience seemed to form out of its disparate parts a meaningful pattern. It would be naive to assume that, in this dynamic society, a pattern derived out of college would be permanent. New movements, new themes, will be introduced in unpredictable variation. But it the college experience has been highly significant, it will at times appear, as in the case of a fugue, to overlie the structure of subsequent experience. To each the movement of college experience is rubato. To some it has moved its culmination in a quiet adagio movement. To others it has been allegro con spirito. It is our hope that for each student the movement may have had direction in meaning. In a world that appears fragmented, diverse, and at times chaotic, the intellectual and emotional experience in college may demonstrate the possi- bility of resolution of discords, of stability of motive, and constructive form. Recognition of this form sometimes does not appear during college experi- ence but as a result of post-graduation perspective. At Oglethorpe this should involve ways ot looking at oneself, at man, at governments, at re- ligion, at science and art in such a way that these separate elements may, with the help of books, teachers, and our fellow students fall into a pattern that may be described as progressions — variations on an ideal. 12

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More than 2,000 years ago the ancients sym- bolized learning by a torch passing from hand to hand down the generations. That lighted torch is the symbol of imagination — the imagi- native acquistion of k nowledge. — Whitehead 11

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Donald C. Agnew, President A.B. (Park College) M.A., Ph.D. I Duke University) George C. Seward, Dean B.A. (Amherst) Ph.D. (Tuebingen) 13