Rend Lake College - Tarn Yearbook (Ina, IL)

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Congressman KENNETH GRAY, a great promoter of Rend Lake Col- lege, gave an address at the dedi- cation ceremony. RLC students were also participants in activities at the dedication.

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At Rend Lake Dedication A Plan Becomes A Reality

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To The Student . . . Recently, after several years absence, I had occasion to visit the University of Illinois where I had been first a student and then a member of the faculty. Now, after many years, the campus is a strange place cluttered with unfamiliar new buildings and denuded of the thousands of stately elms I had known. It is now an unfriendly place with too many people hurrying to too many places and not a recognizable face among them. I searched the places I had known and loved, but nowhere could I find evidence of my having passed that way. It seems I had left no track. Then I found a white-haired man in a camera store who remembered, and a professor who also recalled my years with him. Later, I found another professor there who had worked in a fraternity kitchen with me when he was a senior and I was a freshman; he remembered after thirty-one years. It has since occurred to me that the only trace left upon the university by my earlier attendance is to be found buried deeply in the hearts of a few aging friends who will one day be gone. Indeed I have left no permanent track. However, the University of Illinois left its imprint on me. And I shall not forget. It is proper that the school mold the student, refine him and perhaps change his direction, and leave an indelible tract upon him. It is also proper that, after careful maturing, individuals exert positive influence on others and perhaps even upon institutions. A few notable people affect the course of great institutions in a very real way, but most of us fulfill our purpose and then are gone. Usually those who exert permanent influence on a college or university do so in their more mature years capping a lifetime of achievement, and then rarely at their undergraduate alma mater. Once in a while it is good to return knowing that it is notour own tracks we seek - they are gone. Rather we should rejoice that the great institutions which helped mold us are still reshaping and refining youth in an ever changing and improving way. Just as I left my alma mater and then returned, so you will leave Rend Lake College to perhaps come back some day. You will have memories, and you will at first be disappointed with the changes you will see. Your tracks and those of friends you knew will have been erased by the trampling of the thousands who follow you. The real imprint will be that of the college uponyou. The fond dreams of countless generations of youthhas included a desire to change the imperfect society bequeathed to them, and all have succeeded to a degree. So will you. However, the chance is great that any such change you may effect will be accomplished in maturity, not in youth. Youth is a time of impression, and I sincerely hope that the imprint left upon you by Rend Lake College will help in the building of a better world. Dean James R. McGhee