Ripon College - Crimson Yearbook (Ripon, WI)

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I “We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our art, have their root in Greece. The speaker is Shelley, the language poetic, the effusion Romantic, and the truth abbreviated in that it neglects the role of the Romans in the foundation of Western Civilization. Originally simple farmers and citizen soldiers in central Italy, the Romans were endowed with a practical genius which led them toward magnificent architecture, durable political administration, and solid civil engineering like roads, bridges, and aqueducts; but it led them away from the theory and ideas so precisely and comprehen- sively studied and written about by the Greeks. Yet that same genius and pragmatism prompted the able among the Romans to bring from the Greek world its special achieve- ment and to teach it in Roman schools. The Romans thus began the transmission, the handing over, of earlier culture and civilization, enabling new generations to build imme- diately upon the old; and the stability of Roman political administration both at Rome and in the provinces insured a firm grounding of the new schooling which continued through pagan and Christian schools and has survived the fiercest barbarian attacks through all subsequent centuries. Although clearly conservative in its preservation of the most relevant of the past, the Classical Tradition nevertheless liberates us from the structures, strictures, and fads of the contemporary. The unstated assumption in this observation is that individuals de- serve to be free from inhibiting forces, whether political, social, religious, superstitious, or even natural, in order to achieve their full human creative potential. This profound anthropocentric assumption, as vulnerable and fragile as often taken for granted, is the quintessence of our Graeco-Roman heritage. In Athens of the fifth century B.C. the individual emerged from sculpted marble, walked across the tragic stage, and had his voice in the assembly of the citizens. There were talent, knowledge, and wisdom may have elevated some above others Pericles seems to have been a first among his equals — any citizen apparently had the right to express his opinions and make himself heard. 4 Introduction

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Table Of Contents Faculty 7 Greeks 17 Living Groups 27 Sports 41 Student Life 63 r. Seniors 83 t i I k ’ Introduction

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Both the beginning and the end of Ripon’s 1988-89 academic year were marked by the Graeco-Roman heritage of rhetoric and politics. In early autumn students held their own notable assembly in front of Middle Hall to protest certain administrative policies, and the May Commencement theme, The World of the Media. was but a late twentieth- century version of an issue defined by the Greeks: How do words lead and mislead us? The problem is epitomized in the derivation of the English words grammar and glamour from the same Greek root meaning 'write'; and it is formally elaborated in such philosophical treatises as Plato’s Gorgias. Thus the Graeco-Roman heritage continues to have a lively existence at Ripon. as it should at a liberal arts college. The new flourish this year is that after a period of dormancy in part-time status, the Classical languages. Latin and Greek, have been restored to full-time status in the Ripon curriculum. Thanks to the Marie Zarwell Uihlein Chair in Classical Studies, conceived by the enthusiastic vision of President Stott and endowed by the sensitive generosity of Mrs. Uihlein, Ripon students can again examine the words of the Greeks and Romans without the medium of a translator. All of us can now without any intermediary continue such inquiry initiated by the Greeks as. How and what can I know and believe? How and what do I communicate? How and what do I live? Eddie R. Lowry Jr. Associate Professor and Uihlein Chair in Classical Studies