Rollins College - Tomokan Yearbook (Winter Park, FL)

Page 19 text:

BtSctpltne •president Hamilton $olt 0 HUMAN being can hope to go through life and amount to any- thing without discipline. He who expects to have license to do exactly what he wants, when and where he wants, is due to have some severe jolts. Discipline may be imposed by Nature, by society, or by ourselves. As infants, each one of us are under one hundred per cent outside dis- cipline, but as we grow older this imposed discipline is gradually relaxed, until as mature men and women we approach but never quite reach one hundred per cent self-discipline. The average person seems to be ready for self-discipline at about twenty-one. The United States constitution fixes this age as the date when we can exercise the responsible right of suffrage and when we ought to be able to support ourselves and determine our own affairs. Discipline imposed from without is more irksome than discipline im- posed from within. Discipline from within seems to be impossible unless we have first learned dscipline from without. Accordingly as we go through life we are disciplined by external regulations as long as we hold sub- ordinate positions. Only in our leisure and when we reach the top of our profession do we achieve any large degree of self -discipline. At Rollins the students are supposed to be under external discipline in the Lower Division. They are supposed not to be admitted into the Upper Division unless they can discipline themselves both in work and in leisure. Otherwise the liberty that they are accorded in the Upper Division will turn into license. Liberty, leisure, and even happiness come not as rights. They are blessings that must be earned. Money gives leisure but it has to be earned by the individual or some parent or donor who has bequeathed it after himself earning it. Life implies movement; movement implies change; change implies choice; choice implies values; values imply morality; morality implies discipline. Does all this have any significance for Rollins in the year 1932-33 and the years to come ?