University of Chicago - Cap and Gown Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

Page 9 text:

w I IN L i 2;; U N .III F. Imbedded in the corridor just outside Oxford-like Hutchinson Commons is a brazen replica of the University seal. Like similar artifacts, this object is popularly invested with a mystical power: the unwary student who steps on it will fail all his exams. Every college and university in America has similar cuse toms and traditions, and participation in them is often equated with uschool spirit? a sense of unity in and identih ficatjon With the institution. The belief that spirit and unity are good things has led to public approval of fresh- man beanies, panty raids, tugs-of-war, honoraria, cheering sections, and a host of similar usages. Such spirit, some have said1 is notably absent at the Uni- versity of Chicago. UC students walk wherever they hape pen to be goingeon the Hutchinson seal or oEewith equal nonchalance and no observable ill effects. The cur- rent custom seems to be not so much to Haunt tradition as to ignore it. This neglect of customary custom, it is further claimed, causes a iack of unity in the student body-a lack which has often been discussed, debated, and deplored. Cries of TTapathy are raised from time to time, rallies are organized sporadically, but for the most part Chicagds students go about their business and display a profound disinterest in mass action of any kind. Everyone has his own pet explanation for this state of student affairs; events, people, and policies are aiternately praised and blamed; but we believe that the history and the quality of student life are, to a great extent, reflections of the character of the University itself. First and Foremost, a university

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It has always been a university, dedicated to the twin ideals of education and research that are the major aims of any university worth the name. It is, by and large, a grad- uate institution: two thirds of the student population are graduate students, immersed in the serious business of earn- ing a higher degree, and the high quality of its Divisions and Schools, taken as a whole, is unchallenged. But most important of all, it is a university that honestly believes and works under the principle that no single prescribed en+ Vironment, no matter how well constructed, can produce the consistently high order of thinking and work that the University has come to expect of itself. The only kind of atmosphere that is indisputably necessary to these func- tions is freedom: not freedom to waste time practicing secret handclasps, not freedom to distil moonshine from cucumbers 0r argue the merits and measures of angels and pins, but the invaluable freedom to investigate, to doubt, to rebel, to ridicule, to correct, to revamp, to invent, to improvise, and, most of all, to learn. T0 learnenot wise: to think, but bow to think. This atmosphere of a demanding, disciplined intellectual freedom pervades the university in countless forms1 from the constant demand, iiDehne your terms?! in a casual coHee-klateh conversation to the most sweeping of struc- tural revisions in curricular organization. The argument, the discussion, and the changes are continual. What should be learned? What should be taught, and how, and why? Courses have been changed, added, combined, and drapped. Syllabi and reading lists undergo constant revi- sion. Methods and disciplines are constantly being re- examined, and When the methods of a particular field are found to be inadequate to the study of a given problem, an interdisciplinary committee comes into being. Every change has received opposition, every new idea has been given careful scrutiny, but thought these changes have proven benehcial 0r proHtless, the ongoing process of edu- cational revision continues. A history of Freedom and education