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

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Lowrey looks at spirit of college past, present, Future The New College presents us allestudents and facul- ties and that hybrid collection of individuals we loosely term Hcentral administrationllewith hard problems as well as great opportunities. Can a University whose central concerns have always been research and the training of graduate students develop the best four-year undergraduate program in the country? Can we, with a student body noted for its heterogeneity. build up the kind of esprit which marks the student bodies of Col- leges such as Reed and Vassar and Swarthmore and Grinnell and Sewaneeecolleges which, because of an insularity of one kind or another, and because of a dedi- cation to ltteaching. give their students a sense of focus, oneness, direction? Can we make a new College which will attract the best potential minds in the conn- try, which will over four years allow talent to mature faster, go farther, emerge better-trained and better- equipped than it would have had it been put in the seed- bed of Harvard, Stanford, a powerful, moneyed, state institution. or a small residential college? Well. we have resources that no other institution has, and we have a tradition. The tradition is one oi being uxilifferent. not out of eccentricity, but for very hard- headed reasons. The Old College pioneered because a group of men here knew most undergraduate education in America was hag-ridden by allegiance to the forms of the pasteand the efficacy of their Pioneering is per- haps best shown by the fact that Chicagols tlcontrover- sial ideas are now accepted by almost all of the great institutions in the country. Under one rubric or anu 14 other, most of the principles tend a lot of the materialsl developed here are now ltstandard? And resources? Anyone who has studied or taught in a variety of the colleges and universities in this country will tell you that Chicago has always been peculiarly blessed in hav- ing more toughminded, imaginative persons who are not afraid to try new things than any other institutione persons who have shown an amazing capacity for find- ing root problems and working out very practical solu- tions to them, In no other university or college that I know is there such a constant interchange of ideas as there is here, such a. vigorous and continuous iteross- polinizationll among disciplines. We have a deserved reputation of being disputatiouseour enemies call it chssedness and our friends uintellectual ferment? So we are changing things again, and I doubt that anyone will ever accuse us of imitation as we work out the new system. We will undoubtedly be accused of a lot of things-r-and a great many of the accusations, perhaps the most vitriolic ones, will come from inside our own structure. For which we ought to give thanks; that critical attitude is precisely our greatest asset. Free inquiry, free experimentation: as long as we keep those, we stand an excellent chance of developing some- thing which will bear out the justness of Mr. Jeffersonls remark. ttThe truth? be said, llcan stand by itself? PERRIN H. LOWREY Humanities

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The Faculty speaks In order to present a unique and perhaps more genu- ine picture of the University of Chicago Faculty, Cap and Gown has attempted an experiment in this yeaHs issue. With a 25-word limit, which was completely ig- nored, a group of daringA-and ingeniousifaculty mem- bers were asked to comment on one of the following ten suggested subjects: politics religion Life . football . Truth . students . Chicago Tribune . the New College . sex . what is wrong with the University omuDMJude-Jk H C Interestingly and perhaps significantly enough, relig- ion and sex were avcided, ignored, or overlooked by our respondents Life is we compiex to be commented on in two sentences, This is my comment on life. Max Rheinstein Law 16