University of Dallas - Crusader Yearbook (Irving, TX)

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YOu have by this time heard and heard againi-of the f-elicities of a core curriculum and of a liberaleducatioh, and your presence here today indica'tesithat in Some way or the other you have been persuaded. For many of you that means four years of your life and a not incon- siderable expenditure of money. The rhetoric must have indeed been powerfully ipersuasiVe. Let me remind you once morefthen of what has been; said to you as a rec0nfirmatiOn of that enterprise which you have. we hope. chosen wi-thithe most careful delib- eration, It is always good to say something to the ,, troops before the battle begins i. As I was thinkirIg of what to say to yOu, I rummaged through some old UD brochures and catalogues and found this descriptiOn of the University in a letter supposedly sent to entering members of the freshman class: You will find that the school is fifteen minutes by air from - downtoWn Dallas. and that the - property consists of i000 acres of flat hills and rolling plains among the Sierra lrving 7 Mountains, all kept carefully by landscape crews in as bad a state of disrepair as is hu- manly possible . . The purposes of the Curriculumare then Succihctly stated: - l. A mastery of the phllo'r sophical principles which will enable them to use undefina- ., ble terms and to know the es- sence of all Being Uncluding - God' st ' 2 A comprehension of the- ology which will enable them to be social successes at any Hungarian seminary or cone vent in the country. One gets a further idea of the character of the Uhls versity from the description ofbthe academic depart- ments. Here, for instanee. is that of the Departmentof ATI: I l I -, L Located in a quaint gully. i this Department '. . . 'com- 9 - pletely respects the freedom i of the aI'tiSt not toybe an art ist. And here is that of English; I The Department of English . assumes that the student has a certain grasp of formal grammar and is prepared to read 42 works of classical lit- erature in their entirety, in the original. during three specified days in Orientation week All students are re- quired to take 36 lawn of Up- ' per Division English regard- less of maior. l should explain that this letter was written by the -' Senior Class of 1967. and only a deep-dyed UD' er could a possibly have written it. The genuine UD strain shows through: the emphasis on theological truths and philo- , sophical principles. the freedom of the Art Department. : the centrality of the readings in literature to the cur- riculum. and of course the somewhat austere physical I surroundings. I One must add to the above the l967 Senior Classis underStanding of interdisciplinary graduate programs, especially the cane in Agriculture and Literature. staffed by run- away agrarian poets: ' The Agriculture andiLitera- ture'Program is designed to filla need that has arisen due to an aCute shortage of highly articulate Agricultural Human- ists. We believe that the great traditions of Western AgriCul- mm are in danger of being lost to future generations. - And of course one of the most important courses in this program was the Bovine Literary Tradition. 2 it is always easy to satirize academic communities. I because there always seems to be such a great gulf I between that which is said and that which is. between I aspiratiOn aIId actuality. that the enterprise seems to - be ludicrously comic. We all tend to be Don Quixotes In the academic Community, but we also seem to be al- ways acto'mpanied by Sancho Panzas Cortsider, for instance, this place in Texas which, until the invention of the air conditioner, was never : thought to be humanly habitable. When I first saw; the l

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, 25?;qu i??nirn :E. 5,

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University of Dallas. it was in June and the temperature was IIO . The barren hilltop was and is a sun-blasted landscape of stunted trees and limitless sky -- and someone decided afterwards to magnify the effect of the sun by; constructing airlong shadeless undulating piazza of broken bricks. One cannot come to UD for the pleasant delights of the senses; that is forbidden in Texas. No teInptation can draw you here sate that of the austere; pleasures of the mind. One does not come , to this University for something extraneous to learning. Knowledge. opportunity and. yes. power arewhat are offered. God's, Providence works in strange ways and for- some mysterious reason He has determined that the possibility of philosophic inquiry exists in Irving. Texas, .and not. say. in Santa Cruz, California twhere my family used to IiveL which is a far more beautiful and pleasant place. But there insanta Cruz. the students Ijspoke to , felt themselves lost, for what they had learned from their studies was that there was no significance to anything they did. i What then makes the University of Dallas a special place would seem to rest entirely on the promise of the education given here. The life of this University is especially to be found in the classroom. What made possible such an education in this raw frontier. which a few decades ago was a wilderness? I always look 'for a founder, for the greatest things seem to be the work of a single soul and in our case I think one must finally come to the .zvision and courage of the one soul in the Cowans; for Without them I veryimuch doubt that we would have had either a core curriculum or an Institute of Philosophic Studies e- and without this I doubt that there would be very much distinctive ' about the University of Dallas. We must be aware of the pervasive nihilisIn which infects the thought of the whole of our educational system - from the lowest to the highest ranks. I would . guess that the University of Dallas is one of a yery few educational;institutions of some standings which de- clares. unabashedly. that there is an intelligible order of being. of truth; that there, are, to quote from Sopho- cles' Oedipus iRex: GawsI Iofte-footed. begotten in the heavenly regions of the- ,. sky. nor did any mortal nature of men engender them. nor should oblivion ever lay them to sleep; divinity is great in them and does not a grow old. ' That our inouiry 'is into these divine laws is what saves us; for it gives to all our studies an energy. a vitality. which in itself provides its OWn justification. It is the peculiar characteristic of the modern intel- lectual thatthe chooses to believe in the weakness of reason and in the power of necessity or chance. That is because the modern intellectual sought to liberate him- self and find the simply human apart especially from the divine. But as Sophocies reveals. the simpiy human is finally monstrous. for theihuinan being is not simply human. Paradoxically. then. the fully human comes to light in and through that which is not human. The human being will always be discovered to be either half-man and haIf-divine. or he will be haIf-Inan and haIf-beast. The Ifirstl differentiating characteristic then of a U0 education is that innocent faith which is at thehksame time the natural and commonsensical experience of human beings - that there are divine and natural laws and that the truth of what is; of; the structureof being. is that which is finally mosttpowerful. Excerpt afrom the Fall Convocation AddressaAugust 28. I984; Dr. Leo Paul S. de Alvarez