University of Dallas - Crusader Yearbook (Irving, TX)

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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

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