University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

Page 14 text:

Bernard Shaw, in his play Heartbreak House, described the insane, irresponsible self-satisfaction of war-time English society. England, he implied, was fast breaking to pieces. Through his character Captain Shotover he declared that knowledge of navigation is essential to the avoidance of shipwreck of English institutions. The institutions of the United States, likewise, must be steered away from the rocks and must be headed towards God's open sea. The administrators, the trustees, the faculty, the members of the Alumni Council are in large part the navigators of the University of Pittsburgh. The glory is theirs if rocks are avoided; the responsibility is inevitably theirs if shoals are struck. Their responsibility is not to their own ship alone, since they must utilize their knowledge to make effective the teaching of navigation to others. This knowledge extends to many spheres. It embraces decisions on campus policy, on scholarship, on methods of instruction, on construction of buildings; it reaches out into the arena in which the struggles of ideas and of men are decided. Today, the navigators in the United States are perhaps not so irresponsible as the navigators of the English war-time society. They recognize the need for careful navigation; they are in doubt only as to the proper theory of charting and the proper application of the rules. And so, upon the navigators of a university a double duty falls. The responsibility is great; likewise the necessity. For upon the correct charting of the training-ship, the charting of other ships depends.