University of the South - Cap and Gown Yearbook (Sewanee, TN)

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Sewanee style. This vear, upwards of a hundred girls came to Sewanee, not for a brief party weekend, but to stav. This year the Order of Gownsmen voluntarily relinquished some of its right of student government to a Delegate Assembly elected on a democratic basis. This year, a school supported by twenty-one dioceses of the Episcopal Church formally abolished the remaining vestiges of weekday and Sunday chapel require- ments. We have begun to integrate; the faculty is getting younger; there are more of us here now than ever before. What effect will all these changes have on the original, basic ideals of a liberal arts education at Sewanee? In today ' s changing society, there are many voices which would seek to persuade us that training in the liberal arts is an anachronism. The spirit of pragmatism tells us that learning must be directly subservient to material ends — getting a job, mak- ing money. Liberal arts students are somehow felt to be living in an ivory tower of escape and irresponsibility. The business of a university is to prepare its young men for the com- petitive world of ambition and suc- cess which awaits the moment the new graduate steps outside. Idealism is secondary: how the world is, not how the world should be. is the most important lesson. Sewanee has traditionally stood in opposition to this view, and affirmed the basic integrity of the College of 17