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

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Liberal Arts. Education at Sewanee has concerned itself with fitting the entire man for everything that is best in the whole range of human experi- ence. We have not endeavored chiefly to produce scientists, or historians, or philosophers, but to bring forth sci- entists who are also historians and philosophers, doctors who can speak about literature, lawyers who know chemistry. Permeating the Sewanee educational philosophy has always been the motive that to train a man to be all that he can be as a man is of greater moment than simply equipping him to fit into some voca- tional slot. Sewanee has tried to shape what a man is, knowing that if this job is done well, what he does will be a matter of no anxiety. Molding the temper of a man requires more than classroom instruction. It must involve constant intercourse with other men, a man ' s feeling of the unity of his environment, and participation in the common cultural and spiritual traditions that western Christianity imparts to us all. It is no small task that this University sets for itself; and it is equally certain that the task is of no little importance. The question, then, is whether Sewanee will maintain this philoso- phy, or abandon it for some other one. Even though the institution of a computer program at Sewanee has had ominous overtones for some peo- ple, there is still little sign that Sewanee is willing to discard the way she always has been. We have held fast to our belief in a community of scholars, living and talking with each other, all participating in the educa- tion of each other. The relationship between faculty and students is as close at Sewanee as anywhere else, we venture to say, in the world. The sense of being in possession of one ' s environment is particularly strong here. So long as we use change to serve us, we have nothing to fear. Change is not inherently a frightening ' .9