Anatomy of an alumnus.pdf

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extracted text: ■ A good college graduate should be loyal to his alma mater; and the reasons are given by a great American jurist and leader in this article. ANATOMY of an alumnus What is it that binds us so closely to our alma mater? Why do we respond so warm ly? Why do we do so much in a myriad of ways to de monstrate our love for the institution that brought us to maturity and helped us to develop our latent talents and capacities and our sense of human values, to appre ciate the beauties and the harmonies of art and litera ture, and to strengthen and broaden our intellectual fa culties? I respectfully sub mit that there are three rea sons for this. Doubtless there are others, but I stress these three above all others. I shall discuss them in what I think is the inverse order of their importance, but I real ize others may have different views on the subject. First, there is the psycholo gical urge to be identified as a member of the group, the notion of “belonging.” This enhances one’s indivi dual ego and produces a per fectly human feeling of plea sure and security. People like to get on the band wa gon if given a reasonable op portunity to do so. It is the opposite of a feeling that one is on the outside, more or less regarded as different from the others. Class spirit and class unity inevitably foster this idea of “belong ing.” After the lapse of a few years not a single mem ber of the class thinks he is being left out in the cold. Second, there is that spark of fire between the teacher and the pupil, between the institution of learning and the student, that continues with us through life and ne ver ceases to engender a re ciprocal feeling of warmth and affection and gratitude. As the ripples go out endless ly when one throws a pebble into a pond, the effect goes on and on until we join our loved ones in the great be September 1967 13 yond. Some of us may per versely seek to extinguish this spark of fire, while others nurse and foster it with loving care; but, in either event, and no matter what may happen to us, the spark is never extinguished. This I submit is also a ba sic psychological fact. The third reason is not so widely understood. I shall try to work around to it on the bias, my favorite ap proach. When I was a boy at prep school I simply could not understand why Cicero kept harping on his desire to establish a reputation that would continue down through the ages. Most of the other Greek and Latin authors we studied seemed to be obsessed with the same idea. As I grew older it sud denly dajvned on me that, in varying degrees according to their circumstances, prac tically everyone has an itch ing for fame. People do all sorts of things that can be designed for no other pur pose than to perpetuate their memory, as far as they can. But, when you stop to think about it, where is one to find the lasting, solid quality of permanency in this best of all possible worlds, as Vol taire used to call it. Build ings of great beauty, temples, churches and what not, are constructed, but as the years roll by they are tom down and replaced by others. Think of the millions of books that were thought to bring imperishable glory to their authors, but now lie buried away in some library and forgotten or wholly des troyed and lost in oblivion. A person does not have to be so very bright to realize that nothing he can do will be sure to construct an image of himself that will be per ceptible to anyone in another fifty or one hundred years. Yes, the deeds of men and women as well as those of their friends and relatives and all that is dear to them will pass into the mist and be no more, as Horace so often reminds us. But the college or university stands out as almost the only really solid, permanent fact. It is something we can cling to throughout life, and thus be come a part of its very per manency and stability through the ages. We may leave our mark upon it, per haps our very name, in a 14 Panorama more or less conspicuous way. Even the annals of the col lege or the university and its archives with their refe rences to the records of the students and the benefactions of the alumni run back to the time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, as the lawyers say. So I think it is the most natural and the most human thing in the world for our alumnus to act as he does. And as he comes back to warm himself in the sun of the campus and opens his coffers and bestows of his substance to the various drives for Annual Giving and for the Capital Needs of his alma mater, and for the es tablishment of professorships and scholarships and what not else, we may rest assured that he is well repaid not only in the happiness he en joys with his classmates and with the alumni of other classes, but also by the satis faction one always feels in responding to an inner urge and a subconscious motiva tion. — Judge Harold R. Me dina of U.S.A., from Ameri can Alumni Council, Leaflet No. 12. IMPROPER PROPOSALS One beautiful evening, a young man who was very shy was carried away by the magic of the night. “Darling,” he asked, “will you marry me?” “Yes, Bill,” she answered softly. Then he lapsed into a silence that at last became painful to her. "Bill,” she said with a note of doubt in her voice, why don’t you say something?” “I think,” replied Bill, “that I’ve said too much already.” — Alan Swerth. September 1967 15
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