Summer/Fall 2001

Worthy Goals

At this year’s reunion, my class-the great Class of 1965-gathered (albeit somewhat sparsely) in cluster with the Classes of 1966 and 1967. Our numbers were diluted because several instead chose to attend Commencement, where out classmate Dick Hecklinger, U.S. Ambassador to Thailand, received an honorary degree.
In the two gathering combined, Ann and I were able to reconnect with many old and very good friends, and to be reminded of how the good qualities that are evident in the young do in fact shape their lives in visible ways. The people worthy of admiration then remain so today. There is something deeply reassuring in that.
Most people who ask what it’s like to be a university president assume that one of the real drudgeries of the job is the amount of interaction a president must have with alumni. They further assume that the alumni constantly pressure the president to campaign all sorts of issues that have nothing to do with the demanding education of young people.
My experience has been just the opposite, especially at St. Lawrence. At this reunion, alumni communicated over and over again their high expectations of me and of St. Lawrence to be among the best at the liberal education of young people, and their willingness to support that quest.
I’ll take that kind of pressure any time. Joining partners and colleges in the pursuit of something really worthy is why I like this job so much.
At lunch at MacAllaster house, my classmates asked me to talk about the ways in which St. Lawrence students today are different from those of our time. One of the themes I stressed is the disillusionment of the current generation with traditional forms of political engagement. In this, St. Lawrence students then and now mirror the national picture. Faith in government, nationally, regionally and locally is far lower among today’s students than in our generation-hard to imagine, really, given the protest years of the later 1960’s and early 1970’s, but true.
Paradoxically, there is no evidence that today’s freshmen intend in their lives to be any less engaged in local issues. Somewhat more report aspirations to become “community leaders,” and over half have engaged in volunteer service in high school, compared to about 25% in our time. They are perhaps more idealistic than we were.
We often urge out students today to “think globally, act locally.” Most of the really tough problems my generation faces as leaders, and that today’s freshmen will inherit, are large, transcending issues that demand powerful and effective local action within an intelligent regional, national and international public policy context: K-12 education , public health (water and sewage, for example), environmental quality and health care, for example. The New York State Department of Education can mandate new educational standards, but only students, teachers, parents, local leaders and local taxpayers can achieve those standards. There issues require the kind of thinking and action a liberal arts education in intended to foster.
This generation of young people seems to be saying that it wants to address these issues, but not by participating in traditional political institutions and activities. This is a real problem, because our system assumes that that is one of the venues in which solutions might be sought.
Either we must help today’s young people re-engage our political system, or work with them to re-make the system so that reasonable people will conclude that attacking problems through it is not a waste of time. My classmates-many of whom have spent their lives engaging local issues while thinking globally-and I spent a great deal of time throughout the weekend talking about this aspect of what might be called a crisis or malaise of American local politics, without coming to any really smart conclusions.
Through the Canton Initiative the University-and literally hundreds of people connected to the University-seeks to be a constructive player locally. But there is no textbook that explains how a private university located in a small town should best contribute to local vitality. Perhaps the best we can do is committing to engage, and then make it up as we go along.
Hopefully, our students are watching and imagining how they too can make a life of local engagement. We are encouraging their deep commitment to volunteer service as never before, through new steps in support of student leadership and service by Dean Petty and her student life staff. We are in the trenches with our students locally, with the hope that we can translate that to a larger system, so that coming generations of St. Lawrence graduates might rise above the malaise of their immediate predecessors. This, like so much of what we do here, is a truly worthy goal.
That Laurentians at Reunion wanted to talk about such thing was wonderfully reassuring. While there is much in the world today that needs fixing, much has also gone quite right, as our conversations showed most clearly!