Remarks—Town/Gown Reception
Sunday, December 15, 2002—Daniel F. Sullivan

[4:05 p.m.] A warm welcome to you all. This annual reception is something we do to celebrate the wonderful, old, deep, and vitalizing relationship St. Lawrence has with the community in which we live. Though this reception is something of a tradition, four years ago John Clark ‘69 brought a terrific new idea to it—the idea that we should use this special time together to identify and celebrate outstanding St. Lawrence alumni with strong connections to this village, town, and area of the North Country.
The picture boards you see mounted permanently on the walls in the side rooms to my left and right are from 1999, 2000, and 2001. Those on display in this room today are John’s latest creations. The new ones for this year recognize Alexander Oswald Brodie [pronounced Broad-ie] (Class of 1867), Clara Weaver Robinson (Class of 1876), Charlotte Kimball Kruesi (Class of 1892), John Augustus Finnigan (Class of 1893), and Williston Manley (Class of 1888). I hope you’ve had a chance to look at them all and read the captions, or if you haven’t, that you will take the time before leaving here today. All of them should make us proud. Their North Country backgrounds are so like our North Country students of today, and their local and world accomplishments will, I’m sure, be matched by accomplishments of North Country students we have on campus today.
I’d like to thank John again both for his idea and for the research and presentation he has accomplished. And I’d like to thank LaVerne Freeman, the Edwards Historian, and Mary Smallman, the Hermon Village Historian, both of whom I think are here today, for the help they gave John on parts of his research.
I’d also like to recognize several others. You met my wife Ann on the way in, I’m sure. Also with us today is Susan Johnson, ’66, trustee of the University. Our music is by The Trillium String Trio—Agnes McCarthy, John Jadlos, and Christian Hosmer. Please give them a round of applause.
We are indeed here to celebrate our relationship—town and gown—but what is that relationship? In medieval university communities in Europe, the relationship was dicey at best. Many of you will have noticed that in the academic processions of today, such as the matriculation and commencement ceremonies we have at St. Lawrence, when the faculty and students march in caps and gowns, the faculty marshal carries a mace. It is ornate and ceremonial, but in actuality it is a vicious weapon—you can see maces being used in the battle scenes in films like Braveheart. In medieval university towns, academic processions were often attacked by hooligans, and so the mace was a very practical necessity for getting to their destination. We also know that medieval university students misbehaved in their communities just as our students today sometimes do here in Canton. Some might therefore say the hooligans were justified. But this medieval model of a relationship is surely not something any of us seeks to emulate today, and indeed, despite occasional lapses, it is nothing like the relationship we have today.
I suspect that, in reality, St. Lawrence’s relationship with the Canton community is many things to many different people, depending on one’s situation in the community. For my part, one the annual top priority goals and objectives I submit to my board of trustees is to continue to develop an ever more positive relationship between the University and the Canton community. We are trying every year to get better at working toward a true partnership spirit that recognizes the enormous good we can do for each other if we get it more and more right. We are now the third largest private employer in St. Lawrence County—after Alcoa and General Motors—because employment at St. Lawrence has grown in the last six years. But we know that is a good thing only if we aren’t perceived to be or act like a proverbial 900-pound gorilla, instead of a good neighbor.
Very importantly, our ability to be a better and better neighbor is highly dependent on how well we are succeeding as a university in a nationwide competition for students, faculty, and funding. The American system of higher education—a blend of state and private institutions—leaves the choice about where to attend college to prospective students and their families. There is no national university system here, as there is, for example, in Britain, where allocation of students across campuses and overall funding levels are powerfully affected by decisions made in the national government. St. Lawrence is an independent university—we have great freedom to pursue the goals we believe are important. But we must convince prospective students and their families that we are the university for them. We have the freedom to pursue excellence, but independent colleges and universities also have the freedom to find mediocrity. The state has no obligation to bolster us financially if we get it wrong.
The competitiveness of the American system brings with it a mixture of positives and negatives. The need to get better—in student learning outcomes, in student and alumni occupational success, and in other ways—faster than the competition, is a powerful motivator for improvement in all that we do. It is not possible to just find a plateau and rest, because our top competitors are not resting. So our competitive system pushes universities like St. Lawrence to seek excellence constantly.
At the same time, excellence in these terms is expensive, because students and their families partly define excellence in terms of the richness of the programs offered and the quality of the amenities, and so there are no real limits on how much a university can and should spend on the education of its students—so long as resources can be found to finance such spending.
Taking all cash spending into account, and excluding university expenditures on student financial aid (really a form of discount), we spend roughly $46,000 per student. A “full pay” student pays about $35,000 in tuition, room and board. Approximately 20% of our students are “full pay.” The average student at St. Lawrence pays roughly $19,000 in personal and family resources for a year of attendance, receiving a subsidy of $27,000 (the difference between $46,000 and $19,000). On the other hand, Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, and Swarthmore spend roughly $80,000 per student!
This year St. Lawrence is providing University-funded scholarships to students totaling $28 million. In addition, our students with the least family financial resources receive need-based grants from New York State, from the federal government, and from many home-town sources. North Country students make up about 17% of the St. Lawrence student body, and they receive almost 25% of the need-based scholarship aid we provide our students.
You may not know this but in New York State, the average family income of students attending independent colleges and universities like St. Lawrence has for 20 years been lower than the average family income of students attending SUNY colleges and universities. That is because there is a financial incentive to high-income families to send their children to public institutions, thereby avoiding having to pay the tuition difference between a St. Lawrence and the SUNY system. At the same time, New Yorkers believe that independent colleges and universities like St. Lawrence are better academically, and provide a richer array of opportunities for growth and development, so when the price difference is reduced or eliminated, as it is for financially needy students through our financial aid programs, these students differentially choose independent colleges and universities over public institutions.
There was a time in St. Lawrence’s history—15 to 20 years ago—when the student body was very wealthy compared both to the public institutions and to other selective independent colleges and universities. But that is not the case today. There are students at St. Lawrence from very wealthy families today, but a far larger number are from families of very modest means, exactly like the situation at SUNY Potsdam.
Do I wish that today’s college students would act with greater humility in light of the tremendous opportunities our society is providing them—be, in fact, more thankful for the great subsidies they are receiving in order to have a top-flight education? You bet I do. At the same time, I know how deserving they are, and I know by looking at the accomplishments of our alumni how much they are going to contribute to their communities, our nation, and the world as mature adults. From where I sit, it’s truly worth it.
How is St. Lawrence doing, then, in this national competition for students and funding? The answer is “better and better each year.” Applications for admission continue to grow, the average academic ability of our applicants continues to increase, and—very importantly for our relationship with this community—so does their seriousness of purpose, measured in a whole host of ways from how hard they work on their studies to how willing they are to give back to the university and their community. And it is “seriousness of purpose” that we look for in all of our applicants, not just high academic ability. We all know that the unibomber, Ted Kascinski, had genius-level intelligence and a Ph.D. We seek students with academic and other personal gifts who in turn seek to put those gifts to good and virtuous use. Our ability to locate and select a higher and higher percentage of those kinds of students for each class depends, to return to my theme, on our ability to get better faster than the competition. That is why you see us raising private gift funding as aggressively as we do—nearly $19 million in gift cash last year alone—and why you see us investing in faculty, programs, and facilities as aggressively as we are. That’s where the job growth has come from, both permanent jobs at St. Lawrence and the 100 or so construction jobs we have supported every year for the last several and going forward for perhaps another decade, as we continue investing in facilities improvements.
But we are in this together—a healthy, attractive and vital Canton with great K-12 schools, high quality health care, improved housing, great day care, and an improving tax base—is critical to St. Lawrence’s success. And a successful St. Lawrence, in true partnership with its community—a good neighbor, not a 900 pound gorilla—adds financial resources and an improved quality of life to the Canton community. Our relationship is symbiotic. For that symbiosis to flourish, we must work together. St. Lawrence is deeply committed to our working together, no matter how long it takes, and no matter how difficult the issues sometimes become.
So in this holiday season let us be thankful for our blessings. I have loved St. Lawrence and the Canton community from the very first time I saw it in the fall of 1960 when I visited as a prospective student. I believe that together we can move mountains!
Thank you for being with us today, and very best holiday wishes to you all!