The Right Attitude for the Times

For a hundred years, our school has been giving thousands of students a variety of skills and attitudes.  Our faculty have been telling them about the wisdom of the ancients, the opinions of sages and cranks (not always making clear which is which), a variety of procedures for doing things, analytical tools, insights, and occasionally, prejudices!  When they graduate, students are often grateful to their school, and later in life, respond with generosity.

The generosity of alumni and well-wishers gives our school a slightly greater degree of permanence.  The permanence of their alma mater is valuable to alumni, but it is desperately important to those of us who work here.  College faculty are understandably preoccupied with generosity for this reason.

Thinking of generosity, one associates it with earlier times: the industrialists of the golden age of America, names associated with steel, coal and oil.  But in these difficult times, it seems as if purse-strings are being tightened with great determination; doors are firmly bolted at night, as we peer anxiously through cracks in the shutters at what seems an inhospitable, even a hostile world.  But others are hurting far more than we are.  Soon it could be time for food banks, for soup kitchens, for free clinics, and homeless shelters.  The need for generosity does not wait on convenience.

But generosity is learned, not born with.  It is here, in college, that the young people see examples of going the extra mile, staying that extra hour, giving that extra review, and summoning up that one last smile when you would really rather not.  Generosity goes hand in hand with education.  Education, on the face of it, is enlightened self-interest, spiced with generosity.  In reality, it is generosity of spirit, masquerading as self-interest!