From the Archives: Is College life worthwhile today?
March 1, 2012
Filed under News & Features
Each week we will reprint an old article from a past Dolphin issue. The following article was published on March 1, 1951.
In Korea, the cold, unshaven soldier faces death. At Le Moyne —and we intend no flippancy —the comfortable, well-tailored student faces Shakespeare. But both have this in common: that the times in which we live offer little encouragement, or incentive to succeed.
The soldier’s state of mind is bitterly evident to him and to us. His present occupation is war and the payment for the fruitless work he does is suffering. The utter futility of war is constantly before his eyes. Yet to most students the purpose of the Korean campaign makes far more sense under present conditions than does college life. Students find little significance in what they are doing. Why write a term paper or outline St. Luke with a war going on? Why sweat over philosophy when your best friend has joined the Air Force?
The future is dimmed by clouds of doubt and uncertainty as we wonder if we will finish college and try to guess where we will be next summer. For most of us, study and college life has meant less this year than at any other time in our lives. Both the freshman, so far from graduation, and the Senior, on the eve of fulfillment, feel the emptiness of frustration. Clearly, then, the time has come for an evaluation of our student state of life.
Is College worthwhile today?
To this question we offer in answer, an emphatic yes. It is precisely because the world is being racked by disasters that college-trained men and women are needed. It is our contention that any permanent solution of the world’s present impasse can come only from the Christian ideal of Education as taught here at Le Moyne.
In Christian Education, we can find hope and joy in place of gloom and despair. Here we can find a sense of duty, duty to our neighbor and especially to God. For God seeks leadership and He seeks it from the Catholic student who is to become part of the intellectual element of His Church. Thus it follows, that we have a task to perform as students, in spite of Stalin or General Hershey, and that task is to persevere in our college work. Failing this, we neglect our Christian duty and we “bury the talents” which God has given to us.