Given the broader discourse of the past two months, I have purposefully delayed making an installment for the past few weeks to keep my 15 October post at the top.

Traditions

Colleges and Universities are rife with traditions. Some are silly, but some can be quite meaningful.

Sometimes they accrete their own mythologies. When I was at another institution, there was an entertaining and harmless tradition of wearing costumes during senior week. I once made a wise crack about it, and was told by a student, “You don’t understand, this has been a tradition for nearly a century;” to which I replied, “No, you don’t understand, this was started five years ago by a student named ‘xxxx,’ and I was there. It’s fun, but not foundational.”

Some traditions truly are foundational. Each year at commencement I acknowledge Susquehanna’s traditions:

“Like sacraments, our university traditions are outward signs of inward truths. They are actions that signify values that are at the core of our institutional identity, and they bind us as members of a rare and meaning-filled community.”

At Susquehanna, favorite traditions include: Move-In/Convocation, SU Give, Homecoming, Family Weekend, Thanksgiving Dinner, Candlelight, Martin Luther King Teach In, and SU Serve.

Each of these traditions focuses on certain values or goals.

Move-In (some photos from last year are at the bottom of this page) is an opportunity for faculty, staff, returning students, and some of our neighbors to welcome new students and their families to campus. It affirms for them that we are the close-knit and supportive community they were anticipating.

SU Serve is a day focused on our yearlong commitment to community service. It is also a tradition celebrated by thousands of alumni across the nation and around the world who given tens of thousands of service hours to community organizations every year as an extension of their college experience.

Convocation and Commencement are our formal traditions. We do ceremony with significant pomp and minimal stuffiness. We strongly tie these events to each other. At opening convocation, I invite our new students and their families to their future graduation. I tell them what charge I will give them at commencement, and I encourage them to do all they can in their four years here to be best prepared to meet that charge.

The last few weeks of the Fall semester include some of our favorite traditions.

Be a Kid Again is a gathering on the night before finals. Students gather in the dining hall in their pajamas and sit crossed-legged on the floor enjoying cocoa and cookies. Harmonic Combustion, our student a cappella group, leads them in some carols and I sing a setting of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” with patient help from Prof. Marcos Krieger and Phi Mu Alpha and Sigma Alpha Iota, our musical Greek organizations. It was surely started to provide a boost of encouragement for first-year students about to take their first collegiate finals, but many students participate all four years.

Thanksgiving Dinner is the most sentimental for me. We have three seatings over two days. The final seating is for seniors. Everything is family style, served by faculty, staff, and many of their family members. It is a 42-year-old event that could not be more heart-warming. The students are truly grateful and gracious. This year’s seniors were especially appreciative because their first year, we did Thanksgiving as a masked take-out. Even then there was a palpable sense of gratitude.

Our Christmas Candlelight is beloved by the religious and non-religious alike. About 1400 people attend our own version a Lessons and Carols Service. Founded in 1966, it is a terrific showcase for our choirs and instrumental ensembles, and it is one of our best town-gown integrations. This year’s program was focused on finding hope and peace in a weary world with an emphasis on the Beatitudes.

Each of these traditions helps to shape and reinforce culture and values, and they are strong reminders of how lucky we are to be in this wonderful place.

Last weekend, I watched in horror as Hamas heinously attacked and killed hundreds of innocent people in Israel. My next thoughts were on our regrettable history that has cultivated such inhumane rage among these terrorists. Then I began to fear what spiral of successive acts of revenge would follow. Like nearly all conflicts and wars, this will have no winner, but the losses will be beyond measure. They already are.

The following Monday, Rabbi Nina Mandel, our Director of Jewish Life, held a gathering to express solidarity. A small group of us sat together in mutual support. We looked at maps of Israel and the Occupied Territories. Some of those gathered pointed out where their family members were living, or where they had once lived themselves. We tried to unpack what we knew, what we thought would happen next, and mostly we were sad together.

The next morning, I sent a message to the campus community. This is one of the more challenging balancing acts of the presidency. At difficult times, many members of every campus community want a statement of a position, a value, or compassion.

I have written here before on the lodestones I use in crafting a statement, when they apply: the University’s Mission Statement and our Statement on Diverse and Ethical Living. I also want the members of our campus community, especially our students, to know that I love them and care for them

Throughout the remainder of the week, there have been criticisms of numerous presidents for not issuing a statement, and for those of us who did, there have been criticisms of what we said, or didn’t say. It is difficult because what words of compassion can provide consolation, and what words of outrage won’t amplify tensions?

My message was simple: “We are all watching the eruption of violence in Israel with horror and sorrow. Our hearts go out to members of the Susquehanna community who have friends and family in harm’s way, and we hope for a quick and peaceful resolution.” This was followed by a list of campus support resources.

I received messages from community members thanking me and others expressing disappointment or indignation for not being stronger and for not calling out the malefactors. Each of them has a reasoned perspective.

I am outraged at what Hamas has done, but those campus messages go out over my name, and I will be just as outraged when innocents in Gaza are killed as part of the retaliation. What message should come next, and how would my rhetoric not become the same vicious cycle as the acts of retribution they are meant to condemn.

Victims are just that, victims. We are the mourners and the caretakers of those who mourn. We can also honor the dead by being advocates for peace and a more just future for all.

During our gathering on Monday, a copy of Psalm 122 was handed out, verses 6-8 are:

⁶ O pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee.

⁷ Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces.

⁸ For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will wish thee prosperity.

⁹ Yea, because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek to do thee good.[1]

Let us hope for peace within all our walls, and let us pray for the courage and wisdom to broker a lasting end to this and all wars.

[1] Psalm 122. Laetatus sum. The Book of Common Prayer. New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928.

For centuries the visual arts were taught and learned through private instruction and apprenticeship. Their arrival in school and the general curriculum came much later.

Benjamin Franklin proposed including the arts in his 1749 pamphlet outlining the ideal education for Pennsylvania’s youth. Franklin’s thoughts about pedagogy were well ahead of his time. He believed that students learned best by practicing the disciplines they studied, and he recognized the value of art in the curriculum.

“As to their STUDIES, it would be well if they could be taught every Thing that is useful, and every Thing that is ornamental: But Art is long, and their Time is short. It is therefore propos’d that they learn those Things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental. Regard being had to the several Professions for which they are intended.”[1]

Fundamental art instruction was first introduced in U.S. public schools in 1821, but sputtered along for decades. Massachusetts was the first to mandate art instruction state-wide in 1870.[2]

An exhibit of Massachusetts students’ work at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition catalyzed national interest in expanding art education. The World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 heightened the nation’s awareness of contemporary arts practices from around the world and led to the development of more diverse and functional art materials. The St. Louis Exposition of 1904, the Jamestown Exposition of 1907, and the San Francisco and San Diego Expositions of 1915 successively lifted up the connection between art and practical instruction.[3]

Professional art training was governed by guilds in Medieval Europe as painters, sculptors, and other artists were seen as tradespeople. The first art academies arose in Renaissance Europe. The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture was founded in Paris in 1648, and the London Royal Academy was founded in 1768. The painter, Joshua Reynolds was its first president.[4]

The first professional art school in the United States was the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which was founded in 1805 by the painter, Charles Wilson Peale and the sculptor, William Rush. It remains a leading arts school and museum.

A number of other art schools followed. These include the Cooper Union (1859), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1866/1882), Rhode Island School of Design (1877), Pratt Institute (1887), and Parsons School of Design (1896).

The College Art Association was founded in 1911 and remains the leading national organization for the visual arts in higher education. Following World War II and the implementation of the G.I. Bill, colleges and universities quickly became the training grounds for artists.[5]

By the 1960s fine arts courses became standard in the general education curricula of most undergraduate degree programs.

Today’s students are probably the most visually engaged generation, and they are certainly more visually facile than their predecessors. Contemporary media are driven by imagery, and we must continue to provide our students with the tools to understand and interpret what they see as well as the ability to contextualize images within history and culture.

This literacy will allow them to be wise consumers and producers of visual material, and as AI occupies an increasing footprint in our visual world, the visual world, these challenges will become exponentially more complex.

[1] From Benjamin Franklin: Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsilvania. Philadelphia: 1749.

[2] W.G. Whitford: “Brief History of Art Education in the United States,” The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Oct. 1923), p. 109.

[3] Op. cit. pp.111-112.

[4] https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/academy

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_education_in_the_United_States