Beneath Its Books and Spires – A Deeper Side

Each of us, on the verge of our going to college, seems to get advice from just about everybody, no matter how little they know. With all the advice and words of caution—Don’t this. Don’t that.—Practically every new student finds that he didn’t hear it all, and sometimes wishes he hadn’t heard some of what he did. He resents getting this treatment rather than the mature handing over of responsibilities that a person of his age should be able to take.

The challenge facing you now is more than just a stepping away from old restraints—it means responsibilities towards yourself and others. You or your parents may not comprehend it fully, but it is now that your parents actually lose control of your life. What then? Whatever choices you make, your life will not be the same when you come out. It will be vastly changed.

The responsibility for your life is now no one else’s but yours. The four years you’re beginning this fall will be the hardest time of testing you’ve ever had—not only academic tests but also tests of your character and morals. As ex-freshmen, we can say that the trial waiting for us at Yale was more concentrated, more pressing, and more decisive in our lives than we ever imagined.

When we first came here we were uncertain what we would do, or what we would eventually become. But, then an Event took place, the power of which has since totally transformed our lives. Upending every value we once held, this encounter gave us a new vision, more significant and full of meaning than anything we had ever known. For, we met Jesus Christ.

Since then, beneath its books and spires, there has been a deeper side to Yale. Suddenly we have been awakened to the joys of diligent scholarship and close friends, possessed by a desire to get up early in the morning, and be singing the praises of God, to fill the chapel with prayers and our speech with good news.

The campus you will enter is not neutral ground, but the setting for a disguised, and in many ways congenial, assault upon your beliefs, your integrity and your standards. At its worst, this assault aims at the irreversible corruption of young men and women, and we have seen it succeed in a large way during our years here.

There are at Yale certain reigning assumptions and norms that have, through their long acceptance, come to be established. One of these, as a recent graduate admonished, as that “One should not be inflexible in one’s beliefs; in a community of intellectuals, one should be willing to listen, to consider alternative approaches and to question one’s views,” whatever they may be. It is dogma at Yale that one cannot be dogmatic about anything, except that one cannot be dogmatic. A newcomer may have the uneasy feeling that he is being engulfed by a stifling unanimity, that certain basic questions are never to be challenged, discussed, or even thought about. More likely, he will be hushed into an awed, respectful silence. Better minds than his, quite some time ago, reached certain, settled conclusions.

One of the great joys of Freshman year is the ease of friendships formed and the spirit in which so much is done together. That part is good. What is subtlely dangerous is the extent to which a common norm can force a person into doing and thinking what he would otherwise abhor, or stay away from. The Yale consensus prevails in more than matters of the mind. Among good friends, a little fun or adventurous experimentation can provide an excuse with a deceptive label for a deadly decision. It may not seem wrong, (“After all, we’re all in this together.”) until it is too late.

Four years at Yale will decide the shape and outcome of your later life. Your work, your health and your mind are all at stake. You can really make or break your future now. You have to get it right the first time.