He believed college should be a place where a community of learners engaged in making sense of the world, through youth, through reason, through faith. And he believed that everyone is included in that conversation. My challenge and the challenge of everyone in this community is to continue transmitting that excitement from generation to generation. If the stories of Bishop Hobart and William Smith somehow lose meaning for students today, then the Colleges risk losing more than a slice of history. Tribes, families, and civilizations have stories they look to as a way of understanding themselves and their place in the world.
Colleges are much the same.
Brophy, Norvell, Guarasci, and Debra DeMeis, dean of William Smith, have taken up the challenge. But in either case, the Colleges now weave tradition as much as possible into student life, to reinforce and project the identity of the institution. Tradition gives people a sense of our identity, the sense of becoming part of something bigger than themselves. The Hobart Challenge Guarasci faces a remediation project at Hobart, where a funny thing happened to institutional heritage on the way to the 1990s. Sometime in the late '60s, traditions seemed to fade, at Hobart and nationwide.