He comes down, heavily, on the side of the good that institutions can do. His reaction was the opposite of the knee-jerk distrust of organizations. In word and approach, he said you can't serve the deep needs of people over the long haul unless you institutionalize. Without this step, the service is sporadic and uneven. However, he cautioned, you must always attend to the climate within your institution to be sure that it nourishes and doesn't kill the Gospel seeds you planted there.
Inaugurations are times of beginning.
To be sure, the main purpose of Niagara is learning, higher learning. And to accomplish that, you certainly need departments, procedures, a chain of command, fiscal controls, professional societies, and a hundred other things institutional. But, there is also that all-pervading climate, that ecosphere which calls forth or suffocates the values you planted there at its beginning. At the heart of that planting is our Catholic and Vincentian Heritage. And in terms of a person, it is the world-view of that very creative and energetic disciple of Jesus Christ, Vincent de Paul.