From the archives: Flores Perennes Carpimus

From the archives brings you old news today. As time passes, the news we report on changes, as does the way we report on it. Conversely, we’ve been covering some of the same issues since 1872. As graduating students prepare to depart, the Argosy can’t say it has any good advice for you. But a well-meaning editor in 1957 felt differently, and gave out friendly, unsolicited advice by expanding on our past slogan.

Mon. May 13, 1957: vol. 84, issue 20.

Another year has passed, more graduate, and this time it is the Class of ’57 that officially bows out of campus life. With this we begin to reflect upon the past four undergraduate years at Mount Allison and the significance of their completion. We throw our minds back and recall various stages. There was the adaptation to campus life and the cultivating of effective study habits. There was further the exposure to new theories and various phases of study, and the test of having to build up a tolerance and respect for the dispositions of our associates. We have had the training of self-discipline and the task of making decisions on the basis of priority and experience rather than in accordance with inclination. Lastly, there were the weeks of strain and anxiety before we could be thought worthy of the “hood”. But what does it all mean? Probably it would be advisable to make two interpretations one from the viewpoint of the university, the other from the viewpoint of the student.

I believe that the motto of the Argosy, whatever may be its special connotation with respect to this publication, serves well to interpret the university attitude to granting degrees. Under the direction of administration and faculty, the university has been a greenhouse in which the seeds of knowledge are continually being sown and nurtured, and then year by year the flowers are plucked. This year members of the Class of ’57 are among the flowers being plucked.

It is in the expectation that students have well passed the budding stage in intellect, knowledge and outlook that the university decides to graduate them. They are expected to be in the community an asset more profitable than otherwise.

For many who have weathered four years in eager anticipation of graduation, where is that crowning state of enduring elation? It is non-existent. Graduation then becomes another step in life, not an end in itself, where one must ask the question “what next”? Each step in life thus attained must be the basis upon which other ambitions are founded. For some, such ambitions may be post-graduate studies; for others, efficiently fitting to the pattern of life in which the tools of university education are put to use; and even for a few, the setting for the stage of a good partnership — in marriage. In short, graduation brings but an awareness of life’s dynamic mechanism.

As members of the graduating class let each resolve to ensure that flowers have not been plucked merely to have their sweetness wasted on the desert air.

The time spent as undergraduates becomes worthwhile only to the extent that the media of knowledge, training and experience benefits others.

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