Freshmen Address

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Address to Freshmen
Meeting House
September 16, 1927.
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It is ~ privilege as the President of the College to
welcome you .on this occasion as actual members of the College. When
you go into a department store, there is somebody usually who welcomes
you, who tells you what to do. When you go to a lecture you are in
a certain sense, as they s~, a member of the audience; and in various
relations of life you become members of this group or of that group or
of another group. But when you enter a college, and enter into a
college like this, it is almost as if you were being introduced into a
society. You are a manber of a college in a very much more intimate
sense, you take upon yourself both privileges and responsibilities which
I want to say just a word about tod~. You are entering into a heritage.
It is as if somebody had left you something in a will and I were the
person who came to notify you that here was an inheritance vilich was yours.
You might or you might not have expected this legacy; you might or you
might not know what duties and responsibilities it inVOlves, what it was
worth. I can't in a few minutes this morning give you anything like a
complete account of what this legacy is worth, IIhat duties it involves and
what responsibilities, but I do want to emphasize that it is a real, and
as I think a very precious legacy, worth striving for, worth striving to
deserve, and after you have got it, worth carrying on and passing on to
future generations who are going to have it. Because after all, a college
consists not of a Board of Managers merely, not of a faculty mere ly, not
even of a body of students although they are very important, but it consists
of a whole tradition~ of successive generations that have passed through it,