BOSTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE >\ I

$BOSTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE >\ I$ ALSO: OUT OF AFRICA / EYE CONTACT / RELUCTANT RETURN Boston College magazin ENDNOTES '-:-. "**<' rv / «L *. ;*v i »t., a# few i&£#i' If . * / vBISlC By Ben Birnbaum m £ a, i^3f^V**S maoui IT^^qRS * Li ^^^^' WTSkW' » » V : 7 ^5^4 • M5* a4 ." V £ - ^--, tit m a \ The first of the lasts occurred in September at Faculty Convocation, the annual meeting at which the President delivers his state-of-the-University address. Robsham Theater was packed that afternoon in expectation not of the first last but of something else: that the naming of the next BC president would be on Fr. Monan's regular slate of announcements, appreciations, cautions and encouragements. It had been 19 months since he announced he would step aside for "new leadership," 1 5 since the trustees put the succession search on hold after none of the Jesuit final candidates was able to meet BC's timetable, and six weeks since the Boston Globe reported that the search had quietly resumed and "narrowed the field to fewer than five." J. Donald Monan's 24th convocation address started out with a stroll through precincts that would have appeared quite familiar to anyone 22 BOS TON COLLEGE MAGAZINE PHOTOS BY GARY GILBERT who'd been on one of the previous 23 guided tours. and celebrations—from Pops on the Heights, to First, the appreciation of summer weather, then the Christmas-tree lighting, to faculty promotions, welcome ofsome notable new hires and an apprecia- to Commencement—at each stop someone was tion of the areas they would lead at BC. Then came sure to remark, "You know, this is Fr. Monan's last." the review of construction projects and plans, the delivery ofpleasant news about the balance sheet and SEASON OF FAREWTLL IS LIKE a full moon. It the caution that such news should not be taken as A perturbs the tides. It makes people reflective. evidence that BC had no reason to be concerned It makes them remember things. And it makes about its finances. Later came the appreciation of them check the backs of desk drawers to see if faculty, the explication of the current academic plan- there's something there that might be of use now ning process and the comment on the special nature that hasn't been of use for a while and that will not of the Jesuit university. be of use soon again, such as a long-forgotten Three-quarters of the way through, though, black-and-white film that was made a few months and just ahead of the historical corrtextualization of after JDM arrived on the Heights. the past year, the expression of gratitude for excel- It was the fall of 1 972, and BC was an institution lent work and the call for continued support of the shaken by financial shortages, fractious students, University, Fr. Monan made the announcement. It and alumni angry at an administration and faculty wasn't the naming of a new president (that came six that, in their view, had surrendered to the kids weeks later) but official confirmation that the trust- without firing a shot. The film's title, "A New ees, after more than a year's hiatus, had resumed President," may sound flat to contemporary ears, their presidential search. "If the renewed activities but it would have appeared quite pointed in the fall of the Board of Trustees among their Jesuit candi- of 1972. And the production, while charmingly dates proves productive, the College should be in a retro to contemporary eyes (it seems to have been position to name a successor within this calendar shot without benefit of electric lighting or a script, year for arrival the following September," said the for examples), is clearly pointed—a 25-minute- president in a sentence exquisitely iMonanesque in long assurance that BC was now in confident, its detailed embroidery, its adamantine avoidance young, vigorous, virile and responsible hands. of the personal pronoun and its flouting of the One of the segments shows what seems to be a principles of sentence structure that are observed pickup game in the gloaming in the old hockey by journalists. arena, McHugh Forum. The camera finds a slim, But that, in any case, is when it became clear youthful, grinning skater as he weaves up the ice that the September 1995 convocation had suddenly like he knows what he's doing. Crossing the blue become the first of the lasts. And, indeed, as line, he takes a soft pass from Athletic Director Bill Photo pages 20-21 the academic year wound through its ceremonies Flynn and then, while the defense hangs back by Lee Pellegrini IU)SK)\ COLLEG1 \l\(,\/l\i 23 — .e is a public man who doesn't keep the capable of setting new standards of excellence," he H urges a faculty might have been satisfied to who be assured that they were capable of meeting a couple customary valise full of public selves handy. of old standards and keeping their jobs. The odd spring of enthusiasm that buoys certain phrases is, in fact, it as He himself—as much of when he speaks: "You're going to be met with an avalanche of interests," he tells the freshmen as- he will allow you to see, certainly—but sembled in their folding chairs in the cavelike darkness of the old basketball arena, Roberts Cen- himself, always. It's what makes him appear ter. His occasional lapse into an upstate-New York "awl" for "all." Then as now, it's the man. strangely vulnerable in public appearances. So I gave that up and tried instead to watch the film through the eyes of a member of the Class of 1955, say, who in December of 1972 is invited to politely, he pops the puck over the goalie's stick come by after a long day at the office and sit in a and into the net. The voice-over meanwhile re- classmate's darkened, overheated den with other minds us that Fr. Monan "was a defenseman for his class members, have a beer and watch a short film championship high-school team." about the new Boston College president. In a similar vein, another segment finds the young If I am that man, I come away thinking that this president seated with a group of bearded, long- guy Monan seems to be having the time of his life, haired male students and their silent, long-haired and I just hope he knows how to run the place, too. female companions, discussing the purposes of edu- cation. "Is learning something we're beginning to be SOME YEARS AGO I TRIED TO read JDM's Moral afraid of?" the president wants to know. "Where Knowledge and Its Methodology in Aristotle, which does learning fit into the lifestyle that you call col- is said, by those who study such things for a living, lege?" He listens attentively to the halting and som- to be a fine little book. I found it to be a tightly ber responses and then asks whether "the youth wound poem written in a language I didn't know; culture" is "anti-intellectual." After some hemming I could make no headway. In fact, I don't believe I and hawing, one of the young men admits that there was able to keep my bearing through any one may be "traces" of anti-intellectualism here and paragraph. Another of his books, A Prelude to there and then veers off. Not fast enough. J DM sets Metaphysics, which he cowrote with another mem- the hook. "What traces?" he smiles. ber of the Le Moyne College philosophy faculty, In other segments he addresses newly arrived is by no means a walk in the park (see, for example, freshmen, meets with the sideburned members of the pages on "the unity ofdouble problematique"), the faculty senate, speaks at Faculty Convocation, but it is a much easier slog because, as the title receives the sideburned mayor ofNewton, watches implies, it was written as a college-level introduc- a football game from the president's box (despite tion to "the meaning of being." From this book I the demands on his time, he attended every home gleaned something, a note on conformity: game, the narration notes), tells the press that the "The real tragedy of the complete conformist finances are going to be just fine thank you, pre- lies not in the predictable monotony of his life, but sides over a folk Mass on the steps of Bapst Library in its radical inhumanity. The pawn of alien forces, and winces when he learns from a sideburned of compelling habits, of the fads of others, he lacks member of the Council of Deans that 3 3 faculty are a personally embraced inner standard, which would likely to apply for tenure that year. place his personal signature upon his projects. His I watched a video of the film several times one actions, rather than being extensions of his own evening, trying to note differences between the person, are hollow gestures because they are not JDM of 1972 (whom I did not know) and the JDM expressions of an inward life." of 1996, and I concluded that there aren't any It's not a voice—or a notion of conformity except that he appears to have been younger then. that most college students circa 1972 would have The joy with which he jumps into intellectual found endearing or comforting. At about the time tug-of-war, pulling the line of logic before anyone "A New President" was debuting in suburban dens else has even set his or her feet.

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