Nor was our education here confined to the classroom. The liberal-arts tradition in which Ohio Dominican College stands is a tradition that goes back to the universities of the Middle Ages, and ultimately to the monasteries that first brought light to the Dark Ages. The monasteries were founded upon the understanding that all of life was one, that to labor in the garden was a form of prayer. Similarly, education at Ohio Dominican College has not been something that ended each day when we filed out of the day's last class. Our education extended onto the athletic fields, into the dining hall where we talked over the events of the day, and into our dormitory rooms where we met the friends who had come from across Ohio or from around the world to share this stay at the inn with us. We were educated in the college council, and in the Circle K organization. the highway of life, but a place with a very special character. To begin with, it is an old inn. Ohio Dominican was founded eighty-three years ago by the Dominican Sisters as the College of St. Mary of the Springs. But its heritage goes back much further, centuries in fact; the tradition of Ohio Dominican College as as old as the Dominican Order. Let us set forth, then. I will not say, as some travellers do, "without looking back," because we should look back. You cannot know where you are going without remembering where you have been; and besides, we have much to look back upon. Erskine Hall and Spangler Library will be always in my memory, along with every other corner of this campus, and the life I have lived here, and all of you whom I have shared it with. To every one of you, and everyone who has been here before us, and everyone who will be here after us, I give my thinks. It has been a wonderful stay. The education wasn't always easy. I doubt that any of us will leave here regretting that we may never again experience final exams, or may never again sit down at seven in the evening to s |
