...with Quintus Horatius Flaccus"
An Ex Libris Talk for Sigma Tau Delta
Central Connecticut State University
Gil Gigliotti
Showing posts with label Xavier University. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Xavier University. Show all posts
02 May 2014
16 December 2011
Let's just say I'm underwhelmed by this response...
As I responded to the X.U. President when he disseminated the video just a little while ago:
Everything that you say in the first minute
would seem to suggest that you were leading up to some decisive action, some
reaffirmation of core Jesuit values (i.e., something more than the rather light
punishment that has been imposed upon the members of the XU team most
involved).
Instead you simply state the obvious: that
Xavier should be better than this. Well, the actions and aftermath would seem
to suggest that, if we are better than this, it's certainly not by
much.
Please count me among the
disheartened.
30 March 2011
When President Reagan was shot...
...I was a senior at Xavier University in Cincinnati, and I heard about it around 3:00 PM, while walking through Hinkle Hall and passing the office of John Getz, professor of American literature and one of my favorites!, who was intently listening to the radio. I popped my head into his office, made a crack approximating "Is this what faculty do all day, sit around listening to the radio?" to which he replied "Reagan's been shot." (In the picture, he's the one on the right...and, nota bene, the picture was taken several years later.)
30 years ago? Yikes.
And WOW.
More personally (and significantly), this was shortly after returning from Spring Break in Estero Island off the western coast of Florida, where a group of us lived for the better part of a week -- at the family summer cottage of our friends Cathy and Mary -- on a steady diet of Product 19 cereal (in single-serving boxes) and Pabst Blue Ribbon (on a really good sale at the local Winn Dixie).
It was also here and then that I first set eyes on the woman who would become my wife. Yay!!!!!
And a few weeks before I would graduate.
30 years ago? Yikes.
And WOW.
15 March 2010
Now this is a NY Times NCAA tournament article about my alma mater to which I can actually relate...
...it has a nun in the headline!
When I attended Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, as an undergraduate (H.A.B. '81), the Musketeers were not a basketball powerhouse. We struggled when we played Thomas More College from across the river, after all, and a man named Tay Baker was our coach.
It wasn't until Xavier beat Georgetown sometime in the late '80s that I knew something different was happening at my alma mater.
Xavier, remember, had gotten rid of football in 1973 (although I just learned they have club football team now), so my fond memories of Xavier include Lucretius, Homer, Horace, Kate Chopin, Thorstein Veblen, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Georges Feydeu's A Flea in Her Ear, the Flying Karamazov Brothers, and the screening of The Last Tango in Paris that was prevented by local prosecutor Simon Lees, rather than a single sporting event.
For what it's worth, we did have bocce courts on campus, and the President, Fr. Mulligan, S.J., swan every morning in the University pool and could be spotted walking across campus, in his towel and sandals, heading back to the Jesuit residence.
When I attended Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, as an undergraduate (H.A.B. '81), the Musketeers were not a basketball powerhouse. We struggled when we played Thomas More College from across the river, after all, and a man named Tay Baker was our coach.
It wasn't until Xavier beat Georgetown sometime in the late '80s that I knew something different was happening at my alma mater.
Xavier, remember, had gotten rid of football in 1973 (although I just learned they have club football team now), so my fond memories of Xavier include Lucretius, Homer, Horace, Kate Chopin, Thorstein Veblen, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Georges Feydeu's A Flea in Her Ear, the Flying Karamazov Brothers, and the screening of The Last Tango in Paris that was prevented by local prosecutor Simon Lees, rather than a single sporting event.
For what it's worth, we did have bocce courts on campus, and the President, Fr. Mulligan, S.J., swan every morning in the University pool and could be spotted walking across campus, in his towel and sandals, heading back to the Jesuit residence.
06 August 2009
Call me Nathan Detroit!
In today's Inside Higher Ed, Dean Dad writes about the recent grad of Monroe College who's suing her alma mater because she can't find a job.
To help curb just this sort of "I'm here to get a job" mentality, I always present to the parents of incoming students, during my summer registration talk, a 1914 quotation by Oxford don John Alexander Smith that I had to translate into Latin for the final exam in Fr. Felton's Latin Prose Composition class during my sophomore year at Xavier University. I don't remember how I translated it (although I'm sure it wasn't very good, much less Ciceronian, Latin), but it has stuck with me all these years:
… you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will … form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.
So, sue me!
To help curb just this sort of "I'm here to get a job" mentality, I always present to the parents of incoming students, during my summer registration talk, a 1914 quotation by Oxford don John Alexander Smith that I had to translate into Latin for the final exam in Fr. Felton's Latin Prose Composition class during my sophomore year at Xavier University. I don't remember how I translated it (although I'm sure it wasn't very good, much less Ciceronian, Latin), but it has stuck with me all these years:
… you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will … form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.
So, sue me!
22 February 2009
The problem with mandatory press conferences...
Yesterday, at a post-game press conference, University of Connecticut men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun was asked about the propriety of his annual salary. Essentially, "given the economic situation, should you be making as much as you do?"
He quickly, as is his wont, got angry.
He's right, of course, basketball makes a quite a bit of money for UConn both directly (the box office, the t-shirt and sweat shirt sales) and indirectly (the remarkable number of students who enroll because UConn teams have been NCAA champions, etc). Indeed, one could easily make the case that UConn basketball (men's and women's) IS professional sports in the state of Connecticut.
To be blunt, I've NEVER understood choosing a school based largely on their sports teams. If I'm not going to be playing basketball for them, why, when I'm selecting a school, would I care how good they are? I fear, as always, I'm in the minority here.
For example, in my first year in the doctoral program at The Catholic University of America in the mid-1990s (er, I meant mid-1980s...godd catch, Stuart!!!!), I taught freshman composition. On the first day, I went around the room and asked my students why they had chosen CUA? Over half said "Because I couldn't get into Villanova," who of course had recently won the NCAA Men's basketball title!
I attended Xavier University in Cincinnati, which had dropped its football program back in the 60s, before they became a credible national basketball presence. When I was enrolled, we'd have trouble beating Thomas More College from northern Kentucky! Sports simply never played a part in any decision about a school.
But I digress.
These post-game press conferences, I understand, are mandatory.
Why?
Rarely do the coaches really want to talk about anything significant, so why make 'em? They've won or lost. They played well or didn't. The coach got thrown out of the game or he didn't. (Remember: this whole thing started with Jim Calhoun.) Are there ever ANY insights at which the esteemed press couldn't arrive on its own?
I doubt it.
And let's not stop at college sports press conferences. The professional ranks have their own mandatory press gatherings. In the case of the esteemed/reviled Bill Belichick, for example, I understand that he doesn't even have to tell the truth in these exchanges ---- top secret strategy and all that.
Once again, that's fine (since none of this really matters to anyone but ESPN), but let's not force him to meet the press to "answer" questions, if, in fact, he doesn't have to.
Coaches have better things to do, I hope.
The press has better things to do, I hope.
And, most importantly, no one has EVER asked me, as I leave my classroom after an early American lit class:
"So, teach, were you pleased by how your class handled the spoon passage in Canto Three of The Hasty Pudding?"
"Do you think they'll be up for Greenfield Hill on Wednesday?"
"How does this class match up with the great Eng 340 classes of the late 1990s?"
If they ever do, then I'll reassess.
Of course, if I can answer in front of a Dunkin Donuts banner, how sweet it would be!!!!"
He quickly, as is his wont, got angry.
He's right, of course, basketball makes a quite a bit of money for UConn both directly (the box office, the t-shirt and sweat shirt sales) and indirectly (the remarkable number of students who enroll because UConn teams have been NCAA champions, etc). Indeed, one could easily make the case that UConn basketball (men's and women's) IS professional sports in the state of Connecticut.
To be blunt, I've NEVER understood choosing a school based largely on their sports teams. If I'm not going to be playing basketball for them, why, when I'm selecting a school, would I care how good they are? I fear, as always, I'm in the minority here.
For example, in my first year in the doctoral program at The Catholic University of America in the mid-1990s (er, I meant mid-1980s...godd catch, Stuart!!!!), I taught freshman composition. On the first day, I went around the room and asked my students why they had chosen CUA? Over half said "Because I couldn't get into Villanova," who of course had recently won the NCAA Men's basketball title!
I attended Xavier University in Cincinnati, which had dropped its football program back in the 60s, before they became a credible national basketball presence. When I was enrolled, we'd have trouble beating Thomas More College from northern Kentucky! Sports simply never played a part in any decision about a school.
But I digress.
These post-game press conferences, I understand, are mandatory.
Why?
Rarely do the coaches really want to talk about anything significant, so why make 'em? They've won or lost. They played well or didn't. The coach got thrown out of the game or he didn't. (Remember: this whole thing started with Jim Calhoun.) Are there ever ANY insights at which the esteemed press couldn't arrive on its own?
I doubt it.
And let's not stop at college sports press conferences. The professional ranks have their own mandatory press gatherings. In the case of the esteemed/reviled Bill Belichick, for example, I understand that he doesn't even have to tell the truth in these exchanges ---- top secret strategy and all that.
Once again, that's fine (since none of this really matters to anyone but ESPN), but let's not force him to meet the press to "answer" questions, if, in fact, he doesn't have to.
Coaches have better things to do, I hope.
The press has better things to do, I hope.
And, most importantly, no one has EVER asked me, as I leave my classroom after an early American lit class:
"So, teach, were you pleased by how your class handled the spoon passage in Canto Three of The Hasty Pudding?"
"Do you think they'll be up for Greenfield Hill on Wednesday?"
"How does this class match up with the great Eng 340 classes of the late 1990s?"
If they ever do, then I'll reassess.
Of course, if I can answer in front of a Dunkin Donuts banner, how sweet it would be!!!!"
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