September 26, 1938

Professor of English Amy Reed ’92 dismissed a cliché, telling students in her convocation address not to think of the four years of college merely as a preparation for the future but also as living for its own sake. “You have come,” she said, “to a college with a self-governing faculty, a self-governing student body and a president who refuses to be a despot…. A sound democracy does not consist of a number of people all named Zero and led by a brilliant leader. It requires, on the other hand, the hearty and persistent cooperation of highly developed personalities who are free from the wish to dominate others.”

The New York Times