President's Address

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT (25 May 1984 - UA RG 285, Box 1, File 5)

It is my pleasure to welcome everyone to the tenth Spring Convocation of the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, an occasion with heightened significance because it marks the completion of two full decades in the life of UNBSJ. But I shall leave it to Dr. Condon to speak more particularly of that significance.

My job is a simpler and altogether more pleasant one. It is to express, on behalf of the Board of Governors and the Senate of the University, warmest congratulations to the graduating students and to wish you success in the lives and careers that lie ahead of you.

As always, I'm hard pressed to know how to say that in a way that doesn't sound perfunctory or hackneyed. The trouble with having a Ph.D. is that people expect you to be able to say wise and original things on any occasion and at short notice. Perhaps this is because a few Ph.D.'s have actually been able to do so.

Take, for example, an eighteenth-century clergyman by the name of Dr. Dodd. Dr. Dodd was a Cambridge don who was known to the students principally on account of his sermons against their drinking habits. In one such sermon he had referred to them as malt-worms. Then one dark night while he was on his way back to his lodgings he was accosted by some drunken undergraduates who, to embarrass him, demanded that he preach to them then and there. Here is the sermon he is alleged to have preached.

'My brethren, let me crave your reverend attention: I am a little man, come at a short warning, to preach a short sermon, upon a short subject, to a thin congregation, in a unworthy pulpit. Beloved, my text is MALT. Now, there is not teaching without a division. I cannot divide my text into sentences, because there are none; nor into words, it being but one; nor into syllables, it being but a monosyllable. Therefore I must divide it into letters, which I find in my text to be four letters, which I find in my text to be four: M, A, L, T. M, my beloved, is moral, A allegorical, L literal, and T theological. First, the moral teaches such as you drunkards good manners: wherefore, M, my masters, A, all of you, L, listen, T, to my text. Secondly, the allegorical is when one thing is spoken of and another meant; the thing spoken of is malt, the thing meant is the oil of malt, properly called strong beer; which you, gentlemen, make M, your meat, A, your apparel, L, your liberty, and T, your treasure. Thirdly, the literal sense hath ever been found suitable to the theme, confirmed by beggarly experience: M, much, A, ale, L, little, T, thought. Fourthly, the theological is according to the effects that it worketh, which are of two kinds: the first in this world, the second in the world to com. The effects that it worketh in this world are M, murder, A, adultery, L, looseness of life, and T, treason. In the world to come the effects of it are M, misery, A, anguish, L, lamentation, and T, torment. And the application of my text is this: M, my masters, A, all of you, L, leave off, T, tippling; or else M, my masters, A, all of you, L, look for, T, torment ...'

Alas, brethren and sistern, I lack Dr. Dodd's moral certainly and authority. My own attitude towards the Ph.D. tends to be similar to that of Stephen Leacock who, though proud of the fact that he had earned one, nevertheless knew how to keep itin perspective. "The meaning of this degree," he once said in a lecture, "is that the recipient has been examined for the last time and pronounced full. After this, no new ideas can be imparted to him."

When Leacock was studying for his Ph.D. his father promised him a trip to Europe upon completion. Leacock was so proud that he signed the ship's register "Dr. Leacock". A few days out of port, the purser approached him with the news that a stweardess had injured her thigh and needed immediate attention.

"I hurried to her cabin," Leacock recounts, "but I was a moment too late. A doctor of divinity had beaten me to it."

(Leacock doesn't say if the Doctor of Divinity's name was Dr. Dodd!)

Lacking, as I do, the homiletic skill of Dr. Dodd and the comic with of Dr. Leacock, I must resort to more pedestrian prose.

The world that you who graduate today are inheriting has fewer moral certainties than that of Dr. Dodd or of Dr. Leacock, and yet its essential nature and needs are unchanged. And chief among its needs is for men and women whose minds and spirits have been sharpened by a good education, who bring to their work and lives high standards of professional and ethical integrity and who have the courage to ask them of others.

For two decades this institution in this city has been educating people to give leadership in their society and to be of service to others; helping them to see and feel the connections and relations among things, ideas, people, and events; to examine and evaluate the assumptions and principles upon which our culture and beliefs rest; fitting them with the knowledge and skills for a more useful and satisfying life. In doing so it has striven to give them the wherewithal to create out of the world they live in a picture of the world they would wish to live in.

Madam Chancellor, I believe the Class of '84 is worthy of this tradition. I count it a great honour to admit them to their degree.