Trinity College Newsletter, vol 1 no 18, November 1982

Page 1

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A PUBLICATION OF TRINITY COLLEGE WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Registered by Australia Post — Publication No. VBG 4336

NOVEMBER 1982

THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE Address by Dr. Owen Parnaby, Master of Queen's College at Trinity College Valedictory Service 10th October, 1982 Warden, members of Trinity College and friends: thank you for inviting me to take part in this service for valedictees and to commemorate Founders and Benefactors. It seems to me most appropriate to commemorate Founders and Benefactors at a Valedictory Service. After all were it not for them, those of you who are going down would not be here this afternoon, reflecting on what the last few years in Trinity have meant to you. And if this experience has meant much to you then it would bea natural human response to want future generations of students to have the same opportunities that you have had. That I think was the motivation of the Founders of Trinity, so my theme this afternoon is to trace the threads that bind Founders, Benefactors, and Valedictees.

THE FOUNDERS OF TRINITY The Warden and I belong to a particular Oxford college founded by a Scotsman who was commanded by the church to endow the college as a penance for his sins. Perhaps the Warden thinks it a pity that the church has lost that authority. However the Founders of Trinity were under compulsion, but the inner compulsion of people who had had the college experience: Bishop Perry at Trinity College, Cambridge; Dean Macartney and Sir William Stawell at Trinity College, Dublin; Professor Wilson and Mr. Justice Stephen at St. John's College, Cambridge. I often think how fortunate Victoria and Melbourne were in the timing of their development. First settled when English liberalism was in full bloom, made wealthy by gold discoveries, they had both the vision and the capacity to establish a university and a State library on the model of the best then known to Englishmen — for universities — the college system of Oxford and Cambridge; and for libraries — the British Museum. Just think, forty acres of a one hundred acre university site assigned to colleges. What faith the Founding Fathers had in the collegiate system! What then has the collegiate system to offer? Well, you are the people who have had the experience, and perhaps we should be listening to you instead of me.

FRIENDSHIPS AND MATURITY I am going to suggest three things which I hope your experience has confirmed as making college worthwhile. The

The Ven. Hussy Burgh Macartney, Dean of Melbourne, and one of the Founders of the College.

first Master of Queen's, Dr. Sugden, speaking at the time of his appointment, said of the college man, "If three years of daily association with the flower of his contemporaries cannot make him a gentleman then his case is hopeless". So I think the first thing that will be uppermost in your mind when you think of your years in college will be the friendships you have made and what you owe to your peers and contemporaries with whom you have lived in college. The years that you spent in college were the most formative of your life — years of self-discovery and growing self-awareness, of expanding horizons in intellectual interests


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Trinity College Newsletter, vol 1 no 18, November 1982 by Trinity College Collections - Issuu