Volume CXXXIII, Number 16 February 15, 2002 f

Bowdoin needs some traditions of its own
TODD BUELL

In the first months of my freshman year, I refused to walk through the gate that stands between the Quad and College Street. I was under the erroneous impression that it was a college tradition not to walk through that gate until one had graduated. Midway through my first year, upon noticing numerous people walking through the gate, I realized that this was a tradition of Princeton and not Bowdoin.

I recounted this story in the dining hall one night last week. My friends were lamenting that there were no traditions of that sort at the College. We compared Bowdoin to other schools whose customs are more embedded in student life. Princeton has its gate, and Washington and Lee has a barn where Robert E. Lee's horse is buried.

My dining companions and I theorized that perhaps our dearth of traditions is a consequence of the decision to end fraternities. I'm sure that fraternities added something to the traditions, but as social houses become a more cemented presence in college life, we won't know the difference between the Chi Delta Flag football tournament and the Quinby rendition.

However, this conversation made me think about the place of tradition in our broader society. Tradition seems to have taken a bad name recently. One tends to associate it with elements of superiority, exclusion, elitism, etc.. These are not complimentary associations in today's sensitive culture.

This brings to mind two examples of tradition or its representation being squashed in the name of "fairness" or "equality." The first took place around Christmastime when the city council of Kensington, Maryland voted to ban Santa Claus from the town's Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Apparently, two citizens complained that people might be offended by the religious presence at a civic ceremony.

Last month, the borough president of Brooklyn decided to take down the portraits of George Washington and other famous framers from the borough office. He objected to our great leaders's artistic presence because they held slaves and were all white; apparently the singularity of skin color did not adequately "represent" all of Brooklyn's residents.

Both instances are representative of something that has occurred often in recent memory. Long-standing traditions are being shelved because certain groups of people feel excluded or marginalized. What bothers me about this trend, both locally and nationally, is that it ignores the positive virtues to be gained from a tradition-laden experience.

Enacting a tradition is a way of connecting with the past. It grounds the participant in the history, meaning, and lore of a particular institution. As National Review Senior Editor Jeffrey Hart said in an article about the Wimbledon tennis tournament, the All England Club's mandation of white clothing is a "subordination of the individual, and…of the ego."

Traditions also reinforce other positive values. In the two aforementioned cases, the controversial symbols represented more than an affront to extreme secular and racial agendas. Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas, epitomizes charity, unity, family, etc. None of these virtues are uniquely Christian; rather, one can find them in a lot of faiths.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc. may have held slaves in a period when it was socially acceptable, but they and many other American framers also recognized slavery's injustices and hoped that the Nation would rectify it. These men established the system under which Abraham Lincoln could lead the fight toward emancipation.

These are the celebratory and reflective messages that traditional symbols should embody. They allow us to actively look into the past, just as traditional actions permit us to connect with those who have come before us.

It is perhaps this desire to participate in activities that transcend ourselves that keeps us attending the Bowdoin/Colby hockey game in hoards. We see that there is indeed something redeemable about unfettered enthusiasm for one's school. Even if it is just an annual occasion, we see ourselves as part of the long storied past of Bowdoin. Nobody complains that the cheers could be offensive to Colby fans.

If only our leaders were as enlightened as those raucous hockey fans, the living gates of history represented by long-standing traditions would be opened to anyone willing to walk through them.