The University of Chicago community welcomed first-year and transfer students to campus this week through a number of activities aimed at introducing them to their peers and their new intellectual home in Hyde Park.
Making their official entrance into the UChicago community during Opening Convocation on Sept. 25, students gathered in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, and also remotely from Ida Noyes Hall, to hear remarks from President Paul Alivisatos and Melina Hale, dean of the College.
Hale reflected on the importance of questioning everything and working to understand ideas and people that we might not otherwise understand. She also talked about the “devious logic” used through the Core Curriculum to instill these values in undergraduates from the moment they step on campus.
“Even when the Core is far from your passions, the learning transfers in surprising ways,” Hale said. “When the future scientist or economist digs into the claims of textual criticism, or the linguist does the same for project-based inquiry in biology, that's anything but a waste of time. It provides a richer set of information, perspectives, approaches to problems—both the breadth of knowledge and the mental habits to question everything.”
Alivisatos focused on the importance of freedom of inquiry and expression, and used the Chicago Principles as a guide throughout students’ time in the College and beyond.
“If you can approach a disagreement with kindness and humility, an eagerness or at least a willingness to hear a different point of view, then the odds of getting to the bottom of it will improve,” Alivisatos said. “But at the end of the day, you do yourself and others no favors by holding back. Indeed, do speak your mind. But never seek to disrupt the learning and expression of others.”
At the conclusion of Opening Convocation, members of the Class of 2028 and transfer studnets processed through the Main Quadrangles, past their families, and through an enthusiastic crowd of UChicago community members gathered around Cobb Gate.
On Sept. 26, Prof. Patrick Jagoda delivered this year’s Aims of Education address—a revered UChicago tradition that explores the purpose of a liberal arts education and encourages undergraduate students to reflect on their future in the College.
Jagoda spent most of his address using various references of games, and more specifically, “play,” to explain his views of the purposes and aims of liberal education.
“To be clear: I enjoy games, but I cannot live without play,” Jagoda said. “... Play is not necessarily childish. At its best, it makes you childlike, which has been a lifelong goal for me … play is another word for experimentation, which is another word for learning. If you approach learning that way, you don’t engage in it for merely four years; you commit to it for a lifetime.”
Throughout the week, College Programming and Orientation (CPO) hosted both informative and social events for new students.
—A version of this story first appeared on the UChicago News website.