February 12, 2006

If nothing else, Sunday nights are great for procrastination.

After a long uneventful weekend of reading, basketball, and alcohol, my thoughts on the people of St. Andrews are looking up. I got a job at a hip coffee shop, have begun to meet students whom I find intriguing, and continue to be blown away by the beauty of this place.

So, like everyone else in this small town of 16,000 I am a confused citizen contributing to an identity crisis: a storied town coping with the realities of modernization. In a town of cobbled streets and medieval churches that radiates history and tradition only one force seems to loom larger. Those forces, the internet, immigration, diversity, and revisionist histories greatly challenge the town and the university it houses, probing at the fundamental tenets that have stood forthright for centuries. Can this town and university withstand cultural change and honor the blue-blood legacy of its past?

And the answer is, like everything, of course it will survive. The better question then becomes, how will it survive? It is this question that is asked daily by many members of the town and while few seem to have concrete answers, the response does reflect the importance of the question.

From an institutional standpoint, the University has confronted the issue head on. IN the past two years, they have funded and began degrees in sustainable development and film studies. This year’s university address will be centered, like it has been for hundreds of years, around one word. This year’s word is sustainability. In addition, there is an entire blueprint put together by the school about how it can be more efficient, greener, and more sustainable. Certainly this new agenda is a response to a trend within the world that increasingly demands large establishments from multi-nationals to universities to publicly acknowledge some sort of environmental reprehensibility.

And yet, while the speech will address a very contemporary issue, where it is given and how are equally telling indicating that there is a conflict. Each year the rector general, a title aging back to the formation of the university, wears a storied robe, assembles in a vaulted chapel to address other academics wearing equally symbolic clothing. It is this clothing that symbolizes the tradition that is the thread of the university – setting it apart as Scotland’s oldest university. Likewise, the departments that garner the most international praise, medieval history, divinity, and English, are not cutting edge.

Thus it appears that the university’s struggle to remain sincere to its valued history and address modern issues is very much a problem. For both the town and the university this issue will continue; figuring out a healthy program going forward will be the challenge of the 21 century. Perhaps someday they will look back and praise an their changing outlook today as part of their impressive past.