What Have We Done?

Yesterday was a day for considering the history of the college once again, but also for learning more about one of the initiatives of the last twenty years that has had a great impact on the college and its reputation in New Jersey.

Our meeting with Dave Taylor, the first Chair of the Stockton College Board of Trustees, occurred today, and it was a wonderful occasion. Dave came to the college with his wife, Beni, and Ken and I joined them and the President for a very pleasant lunch. This was a great deal of fun, and Dave Taylor had an excellent memory for all the events that occurred so long ago. Ken had sent Herman a picture (at right) of the ground-breaking ceremony, which he had added to his office computer's screen saver. It pictured Dave sitting alongside other members of the platform party, while Hap Farley, then the State Senator representing Southern New Jersey (who had been a strong advocate of bringing the College to the region), was speaking. Dave laughed about Hap and indicated that he had to persuade the Senator to do a number of things and it was always a tough call for him to make – the Haphazard of being the Chair of the Board at the time, I injected to a general groan of displeasure!

Many other things were learned during lunch, which I think Ken will have honed in on, during his interview with Dave, later in the day (the audio of this will be uploaded to the volume web site in the near future).

The President also recounted one story that Elizabeth Alton had recounted in her book on the early years at Stockton. Apparently, when she observed all the students and faculty entering the Mayflower Hotel for the beginning of the first term, some of them a little more ragged and hippy-ish than would have been to her taste, she thought to herself, “My goodness, what have we done?”

After lunch, we decided that although we should take Dave around the Campus Center, Beni would not be up to clamoring through the construction site. So we took her to the balcony at the end of F-wing to view the building, and then we all accompanied her to look at the new extension to the Holocaust and Genocide Resource Center in the library. She and I then remained there to talk with Gail Rosenthal, Director of the Center, while Herman, Dave, and Ken wondered off to inspect the progress of the construction.

I cannot comment on the trip around the Campus Center, but you can read about the building in a previous entry here. I can report, however, that Dave Taylor seemed bowled over by the growth of the college and all that had been created since he left the Board after 12 years service in 1981. I believe that he felt that his work had reaped great benefits for South Jersey, and that were he to comment in the vein of Elizabeth Alton it would have been a more positive exclamation: “My goodness, look what has been achieved!”

But, Beni Taylor and I were to learn another couple of uses for this phrase. We listened to Gail recount the origin of the Resource Center and all the work that has occurred there, particularly the work focusing on the many survivors from the Holocaust in the South Jersey region.

We also watched a 10-minute NBC supported documentary called, “Rails of the Holocaust: A Journey to Stockton College.” This covered the recent expansion of the Center, the creation of a sculpture at the new entrance, and the endeavor to secure some rails from Poland – rails that had been used to carry the cattle-cars that had transported so many of the victims of the Holocaust to Auschwitz, where most of them would be exterminated at the hands of the Nazis.

The great accomplishment in the establishment of this architectural memorial to the Holocaust could easily inspire the positive exclamation, “Look what we have achieved!” Stockton, after all, has been in the forefront of educating residents of New Jersey about the horrors of the Holocaust and the ever-present and continuing danger of genocidal outbreaks occurring around the world.

Of course, what this Resource Center memorializes can only inspire a negative exhortation about human history – “What have we done?” indeed! But as Dave and Beni wandered back down the corridor of the college they had helped to create, the more positive meaning for the phrase came back to the fore, and an overall feeling of purpose and accomplishment prevailed.