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Photo Courtesy Max O'Neill

Georgetown students are uniquely educated. With our classes focused around a core curriculum, we gain the ability to act with faith and reason — despite what Mom and Dad might say. Faith and reason provide the greatest base of knowledge for a leader, and it is with the gift of education from the university that we will do great work in this world. Much to my dismay, many people say that Georgetown has turned away from the traditional liberal arts education and has chosen instead to follow the trend of modern education by focusing on narrow disciplines and research. Currently, there is a movement to improve the university materially, focusing on expansion — internationally and physically — ultimately to improve the Georgetown student. Georgetown graduates at this point have the unique ability to decide if this is the case and define who we are.

Over the next century, Georgetown will be a great influence on many fronts, as students, alumni and faculty move mountains. Georgetown, as an institution, is only as great as the caliber of the people it attracts. With greater material improvements, better students and professors will come to Georgetown to receive an education of men and women for others. Georgetown is attractive for a variety of reasons: location, Jesuit tradition of education, large international presence, research by professors and basketball. In the years to come, some of the achievements of the administration will bring Georgetown to the next level. Georgetown will have relationships that extend beyond Qatar and China, which will solidify Georgetown as an international university. Georgetown basketball will win numerous national championships. And Georgetown’s campus will be almost unrecognizable to current students because of large campus projects and improvements — we may even have a boathouse!

However, it is the education that Georgetown students receive that will allow Georgetown to excel in the next century. The qualities instilled in the students through a thorough and well-rounded curriculum give students a better understanding of the world. The Georgetown education in particular has the potential to uniquely prepare moral and ethical leadership. A student of literature, philosophy and history, among other disciplines, learns real responsibility and will be able to apply it properly. The lessons taught when reading works of Plato are as applicable today as they were over 2,000 years ago when they were written. Each subject is a key input in the core curriculum and cannot be removed while maintaining a complete education of faith and reason.

This is why we must ask ourselves, as the administration enters the many different initiatives to improve the university, “Are they doing the right thing?” C.S. Lewis wrote in “Mere Christianity,” “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

By focusing on and investing time and money in other aspects of the university, are we losing focus and diverting too many resources from what is a true Georgetown education? To examine this, we must return to the purpose of a Georgetown education — to provide students with four formative years supported by the Jesuit pillars of education. Students graduate with an education of faith and reason and an understanding of men and women for others; they are competent in the areas of problem solving and leadership.

In a time when capable leaders are desperately needed, Georgetown has the potential to be the solution. The administration’s movement to improve Georgetown’s international relations and begin on capital intensive initiatives will certainly improve the university, in one sense. However, we must be careful not to lose sight of the mission of the university — to educate its students. Georgetown will build and mold capable leaders in the years to come with an education of faith and reason. It is now up to us to use the education we were given and apply it properly — to show that the years we spent at Georgetown were formative. In the years to come, people will no longer be talking about Georgetown’s Class of 1968 and Bill Clinton, but about the Class of 2008 — the class that brought Georgetown to the next level.

Max O’Neill is a senior in the College and a three-year member of the Student Safety Advisory Board.