Tradition

A few days after dinning with our past college president, I was (together with a few colleagues from other departments) invited to lunch with our new university college head.

For those who are not familiar with the structure of my university, it runs in terms of both faculties and colleges, the former govern teaching and research, while the latter focus on student affair.

Although there are now nearly a dozen of colleges in my university, there were three to start with. One with a religious background, another supported by business people, and the third has a strong tradition of Chinese culture.

I belong to the last – both as a medical student and, by coincidence, when I joined as an academic staff.

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In the middle of the lunch, the head sighed, “You know, many of our students and alumni comment that our college motto has died. No one seems to be interested in upholding the traditional Chinese culture, and I find it impossible to promote the idea.”

“I don’t think it’s dead – but it’s certainly much diluted,” I could not refrain from coming out, “When there were just a few colleges, each could have it’s own personality – if I could use the description. When there are some many new colleges, the face and character of each become blur, and it becomes more and more difficult to tell which college is which. And, to get along with a sea of other colleges, we are forced to give away piece by piece of our own character.”

In other words, the paradoxical happening is, although the university tries to promote heterogeneity of culture by having more colleges, we end up having less individualism because all colleges are very much similar.