The recent changes to what was known as the “Honors Program” and is now known as the Collegiate Scholars have been seriously detrimental. The changes Joe Pappalardo proposed (“Collegiate Scholars should change more,” March 17), while well intentioned, would finish the job of getting rid of what is good about the program.
Pappalardo suggests making “‘Collegiate Scholar’ status pursuable in the same fashion as a specialization.” This proposal would effectively reduce the program to a line on a resume indicating a good GPA, completion of a few honors seminars, and a thesis.
The changes that have already been forced on the program and the changes Pappalardo proposes come from the same misunderstanding of the purpose and nature of the program: the assumption that it exists to recognize academic merit.
The honors program I joined as a freshman was a small, close-knit community of friends bound by a common intellectual interest. I bonded with the honors students in my class by studying for midterms in the core classes we all took together, by reading Virgil aloud in the amphitheater, by making jokes about xenia, kleos, and dulia, and by fighting a Nerf-sword duel over the honor of our beloved professors. Needless to say, this is not how I bonded with the men in my dorm or my fraternity. Even at Hillsdale, I could not have found such a community apart from the honors program, because I could not have been put in four core classes with one group of like-minded students.
The retreat at the beginning of the year, in which we discussed C.S. Lewis and played Frisbee with friendly upperclassmen who were as nerdy as we were, set the tone for the rest of the year. Over multiple semesters we strengthened these friendships with juniors and seniors — friendships that were not based on living together or having the same major, but truly based on our shared love of learning and on the conversations we had about the books we read together.
So what was the purpose of the honors program? Because it provided a unique way to create friendships that were truly rooted in the contemplative life, the conversations that it fostered cut across disciplines as well as classes, and the program helped to encourage a culture for all of campus in which majors in all fields could come together to discuss human nature, the common good, and the meaning of liberal education. Fulfilling this purpose is now more difficult for the Collegiate Scholars, but it is still being done.
The program never existed to recognize academic merit, and it certainly does not exist so that its members can enjoy impressing other students with their status. If this were the purpose of the program, then surely the limited spots in the program should go to students who have proven themselves at Hillsdale, since success here is a better test of academic merit than success in high school or on the SAT. But by forbidding the program from having its members begin at the start of their college experience, we cut off all freshmen from the benefits of the program, even though they are the ones who have the most to gain from it. It is true that under the old system, more “deserving” students — by GPA measurement — might have been denied admittance while those with slightly lower GPAs remained members, but this is only a serious problem if the main purpose of the program is to recognize merit, and it is a problem that was fixed by only sacrificing a large part of the good of the program.
It is certainly true that the program, as it is currently structured, may have to turn away qualified and deserving applicants. This is unfortunate, but it is also true of virtually every worthwhile academic program in the country, including Hillsdale itself, which puts some qualified applicants on a wait list. Pappalardo is wrong to assume that any program that must limit its membership cannot contribute something worthwhile to the college.
Pappalardo’s statement, “It should concern students that the program will not admit just anyone who meets the academic requirements,” misses the true purpose of the program. If it admitted all the students with GPAs over 3.4, it would no longer be an intellectual community, because it would not be a community at all. The Turkey trip and the yearly retreats would become too expensive and would therefore be eliminated. The monthly dessert gatherings would be seen as unnecessary, especially as the program became nothing more than a line on a diploma or resume.
Ultimately, the “Collegiate Scholar” designation, as Pappalardo envisions it, would serve no purpose that is not already fulfilled some other way. Students may already write a senior thesis in their own discipline. And if what we want is a line on a diploma indicating academic achievement, we already have three honors that do this quite well: the Cum Laude honor, the Magna Cum Laude honor, and the Summa Cum Laude honor. But the Collegiate Scholars program exists for a different and higher purpose, and it is well worth keeping.
