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HISP major Alex Wingate ('18) delivers salutatory remarks to new cohort of PBK inductees
Having been selected from a highly accomplished cohort on new inductess, on December 8, 2017, Alex Wingate (HISP & LING '18) addressed her fellow new member of PBK and delivered the customary salutatory remarks. Alex's words represent a firm call to recall the origins of the liberal arts, and to embrace interdisciplinarity.
"When Prof. Cate-Arries told me I'd been given the privilege of addressing my peers, our professors, and our families at this ceremony, I immediately started thinking through ways to start this talk. My mind latched onto the classic Groucho Marx quote, 'I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.'
"This certainly isn't true for any of us here today because of the great honor it is to be accepted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society, especially considering that we are the foundational chapter. We are joining the ranks of 17 US Presidents, 40 Supreme Court Justices, 136 Nobel Laureates, and countless other individuals who share our love for the liberal arts.
"The liberal arts were originally confined to seven subjects in the Middle Ages because the Book of Proverbs in the Bible says that there were seven pillars in wisdom’s house. These subjects were grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, with grammar, rhetoric and logic forming the trivium and arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy comprising the quadrivium. Since the inception of the liberal arts, the disciplines have diversified from these seven into the many fields of study we see today. Here at William and Mary, our liberal arts education extends to 60 majors, including self-designed majors. Of the 50 of us being initiated today, we represent 45 of those majors.
"Phi Beta Kappa is an acronym for Philosophia Biou Kybernētēs, which means “Love of learning (or wisdom) is the guide of life.” We have each chosen our niche within the liberal arts because it’s what gives us joy and a desire to delve deeper into the subject. It’s our joy in learning about our subjects that has led us to them. I’m happiest freezing to death in a tiny Spanish archive deciphering 16th century handwriting while another of us studies the foreign aid and arms sales to Latin American and another the neuroplasticity in frog model organisms.
"However, we must remember that wisdom’s house has seven pillars, or in William & Mary’s case 60, and to quote another great man, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' Each of our disciplines has an intrinsic value and the potential to have a positive effect on others. No one subject can claim to be superior or self-sufficient from the others. Rather, the liberal arts are best wielded as arts, not one single art. And I know that interdisciplinarity has been harped on us since day one of orientation, but it’s because the message is true. We can only reach our full potential when we work together to critically examine concepts and issues from multiple disciplines and perspectives.
"And like every generation before us, going back to the original 5 PBK founders and beyond, we are facing difficult issues today in our country. Many are difficult to talk about, but we can bring to bear the tools afforded to us by our education in the liberal arts to look for solutions—rather than letting these issues divide and destroy us.
"Progress can be slow, but that should not stop us from pushing through, from talking to each other, and from using our education and empathy towards each other as fellow human beings to find solutions. Use your training in the liberal arts to help push where you see stagnation, lend a helping hand when you see someone struggling, and show kindness where you see hatred. Because if we do stand together as 7 or 60 or however many pillars of the house of the liberal arts, united in our love of learning, there is no obstacle that we cannot overcome.
[Alexandra Wingate, ‘18, Address to Initiates for PBK, December 8, 2017]