The following address was delivered by Frances Arndt, Director of the Residential College, at the 25th Anniversary Celebration (held in the RC on November 3, 1995). From it, you will more than get a taste of life here.

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Last summer when Dean Beale asked me what made Residential College special, what gave it a unique identity, I thought of the usual answers: that is is a place where academic and community life meet, where students determine their activities and service projects, where individuals are recognized. He noted quite accurately that answers to this question vary with the person answering and that we are not characterized by one activity or interest. So, I have been trying to find that one characteristic that defines Residential College for me. Though I will surely not offer it for a mission statement, the thing that carries over into all aspects of RC life seems to me to be that we waste time well here--we waste it establishing ties, we waste it in learning to be responsible for each other.

This idea came as I have been remembering Warren Ashby who taught his last class at UNCG, in this parlor, ten years ago last spring. An RC seminar called Visions and Values, it was team-taught (I was the second instructor) and interdisciplinary, and I still look at notes I made from his comments. That last day was for him rather sad as he did not want to stop teaching. Yet I cannot remember what he said during the class. What I do recall is a rose. Because she knew that the day was special, a friend, Mary Jellicorse, had given Warren a red rose when she met him for lunch. He brought it back to this hall and, during the afternoon class, left it on the receptionist's desk in the lobby in a glass of water. After class we went to Hamms and he took the rose along too. The first thing he did was request another glass of water for the rose.

 Instead of important ideas, I see Warren carrying a rose from one place to another, always putting it carefully in water. This is the vision I have from the course and it gave me the response to why RC is special. It reminded me of another rose, one from literature, the rose in Antoine de Saint-Exuperys novel The Little Prince. Not profound as other literary roses (the story is in the childrens literature section, classified as Easy Reading), the flower that grew on the tiny planet that was home to the Little Prince is, nevertheless, worth remembering. If you recall the story, the little prince leaves his planet and journeys to earth to get a sheep that will eat baobab seedlings before they can take over, but he is also trying to understand what is important. Most of the time, he already knows more about things of consequence than most other people do, but he does have to learn one lesson, and it has to do with the rose.

 He had believed that his rose was unique, a flower like no other in the universe, so when he comes across a whole garden of roses, all looking just like his, it is a terrible discovery. He cries, I thought I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; and all I had was a common rose. He must learn that her uniqueness is not a quality inherent in the rose, but something earned by time well wasted. This is the lesson of the fox, who refuses to play with the little prince until he tames him. When the little princes asks, What does that mean--tame, the fox replies, It means to establish ties. He goes on to explain further: One only understands the things one tames. To tame someone means to give time to them.

So the little prince takes time and tames the fox and in doing so learns what makes his rose important to him. Before he leaves and says good-bye to the fox, he visits the other roses again.

You are not at all like my rose, he said. As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. Your are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.

It is the ties we establish in Residential College that make it a unique place for so many of us. It is here that we do all the things that Murray mentions [in his equally awesome address, For Once, Then Something]: attend classes, argue about ideas, hold dances, concerts, talent shows, art shows, pumpkin carving contests, go to meetings, grumble about requirements (What! I have to take core? or Not another committee meeting, house meeting, DARC meeting. . .), play intramural games or courtyard soccer. Mostly what we waste time best on is sitting in each others rooms or in the parlor or at the picnic table and talking or, better yet, listening, to one another. It is in doing this that we come to know the secret the fox shares with the little prince. For in wasting time wisely, we learn what really matters, and we learn to care for, to be responsible for each other. And it is this which makes this chaotic, at times anarchic, muddled, demanding, loving and beloved place, this Residential College, unique in all the world.

 When the little prince must leave the fox, he learns what all of this means.

Goodbye, he said.
Goodbye, said the fox. And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

 What is essential is invisible to the eye, the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

 It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.
It is the time I have wasted for my rose--- said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
Men have forgotten this truth, said the fox. But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose. . . .
I am responsible for my rose, the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

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Reprinted here with permission. Please do not duplicate without express consent from Frances Arndt and the Residential College. Thank you.

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