A Brown education is a unique one. As I tell prospective students and parents on my weekly tours, no student comes to Brown because he or she wants to be spoon-fed information or methods by which to obtain it. What makes Brown students unique is that they come to campus with the ability and desire to take the initiative to effect change and make a difference. To say that every Brown student steps foot on College Hill with the intention of making a bigger, more noteworthy and long-lasting impact than the one before him would be a grossly inaccurate statement, though. There are students at Brown who would prefer not to be the Elliot Maxwells or Ira Magaziners of their day, overhauling the curriculum for future generations to experience. In fact, most Brown students - and perhaps the Brown spirit - are precisely the opposite. Taking even the smallest steps, Brown students aim to make a difference. From academic initiative to social, political, and humanistic activity, students find themselves constantly sharing their ideas and enterprise with Brown, the community, and the world. When those students graduate from Brown and enter the world, they are prepared to be useful and productive people, ready to take the initiative to lead the world around them. A Brown education helps to mold that influential individual from the moment he is accepted to Brown until he graduates from this University.
Individuals do not become influential overnight, though, nor does an acceptance letter from the Brown Admission Office immediately transform a solid high school student into a world leader. For each acceptance letter that it sends, Brown adds another responsibility for itself: to educate every matriculating student not only with strong academics, but also with a knowledge of the community and the world and a drive to improve them. Soon after a student receives his acceptance letter and reserves a place in the incoming class, he is asked to choose four courses from among the thousands in the Course Announcement Bulletin.
Those four courses form the beginning of a student's Brown education in more ways than merely providing an academic cornerstone - the process of selecting those courses is the first lesson the first-year learns in taking initiative to lead a useful and reputable life.
Once the student arrives on campus, he is inundated with information. Within days of his arrival, he meets with faculty and student advisors to refine the courses he selected over the summer. Those advisors help point the student in the right direction toward taking a well-balanced - or at the very least, well-thought out - courseload. Embodiments of the Brown spirit themselves, the advisors form the foundation of a Brown education, guiding the students through their first initiative-taking exercise on College Hill. As a Meiklejohn advisor this year, I've had the opportunity to watch that process, as my advisees matured from uninformed and indecisive teenagers into well-informed and somewhat more decisive adults.
The lack of a core curriculum and distribution requirements - key parts of the now 30-year-old "New" Curriculum - provide students with the freedom to devise their own programs of study. With this freedom comes added responsibility, though. Although it is easier to craft a curriculum given a set of requirements, the Brown philosophy hopes that students will not want the easy way out. Instead, they will seek to craft curricula based on their own interests and strengths, taking the extra initiative to think about their every course. This reflection process - coupled with the extensive concentration forms that each student must complete before the end of the second year - forces Brown students to reflect, if they haven't already, on who they are and who they want to be. In the reflection process, students learn how to think for themselves on issues that directly affect them. Learning how to take the initiative to craft a curriculum is an important step in learning how to take the initiative to make a difference in life.
But Brown is not solely about academics. The hundreds of student groups, while daunting at first, are a reflection of who Brown students are and what they can and have done, both for Brown and for the community at large. By choosing to be involved in a student group - or electing to create a new group - a student is making a statement about who he is and what he cares about. When I started working for the Brown Daily Herald the week I arrived on campus, for example, I immediately started learning useful skills and watching other people make a difference, if I wasn't already making one myself. Those useful skills were not the skills required to write a news article or layout a page, though; they were skills like learning to work well with other people and learning to make effective decisions - skills required to thrive in the world around us.
Brown's ultimate responsibility is to prepare its students for the world around them, not just through academics, but through social and cultural aspects, as well. Every student should exit the Van Wickle Gates with more than just the 30 credits required for graduation. A Brown graduate, a product of the Brown spirit that encourages initiative taking in its influential leaders, should have the capability, and hopefully a desire, to lead a useful and reputable life. Only then can our society thrive from its college graduates, especially those who have experienced Brown.