Address to the Phi Beta Kappa Initiates, Eileen McCarron Maxwell ’94

Trinity Alumnae Association President

Welcome and congratulations to the Phi Beta Kappa elect.

Your family and friends should know that membership in the Phi Beta Kappa Society is the highest honor that can be bestowed on an undergraduate in America’s colleges and universities. It is America’s oldest academic honor society, and it’s most prestigious. Indeed, when I was inducted into the Society here at Trinity in 1996 by Brother Nivard, Provost of Catholic University and Physics Professor at Trinity, he said the Phi Beta Kappa key opens more doors than the key to St. Peter’s.

Interestingly, the Phi Beta Kappa Society was established during a socio-political environment not completely unlike the one you find yourselves in today. The students at William and Mary in 1775 wanted the classical curriculum offered at universities and colleges to relate more to the political and intellectual movements engulfing the American colonies and the Western World—Enlightenment philosophy. And you have demanded a curriculum relative to your world today, economic globalization and environmental and social justice. The country was at war then, as it is now, and faculty, staff and students alike struggled to understand where their loyalties should lie, with King George, or with the colonies.

Many of us find ourselves in a somewhat similar situation today, struggling to decide weather or not we agree with another George, our President, and the War in Iraq. Some students back then, though exempt from military service, joined militias. And just last month, one of your classmates told me at the Founders Day picnic that she is starting basic training directly after graduation.

You live in uncertain times today as the undergraduates at William and Mary did then. And, you are brave as they were brave. And you are brilliant as they were brilliant. For in the midst of all their uncertainty in 1775, a small group of William and Mary’s best students, like yourselves, formed Phi Beta Kappa, a society in which you could and I quote from the original charter, “…communicate without reserve whatever reflection you may have…indulge in matters of speculation, that freedom of inquiry that ever dispels the clouds of falsehood by the radiant sunshine of truth,--here you are to look for a sincere friend, and here you are to become the Brother of unalienable Brothers.”

Now, because of your brilliance Trinity sisters and brother, you are offered membership into this society. It is a society in which the very definition of scholarship is the pursuit of truth and in whose society truth is always and forever pursued. This is the one certainty that the founding members of Phi Beta Kappa had in 1775 and that you have in 2005.

This certainty never changes, not in times of war, not in times of peace. No one can take it away from you, ever. Indulge in it. Because, it is through the pursuit of truth that injustices are ended, wars are won and peace is made, nations prosper, diseases eradicated, and poetry created. It is has been proven so by your fellow members of Phi Beta Kappa:

• W.E.B. DuBois,
• George Bush Senior
• William Jefferson Clinton
• Jonas Salk
• Rita Dove

And to that list your names are added today. Whether you become activists, or politicians, physicians or poets, I wish you the same success as that of your predecessors in the “dispelling of the clouds of falsehood with the radiant sunshine of truth.”

Pursuing the truth is your charge as a Phi Beta Kappa member. And doing so has never been more important than it is today nor more seemingly difficult. In our technology driven world of the Internet, blogs, and satellite communications, on top of newspapers, magazines, and network and cable TV news, we often feel we are drowning in a rising sea of information and deciphering which of that information is reliable and which is not is so overwhelming that we often jump into the first lifeboat we reach only to find out that boat is sinking. But as Trinity Phi Beta Kappas you know how to find the truth in that morass.

This fine University has taught you the single most important principle of scholarship -- go to the source. Trinity has taught you not to rely on what others report, post or write in textbooks, but to seek out the primary sources. Go to the source. And where do these primary sources reside? In our nation’s 10,000 museums and 122,000 libraries. I am proud to say that I have made my career since graduating from Trinity at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a small but hugely important federal agency that supports the nation’s museums and libraries. These institutions are more important to us today than ever before. For in these trusted institutions resides the truth embedded in the documents that our leader’s have written, the research our physicians and scientists have done, what our cultures have created; and in the records of our lineage where we come from, and why.

And access to those primary sources in libraries and museums is the highest priority of scholars and institutions of higher learning. And here is where the miracle of technology comes into play. Whether we access knowledge digitally or physically, is not important. That we have access to that knowledge is all important. And technology can make access to the truth and to knowledge in our libraries and museums available to everyone, everywhere, at all times. Libraries and museums around the world are digitizing their collections and making them available through digital technology.

Soon Trinity will embark on an ambitious project to build a new library/ science/ technology center. It will be state of the art; it will give our students access not only to the fine collection we have amassed at Trinity but to the collections in museums and libraries the world over. Student’s research will be richer and accelerated. Truth will be revealed. Knowledge will be spread. This is what a University does best and what you as Phi Beta Kappa’s must do best.

Let me end on a lighter note. I will never forget how I learned that I had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After spending the day congratulating my fellow students who had told me they had made Phi Beta Kappa, including my best friend, I went home to furiously finish up an overdue research paper when my best friend called me and asked, “Eileen, did you receive a letter from Trinity yesterday?” I told her I had and she asked if I had opened it and I said “No way!” It was addressed so formally and looked so serious I was convinced it was a bill asking for my overdue tuition. “Just open it,” she said. And there inside was a beautiful letter from President Maguire informing me that I had been elected.

I was elated but as the elect here today well know, you receive this news at a time when you have papers due, exams to study for, graduation to prepare for, that you really don’t have the time to celebrate such an amazing academic achievement as making Phi Beta Kappa. That celebration begins today and will last all the days of your life. The benefits of membership will never cease to astonish you. Let me give you an example.

I never realized just how prestigious membership to Phi Beta Kappa is until I had the rare opportunity of meeting the very man who invented the polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk. Waiting in a very long reception line to meet him I practiced over and over in my mind the words I had chosen very carefully to say to him. He was one the greatest men of the 20th Century. Some family members here today will remember the long lines we as children waited in to eat the vaccine-laced sugar cube that would prevent us from becoming crippled. I had seen the horrifying effects of polio up close with a cousin having been stricken as well as a first grade friend.

Waiting in the reception line I was transported back to the line I waited in as a child to take the medicine Dr. Salk had perfected to save my life. Jonas Salk was my hero in the most literal sense. But before I could utter a single word to him when it came to be my turn to shake his hand, he saw my key, and his eyes brightened, he threw his shoulders back, and he greeted me as one would a colleague saying, “Ah, it is an honor to meet a fellow Phi Beta Kappa and gave me the secret Phi Beta Kappa handshake.”

I was stunned.

All I could muster was to say, “Dr. Salk, thank you for saving my generation.” And he looked at me with such empathy and understanding tears welled up in my eyes. It was an incredible moment. It is not often we get to thank those responsible for saving humanity. All the hours of studying, writing, and exams as an undergraduate here at Trinity were worth those few sacred seconds.