THE CHADSIAN EPIPHANY 2005
MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL Dr J P Cassidy With the horror of the tsunami still very much in consciousness, wishing people a Happy New Year becomes not just a greeting but an act of hope. Many of you are parents now, and when you heard the horrific stories of parents losing grip of their children and watching them wash away, you, like me, might have looked down at the faces of your own children: for a moment you would have been seized with a fragmentary glimpse of the horror of it all. Those of you who are not parents would, no doubt, have had parallel experiences as much the same horror found its way to your hearts. In such a context, it seems almost banal to write about what’s happening in College. Tragedy has a habit of putting things into sharp perspective, and yet tragedy also has the habit of forcing us to ask hard questions about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. The asking of such questions is almost always a good thing for anyone, even a college, to do.
That said, may I also take this opportunity to thank all those members of staff who work so hard, both upfront and in the background, to sustain the College. You’ll read news of what many of them have been up to throughout this issue of the Chadsian. May I also thank the hundreds of you who have supported the College this past year. I look forward to meeting you at the various reunions scheduled for this year.
NEW BAR OPENS IN QUAD Chad’s staff were quick off the mark to ‘test’ the new bar in the Centenary Quad. Principal Joe Cassidy serves Tony Bell, the College’s Catering Manager, the first (half) pint. The College Bar also had a refit over Christmas: the Bar has been expanded and a new wooden floor installed. Blueprints have been drawn up for a new entrance to the bar, ‘widening access’ in another way…
ALAN KLOTTRUP, MBE
One of my hopes over the years for St Chad’s has been to rekindle some of the passion for justice that was the hallmark of our College’s beginnings. ‘Justice’ is too often an abstract, or even a politicised, term; but the term came to special life for many of us when we, along with millions of others around the globe, decided to support the tsunami victims. All of a sudden, typical questions about fairness and giving to everyone their due were subsumed into a deeper sense of profound fellow-feeling, a spontaneous sense that we ought, one way or the other, to do the ‘right’ thing. It would be nice to think that what we do in the College grows out of a similar, ongoing sense of responsibility for our shared humanity. Collegiate living offers so many opportunities to allow the fundamental questions to be asked no matter what we are studying. Indeed this can be a litmus test for determining whether we’re doing the ‘right’ thing as a College. My prayer for the new year is that we at St Chad's are brave enough to open our hearts to our world and to let the world’s sharp concerns push us towards living more vital, more committed lives.
Alan Klottrup, former Senior Tutor and Honorary Schoolmaster Fellow of the College, was awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list. The award was in recognition of his many contributions to the community, not least to St Chad's College. The whole college community warmly congratulates Alan not only on this honour, but on his adding even more letters after his name: he’s at 21 now and still going strong…
COLLEGE GYM RELOCATED The College gym is being relocated from Grad’s House to a newly re-developed site underneath the Moulsdale Dining Hall. The 700 square feet of additional space were made available following the recent replacement of the College’s ancient boilers with a modern heating system.
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