Trustee and National Alumni Board President Andrew Farley, BA ’98, and Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees Laura Felis Quinn, BS ’86 MBA ’18, join President Hibbs on the stage during the inauguration dinner.
Rome After 50 Years: The Eternal Threshold By Peter Hatlie, Ph.D.
50 YEARS
Rome of
10
he UD Rome Program turns 50 years old this year, an anniversary that invites us to join together in proud celebration, to indulge in cherished memories and to make a reckoning of sorts. As many as 10,000 UD students, professors, staff members and friends have lived the Rome experience over the past 50 years. As we reflect upon the impressive number of successful semesters completed and people hosted and held dear, we may dare to ask ourselves what the Rome experience meant and means to us, then and now, in both the millimeter and the mile. Looking back in time for answers, we encounter our photos of the Rome experience — photos, old and new, depicting young, smiling, and often playful and provocative faces, almost always set against some dramatic or curious background. Thinking back, we also encounter our peers and role models in memory and reflection, sometimes vividly and sometimes in elusive shadow, leaving us with a wave of feelings ranging from admiration, affection and gratitude to nostalgia, regret and perhaps loss. If there is one narrative that can possibly encompass this vast spectrum of experience, it may be this: Rome is not only the Eternal City, but also the Eternal Threshold. As Wallace Stevens so wonderfully puts it, “On the threshold of heaven, the figures in the street / Become the figures of heaven … The threshold [is] Rome, and that more merciful Rome [is] / Beyond.”
TOWER MAGAZINE
