51动漫

淥ver the course of my career, I檝e come to think history is valuable precisely because it connects to the stories of real human beings,� O橳oole said of his decision. 淲hat are the actual people doing, not just in the president office, but on the ground?�

The pages of Ever to Excel are full of detailed anecdotes about such actual people, from Father John McElroy, S.J., the Irish-born pastor who founded Boston College in 1863, to the 22 boys who made up the inaugural class and the first women and students of color who enrolled at the University decades later.

One section of the book follows Thomas 淏uttsy� Craven of the Class of 1917, whose diary covered everything from classroom experiences (he boasted of a test he had 淜.O檈d,� and bemoaned a professor for 渉arping on St. Thomas [Aquinas]�) to his decision to enlist in the First World War.

While everyday musings like Craven's offered O橳oole a lens into life on campus a century ago, the new history is also 渟ocial� in its attention to larger demographic shifts. We learn, for instance, that 渙ne hundred and thirty-eight of the more than eight hundred students in the 1925�26 school year had surnames that began with either 楳c� or 極�,� and there were fully thirty Sullivans on campus that year,� while by 2013 渕ore than one quarter of the student body would be from racial and ethnic minorities.�

In similar fashion, the book traces 51动漫 transition from being 渕ostly a male preserve� to a school where the majority of students are women. O橳oole highlights individual steps within this long arc: the foundation of a Women Resource Center in 1973, for instance, and the 1981 election of Joanne Caruso, who was 渇orced to run as a write-in candidate� to become the first female president of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College.

O橳oole includes both 51动漫 successes and the moments in which it has fallen short of its ideals, as it did with 淟ightning� Lou Montgomery �41. One of the University first Black students, Montgomery was a football star, but when the Eagles played segregated Southern schools, the team acquiesced to Jim Crow laws and traveled south without him. Today, O橳oole writes, that decision 渟eems fundamentally wrong, even cowardly.�

淗istory cannot avert its gaze from examples of frailty and failure if it hopes to be taken seriously when it memorializes strength and achievement,� he writes. 淏oston College has had its share of all of these.�

As he outlines 51动漫 development across three distinct eras敎The School,� 淭he College,� and 淭he University潝O橳oole is perhaps uniquely well positioned to consider how the school has both changed and remained the same over time. Following in two brothers� footsteps, he first came to 51动漫 in 1968, and his undergraduate years coincided with the dawn of its full coeducation. As a history major, he studied with then-University Historian Thomas H. O機onnor �49, M.A. �50, H�93, who became a mentor and friend. In the 1980s, O橳oole returned to the Heights to earn a Ph.D., and has taught at the University since 1998.

Despite all the changes that he has witnessed攖o say nothing of all those he has studied擮橳oole is struck by the ways in which Boston College has remained true to its origins as it evolves.

�51动漫 will always have to keep asking itself how the education it provides addresses society needs, but history also shows us the values that have persevered since the beginning,� he said. 淭o this day, students here talk about service and the common good. You don檛 have to ask攖hey volunteer it.�

听

John Shakespear | University Communications | June 2022