The Two Towers: Main

even one founder for each factor. It has not always been a comfortable living arrangement, but when the battling has been the fiercest, the school has been at its most alert. The Institute will doubtless change in many ways as differences between theory and fact continue to lessen, and there are many persons who face the prospect with dismay. Let them be different, they say--like male and female--but let them learn how to live together more happily.

Worcester Tech has maintained an unusual relationship with the community in which it lives, its first building created from one of Worcester's own granite ribs. It was the mechanic, the lawyer, the minister, and the manufacturer who lived around the corner who built the school and brought it up as their own. Alternately they have ignored and interfered, praised and criticized, protected and betrayed. But it is their own. For many years before the building of dormitories, Worcester homes were the homes of the students. And ever since, no matter where the students and teachers have come from or with what background, they have been welcomed as members of the Worcester family.

The school has reciprocated. There has never been a time when the professors have not been willing to lend a hand in municipal planning, when the doors of the Institute have not been open to its neighbors. First there were courses in drawing, long before the subject was taught in public schools. For many summers young boys, eight to thirteen years old, were taught woodworking in the Shops. Then there were public lectures, courses for mechanics, and Civil Defense instruction. Now there are seminars, colloquiums, Scientific Briefings for Tomorrow, the School of Industrial Management, and the Evening Graduate School. With students coming from sixteen foreign countries, with staff participation in teacher-refresher programs sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and with the adoption of a missionary interest in a sister Institute--the Scree Mullapudi in India--W.P.I. often finds itself in the neighborhood of a wider world. But the sense of proprietorship has not changed.

For these factors of uniqueness--the constant inquiry into identity, the contact with the work-a-day world, the reconciliation of the practical with the scientific, the community sense of belonging --there has been a price. There have been contributions of time and funds and effort far beyond the accounting. Nerves have been rubbed raw with abrasive argument, careers have sometimes been mistakenly shattered. There has been an astonishing number of persons willing to be hurt in order to keep faith with self and society, and the integrity thus given to the Institute is its proudest claim to distinction.

Today the Institute stands solidly atop its rounded hill, still overlooking the City and reaching toward the sky. It stands there for more than any other reason because--by some strange and wonderful supply--there have always been enough people who cared.