Is Vic’s motto relic or reality?
Abeunt studia in mores: studies pass into character. If you’re a Vic student, you have seen this phrase plenty of times. It’s plastered on the Vic tote bags, in Ned’s Cafe, and it is certainly referred to during Vic’s famously enthusiastic orientation. However, I have not heard it come up much in conversation or spark much interest among my fellow ‘Vickies,’ save perhaps for the ones who were Classics Conference nerds in high school and take any opportunity to show off their Latin.
Yet, as I reflect on my time at Vic, which is somehow already more than halfway over, it seems worth thinking about what that creed—Studies pass into character—says about our beloved institution, and about us.
Vic has a habit of holding itself apart from the other colleges, considering itself special or distinct in some way. To me, the source of this distinction is the enormous amount of effort and money that Vic puts into engaging with the world in ways that reflect its moral values, and it isn’t afraid of hard moral conversations. I’ve experienced this through my Vic One stream, which opened my eyes to everything from Indigenous lawmaking to democratic backsliding and global inequality. More recently, I’ve seen it as a mentor in the Ideas for the World program, which provides dinner and an academic seminar to ordinary people in Toronto, bringing students and professors together with people who have never had a reason to set foot on a university campus. It even comes with free childcare for people who would not otherwise be able to attend..
Another example that caught my attention is the Difficult Conversations program, especially its recent iteration for the Iranian community to discuss what is going on in Iran. Another, which isn’t very publicised, is the WUSC program, through which Vic sponsors and fully funds a refugee student’s studies every year. These are the experiences that changed my worldview in the way education is supposed to. They are what I will remember ten years from now when I think about Vic engaging with the world; not the dances, the campus gossip, or the fancy catering at events. Vic is special because its students, faculty, and staff are earnest about their values—to use the current parlance, they are ‘chalant.’ They care about the world around them and engage with it in this myriad of ways.
Don’t worry though, I’m not just ‘glazing’ Vic. It seems our college can also be quick to forget the moral component of its mission. At times, it can feel like any meaningful values we might hold as a community are being dissolved in a sea of buzz words about leadership and innovation whose purpose is to deflect any substantive moral thought. A perfect case is the fact that Vic rents one of its buildings to McKinsey & Co, an infamous elite consulting firm so evil that an entire book was written about their negative impact. Most saliently, it advises ICE. It also played a key role in the opioid promotion strategies that led to the opioid crisis, and in developing some of the most predatory financial playbooks of the twenty-first century, such as cutting employee benefits and encouraging companies to buy back their own stock, practices that have contributed to the extreme inequality of our time. They don’t have many signs, but they rent the building next to the Margaret Addison field. Even worse, they have a deal with Vic to promote hiring Vic students. In effect, Vic is actively building a pipeline to McKinsey. Amazingly, during the 2023 outrage about RBC, a fossil fuel funder, having a location on campus, very few people raised concerns about McKinsey, which I would argue is even more egregious for a college whose motto is Studies pass into character.
As one of the most prestigious (and wealthiest) educational institutions in Canada, Vic has a lot of power, and with great power comes great responsibility. These institutions should not just be ladders for students to climb to the top of the socioeconomic pyramid and grab the bag. They should instill moral values, such as kindness, integrity, resolve, and social responsibility, just as much as they instill intellectual values.
However, it is not just up to the administration to build such a character for Vic. If we students want that motto to be more than a symptom of hypocrisy, we need to hold Vic accountable—at town halls, in VUSAC, in building occupations, and in the pages of The Strand: in every place we have a voice. If you are not the confrontational type, maybe it is building up something you care about: joining a new club, starting a new project on campus, having a genuine conversation with a professor without thinking about your recommendation letter, or even talking to the person in your residence hall who seems awkward or lonely.
Let’s dust off that old creed and make it mean something to us. With the world we are graduating into, we could really use it. Besides, in that way, next time Trin students make fun of Vic, we can feel better about defending it whole-heartedly.
