First-year Book
First-year Book
In 2004, a group of Raymond College alumni began a first-year book program for students in the College of the Pacific.
Established in 1962, Raymond College was the first cluster college at Pacific.
Its curriculum was rigorous, and students were challenged to defend their opinions with facts and logic.
Beginning in fall 2006, all entering students at Pacific will now receive a first-year book during orientation.
The purposes of the book are to introduce students to the life of the mind at the university, to enrich the common intellectual experience in the first-year Pacific Seminars, and to be the focus of various campus events throughout the year.
Each year, the book is selected through the collaboration of the Pacific Seminar I-II Faculty Planning Committee and the Raymond Alumni Committee.
This year, the Raymond Alumni Committee consists of Jean Circiello, Dave Wellenbrock, and Peggy Moore.
The first-year book for 2006-2007 is Thomas More’s Utopia.
Thomas More (1478-1535)—knight, Lord Chancellor of England, and as of 1935 canonized as a saint—was the leading humanist of early 16th century England.
Humanism was an intellectual movement that promoted the use of refined classical Latin, placed the arts and humanities at the center of the curriculum, and stressed civic participation as the prime duty of educated men.
His Utopia is the classic statement of humanist thought, serving as a social satire of European civilization cast in the form of a travel narrative to the New World.
In it, he forces Europeans to reexamine various topics such as their attachment to property, war and social inequality.
Although he became good friends with King Henry VIII, More objected to the annulment of the king's marriage to the Catholic Catherine of Aragon.
When the pope refused to grant the annulment, Henry formally broke from the Catholic Church, and More refused his assent to the Act of Supremacy which made Henry the Head of the Church in England.
More was found guilty of treason and was beheaded in 1535. His last words were "The King's good servant, but God's first."
