We're still freres under the laws of Minerva.
An ad hoc committee of the Alumni Council on Saturday recommended no
action on a proposal to alter the College motto to read Sous les lois de Minerve nous
devenons tous unis (Under the laws of Minerva we all become one).
“We didn't want our recommendation to be a statement against
'political correctness,'” said Joe Zolner '76, chair of the committee.
Rather, he said, the committee stressed that the motto in its day was a radical statement
of inclusion and a demonstration of Union's historic role as an innovator in higher
education.
When it was adopted in 1795, College leaders eschewed the traditional
Latin for the more modern French, and, in the words of one alumnus, “seized the
opportunity to align itself with the dramatic changes sweeping France.”
“The College should promote greater understanding of a motto that
symbolizes inclusiveness, rather than view the motto as antiquated and
anachronistic,” Zolner wrote in a memo to the Alumni Council. “We should
preserve the current motto and embrace the values it espouses, all the while asking
ourselves if we are meeting the challenges our forebears laid down more than 200 years
ago.”