The Case for Beauty on College Campuses

Wednesday, May 29, 2019



I received my bachelor's degree from the University of San Diego, a school renowned for its beautiful, Spanish-Renaissance-inspired campus. And upon revisiting it over Memorial Day weekend, I found myself struck by the aesthetic improvements made to campus, just in the time since I graduated in 2015. The highlights of the transformation over the last four years include an ornate nursing practicum building, a new quad on the west side of campus, and a few new seating areas (one of them featuring a pair of comically-sized Adirondack chairs, which seemed an admittedly superfluous addition; see below). Though it was hard for me to imagine when graduating that the campus could possibly get any more beautiful, somehow it has managed to become so.




Gorgeous as it is, the school sometimes catches flak for its appearance. I've heard people wonder, for example, why the university would spend tuition dollars on surface improvements when there are surely other things that need attention, or else murmuring about the privilege represented by the campus environment. And I can see where they're coming from. In some ways, perhaps it seems irresponsible for universities to spend so much money on trivial concerns when there are scholarship funds to attend to and student services to enhance. 

But the cultivation of beauty is not a sin. Rather, I believe it is a virtue, and so did the founder of USD, Mother Rosalie Clifton Hill.  

Per the USD website, Mother Rosalie Hill believed that having a beautiful campus would not only inspire students to perform well academically, but to seek after goodness and aspire to the Lord's truth: 

"'Beauty will attract them; goodness will lead them; but the truth will hold them,' she said.

This has been interpreted to mean that beauty will initially attract people who come to the campus, and when they are here, they will encounter people in whom they find a certain goodness. This, in turn, will lead them to the truth, which will hold them. For Mother Rosalie Hill, the search for truth was the purpose of the university (History of the University of San Diego)."

The University of San Diego's beauty ultimately propels its students to seek its source, the Lord.

The reading from today's Mass reinforces the idea that beauty is vital because it points us to Beauty Itself. In Acts 17:26-27, Paul says, "[The Lord] made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for Him and find Him, though indeed He is not far from any one of us.

The phrase "ordered seasons" in this passage seems to act as a synecdoche for all of the natural processes and beauty signified by the world around us --  a single phrase that represents the myriad intricacies and wonders that populate the planet and echo God's creative genius. And Paul reminds us that each of those things, from the smallest blade of grass to the highest mountaintop, points us back to Him, the one who gave everything to us to begin with. Beauty, Paul agrees, leads us to seek God, to seek the truth of His existence and our being.

As Pope St. John Paul II would add centuries later, in his "Letter to Artists," man-made beauty allows us to reflect the image of God and share in the sacredness of His creative work:

"God therefore called man into existence, committing to him the craftsman's task. Through his 'artistic creativity' man appears more than ever 'in the image of God,' and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous 'material' of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of His own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in His creative power (1)."

In other words, even carefully tended college campuses, stewarded and shaped by human hands, can share in the divine creative mission that calls hearts and minds heavenward. They signify a partnership between humanity and the Creator who fashioned them, and allow people the opportunity to echo His creative work. Those who are attracted to the beauty fashioned by human hands out of the raw materials God supplies will ultimately find in such beauty a reflection of the divine, which in turn causes them to keep seeking truth.  

Seen this way, beauty on college campuses is not only permissible, but admirable and necessary, as it  signifies something greater than itself and encourages us to seek the truth of the One who "gives to everyone life and breath and everything" (Acts 17:25) -- including aesthetically pleasing learning environments.

Because the beauty that exists within the boundaries of a university doesn't stop there. It keeps us yearning and searching for the source of that beauty. And then we build lives that do the same.

And that... well, that is something to be celebrated.