I know I am about to offend several classes of people

First they let females become cadets. Then they banned prayers before meals. Now....

(according to Readers Digest-but note I couldn't confirm it on The Citadel website) The Citadel, following the lead of Notre Dame, is offering alumni the chance to have their ashes kept perpetually on campus in a memorial wall.

Mrs. Curley tells me that I can't relate these three things (especially, she said, because the ash thing is 'guy idea'.) But I can relate them-just see:

By admitting females into the corp of cadets, The Citadel fundamentally changed its nature and purpose. By banning prayer before meals, it starting losing its soul. Now with a changed nature and purpose, The Citadel gropes around like a lost child in the dark trying to find itself; in the dark because prayer has been abandoned. Thus initiatives arise which reflect this search for identity through heritage (as well as to raise $$). Follow this: if enough alumni (or should we say alumnAE now?) buy into this, it justifies their continued existence because the change of nature and purpose and loss of soul has been endorsed perpetually by the graduates (in their ashes). (I might try to make the case the school is going to ashes....)

The back-up argument is simply that once you start doing goofy things (like having female cadets and banning of prayer), even more goofy things follow.

Some would change the argument and try to tell me that it wasn't Citadel's fault (i.e., the Citadel was forced by the courts to accept female cadets and to ban prayer before meals.) Whether that is the case or not, it doesn't change the fact that the fundamental nature and purpose of the institution was changed overnight and continues to change...for the worse.

I am sure I have now offended all the female cadets at the Citadel, all the alumnAE who wish their ashes interred there, feminists of all sorts, many people in general who are opting for cremation over traditional burial (although note well that I didn't really address this last topic at all.), and many Citadel alumnI who have decided to accept the fundamental change as "inevitable progress" for whatever rationalization they have become comfortable with.

(Really though, I am NOT bitter.) Now, I have spent way, way too much time on this.

Oremus pro invicem!