To come to college means to come into a new relationship with books.
Reading, reflecting, discussing, and writing critically about books have always been central to college education. Critical consideration of challenging, sometimes conflicting ideas, accessed and advocated by means of reading and writing, will be a theme that recurs over and over through your years at SMU. We think the best time to start is at the very beginning of your SMU experience. In the process, we hope you will also begin to experience SMU as an intellectual community and, most importantly, to experience yourself as an engaged, participating member of that community.
Instituted four years ago, the Common Reading Program is now an established
tradition at SMU. Students new to SMU receive the selected book during the
summer at AARO and read it before they arrive for the start of the fall
semester. The Common Reading selection for 2007-2008 is Nick Hornby's How to
Be Good, the first novel to serve in this role. Faculty, staff, and
returning students already have begun reading and discussing the book in
preparation for the small-group conversations with new students that take place
just before Rotunda Passage and Opening Convocation—truly an afternoon of SMU
new-student traditions. Students will find that the book and the questions it
raises will be part of the curriculum of their rhetoric courses as well. The
goal behind the selection of How to Be Good—and of the Common Reading
Program as a whole—is to engage the SMU community in the kinds of discussions
that will prepare the University's newest students for the rigors and delights
of the life of the mind.
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