End of an era

From the Friday onwards, the Victorian College of Pharmacy will be a footnote in history.

 

R.I.P. VCP (1921-2008)

It will now be rebranded as Monash University Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

 

And they will celebrate it with a BBQ and a talk to discuss the future of the Faculty.

Like any change being instigated, the change in name is resisted by the majority of the students. Technologically advanced we now are, we demonstrated on Facebook instead of taking the streets.

But after this initial burst of passion, a salient question arises: What's in a name anyway?

I admire passionate people, because everything we have today are their fruits of labour. But to really have passion for something, I felt that there is a need to know the history of it. A lot of students entered VCP nowadays without knowing VCP's history in depth, except perhaps its history of excellence.

Once in VCP, most of them just ride on the coattails of past successes without bothering to find out what makes the Faculty so famous or even how to leave their mark on it. They just treat VCP as a stepping stone for the future, never bothering to find out how the stone got there and the story it can tell.

For  instance, I think only a mere handful of students who realised that the faculty was initially known as Fitzroy School of Chemistry and Pharmacy and subsequently Melbourne School of Pharmacy before taking the name Victorian College of Pharmacy in 1921.

That in part, the Faculty had to be blamed for not inculcating that knowledge into the students.  Knowing the history of a faculty is important because it can serve as a source of pride for the student. By knowing the history, students will be more able to cherish their opportunity  to study here. 

Without knowing the history, students will be the antithesis of JFK's "ask not what your country can do for you; but what you can do for the country". They will be forever tuned to WII - FM (What's in it for me) instead of acknowledging that VCP is what VCP is today due to the vision and generous contributions of hundreds of passionate people. A knowledge of this certainly did spurred me to try contribute as much as possible for the faculty.

Perhaps that's something to think about for the future.