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A Message from the Vice President of University Advancement

As we enjoy the Easter season and the often beautiful weather of April and May, the lesson of Jesus’s resurrection that stays with me most deeply is that death’s and evil’s victories might be dispiriting, but they are also ultimately fleeting. The pandemic brought misery of all varieties to us, but I believe that in New Orleans and at Loyola, it struck deeply at the heart of what we are most fundamentally good at: being a community that lives, learns, suffers, and celebrates together—in person.

One of my favorite things about the many parades and festivals in New Orleans is that we frequently get to experience vividly what we all look and sound—and even smell, maybe especially smell—like. It’s been such a pleasure this spring to be physically proximate again. It’s been a return to the truth that a Loyola New Orleans education is special because of our location as well as our mission.

I’ve read that smell is the sense most closely linked with memory. Even if you live far from Loyola, I can bet you remember some of the smells (pleasant and less so) from your time at the university—the oaks on St. Charles after a rain on a hot day, the brewing coffee of CC’s or Starbuck’s in the Danna Center, the partied-on French Quarter streets (yikes!). For example, I can report that the lobby of Biever Hall smells almost exactly the same in 2022 as it did when I began as a first-year at Loyola in 1984.

The isolating, confusing drumbeat and sterile Zooms of pandemic days and weeks have given way to life back together in all its sensory glory. Do you believe in resurrection? ÌýI do. Here’s to the Class of 2022, as we prepare for the reason Loyola is here in the first place—Commencement, a renewed beginning, a fresh start, for our new alumni.

AMDG,
Chris Wiseman ’88

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