Bulletin Winter 1999

John Fulton Centre Opened A new staff/student amenities centre of the University, the John Fulton Centre, formally opened on 27th October. About 80 guests attended the opening ceremony. Officiating at the ceremony was Mr. Andrew L i Kwok-nang, chairman of the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee. Dr. Oliver Fulton, son of Lord Fulton, delivered a speech. The new building, situated at the central campus next to the existing activities centre, the Benjamin Franklin Centre, is a five-storey structure with a total floor area of some 2100 square metres. Facilities currently accommodated in the John Fulton Centre include a bookshop, a supermarket, a barber shop, a mini bank, a multi-purpose hall, a music room, and offices for staff and student associations. The construction of the John Fulton Centre has been made possible by a grant of over 14 million dollars by the Hong Kong Government. It is named after the late Rt. Hon. Lord Fulton of Falmer, member of the University Council from 1963 to 1986, to commemorate his significant contribution towards the founding of the University and its subsequent development. Speech by D r . O l i v er F u l t on Mr. Li, Acting Vice-Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen, I must begin by saying what a particular pleasure and honour it is for me to be present here at The Chinese University, to represent Lady Fulton and all of my family at the opening of the John Fulton Centre. I hope you w i ll understand that this is no mere formal statement. First, of course, because I feel deeply honoured, and moved, by this dedication of my father's name and by the generous remarks of Mr. L i and so many others on the campus about Lord Fulton and what he meant to the University; but secondly because I know, in a way that you can only guess, how much The Chinese University meant to Lord Fulton. I am not sure how old I was when my father first visited Hong Kong, and began those discussions which were in due course to lead to the first Fulton Commission and the foundation of The Chinese University. What I can tell you is that I cannot remember a time when the University was not an everyday part of his thoughts. Again and again he would revert to it, puzzling over the problems of course, but taking enormous pleasure in the immense and visible successes, which he saw on the visits he enjoyed so much, and of which he heard so regularly from the steady stream of visitors whom he and my mother loved to welcome, first at Sussex and then in their house in Yorkshire. I wish very deeply that he would see all the magnificent new developments - Shaw College, the many new academic buildings and not least this Centre — which have appeared in the short time since he was last here. What was it about The Chinese University which gave it such a special place in my father's affections? Partly, no doubt, it was the sense of something akin to parenthood, of having been intimately involved at its birth, and in its childhood and adolescence, if I may so describe the first few years — though clearly, as we look around, it was a remarkably speedy adolescence to the mature institution we see today. (And unlike many adolescents, it never turned its back on its founding fathers!) But his love for The Chinese University had, and has, much more to do with the character and values of this institution. My father was brought up in Scotland, attending a city school in his home town of Dundee, and then commuting daily by train to the neighbouring university of St. Andrews. From this period and these experiences he learned something which he never forgot — the importance of high-quality higher education institution to the immediate community in which it is rooted. He was deeply offended by the idea that for a university to respond to local needs was in conflict w i th its international standing: by the distressingly common British view, to be blunt, that it is for polytechnics to provide for their area, while universities might turn their back on it. I know he would have been delighted to hear of the growing success of, and the enormous demand for, your part-time degrees and your many 5