Misplaced Pages

#898101

51-528: Founded in 1951, Manuscript was Yale's seventh "landed" senior society. That is, its alumni trust owns the society's meeting place or "tomb". The Manuscript Society was one of the first senior societies to offer membership to rising females at Yale College . Each delegation is selected by consensus among Manuscript alumni, trustees, delegates, and significant others, unlike other Yale societies where undergraduate members more freely select, recruit, and initiate their society's next delegation. The Wrexham Foundation

102-491: A departmental major in their sophomore year. The most distinctive feature of undergraduate life is the school's system of residential colleges , established in 1932, and modeled after the constituent colleges of English universities . Undergraduates live in these colleges after their freshman year, when most live on the school's Old Campus . The Collegiate School was founded in 1701 by a charter drawn by ten Congregationalist ministers led by James Pierpont and approved by

153-617: A cappella in the United States. The earliest choral group, the Beethoven Society, dates to 1812 and emerged in the mid-nineteenth century as the Yale Glee Club . Although glee clubs around the country had spawned small collegiate ensembles since that time, the all-senior, all-male Whiffenpoofs , formed in 1909, are often considered to be the oldest collegiate a cappella society in the United States. Formalizing

204-424: A courtyard. The tomb holds a collection of notable modern and contemporary art. The Yale University Art Gallery is said to have temporarily stored pieces there. Wu said that he designed the building "for privacy, not for secrecy." Dan Kiley designed the landscaping which includes a Japanese water garden. Manuscript is described in the novel Joe College by Tom Perrotta as "basically the cool people's version of

255-459: A degree from the college. Until the rediscovery of Green's ethnic descent in 2014, physicist Edward Bouchet , who stayed at Yale to become the first African-American PhD recipient, was believed to also be the first African-American graduate of Yale College. In the early 20th century, the student body was predominantly "old-stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians"—a group later called WASPs . By

306-493: A dining hall, library, and student facilities ranging from printing presses to darkrooms. Each is led by a Head of College, a faculty member who serves as its chief administrator, and a Dean, who oversees student academic affairs. University faculty and distinguished affiliates are associated with the colleges as fellows. Unlike their English forerunners, the colleges do not administer academic degree programs or courses of study, but they do sponsor academic seminars that fall outside

357-606: A school to train ministers, original curriculum included only coursework in theology and sacred languages . Although early faculty, including Jonathan Edwards and Elisha Williams , maintained strict Congregational orthodoxy, by the time of the American Revolution subsequent rectors, especially Ezra Stiles , relaxed the curriculum to include humanities and limited natural science education. Scientific courses introduced by chemist Benjamin Silliman in 1801, made

408-403: A secret society". Yale College Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University . Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, when its schools were confederated and the institution was renamed Yale University. It is ranked as one of

459-540: A style pioneered by black barbershop groups in New Haven, their repertoire was amplified by the founding of similar groups across the country. Coeducation in 1969 made possible all-women's groups and mixed groups. In all, there are now at least eighteen undergraduate a cappella groups in Yale College, ranging from a Slavic chorus to Christian a cappella. Student publications at Yale date back as far as 1806, but

510-510: A succession of college chapels, and Dwight Hall , formerly the College Library. Although the current buildings have been renovated and their uses changed during the twentieth century, all were completed before 1928. When Yale College moved to New Haven in 1718, the town constructed its first building, the "College House," at the corner of College and Chapel Streets, where Bingham Hall now stands. The wood-framed structure contained all

561-431: A template for collegiate life across the United States. By 1870, Yale was the largest undergraduate institution in the country. The growth of the student body prompted major growth in the college's physical campus, the greatest expansion of which occurred in 1933, when a gift of Edward S. Harkness created and endowed eight residential colleges . Modeled after the college system of Oxford and Cambridge Universities ,

SECTION 10

#1732782584899

612-522: A template for many American college campuses built in the 19th century. After 1870, the original plan gave way to the current quadrangle of dormitories, academic buildings, and chapels. In addition to Connecticut Hall, the current buildings of Old Campus include most of the freshman dormitories of Yale College , Street Hall of the Yale University Art Gallery , and two buildings used for religious purpose: Battell Chapel , third in

663-423: A week. Some of the oldest society buildings are enclosed and windowless; members refer to them as "tombs." Their activities have varied over time and across societies, but most societies meet for dinners, discussion, drinking, and long-form disclosure of members' life history. Despite a long history of social exclusion—of Jews and women in particular—many of these societies have prioritized membership diversity in

714-485: Is the society's alumni arm. Since 1956, the foundation has underwritten the Wrexam Prize, a scholarship in the humanities for the senior who writes the best essay in the field of the humanities. Manuscript briefly played host to the 1991-92 classes of Skull and Bones , who were temporarily locked out of their tomb by alumni who objected to its undergraduates' decision to offer membership to women. From its beginning

765-542: The "gradual abandonment and removal of the present buildings of the Brick Row," beginning with the construction of Farnam Hall. From 1870 to 1928, the college undertook a wholesale reconfiguration of its campus, tearing down the Old Brick Row and its satellites and erecting a perimeter of Victorian Gothic student dormitories around a central enclosure. Where before it had been most prestigious to live off campus,

816-427: The "secrecy" of these senior societies is dubious; their existence is widely known and membership rolls for most are published yearly. Ten present-day societies— Skull and Bones , Scroll and Key , Book and Snake , Wolf's Head , Elihu , Berzelius , St. Elmo , Manuscript , Shabtai , and Mace and Chain —have private buildings near campus; many other societies have a fixed on-campus meeting space where they meet twice

867-413: The 1970s, it was much more diverse. Enrollment at Yale only became competitive in the early 20th century, requiring the college to set up an admissions process. As late as the 1950s, tests and demographic questionnaires for admission to the college worked to exclude non-Christian men, especially Jews, as well as non-white men. By the mid-1960s, these processes were becoming more meritocratic, allowing for

918-672: The Atheneum (First Chapel), Connecticut Lyceum, and Second Chapel. Around the Brick Row at this time were a chemical laboratory, a mineralogical building (the Cabinet), and the Second President's House, replacing one north of Elm Street. The college gradually purchased parcels of land until it controlled the whole block by 1857. Properties owned by Amos Doolittle and Benjamin Franklin were consolidated and demolished, as were

969-541: The College House, was erected in 1718 on the Old Campus' southeast corner, fulfilling the city founders' wish to have a college near New Haven's Congregational church . It was joined by Connecticut Hall in 1750, a student dormitory and Yale's only surviving building from the colonial era. A linear building plan established in 1792, known as Old Brick Row, was the first campus plan in the United States and became

1020-571: The Council of the Heads of College, composed of the Heads of College of the fourteen colleges. The most distinctive feature of Yale College undergraduate life is the residential college system. The system was established in 1933, through a gift by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness , who admired the college systems at Oxford University and Cambridge University . Each college consists of dormitory buildings surrounding an enclosed courtyard, and features

1071-650: The General Court of the Colony of Connecticut . Originally situated in Abraham Pierson's home in Killingworth, Connecticut , the college moved to Old Saybrook, Connecticut in 1703, when Nathaniel Lynde, the first treasurer of Yale, donated land and a building. The college moved again to New Haven in 1718, and was renamed for Elihu Yale , an early benefactor, merchant, and philanthropist. Founded as

SECTION 20

#1732782584899

1122-500: The United States. In 1847, it was joined by another undergraduate school at Yale, the Sheffield Scientific School , which was absorbed into the college in 1956. These merged curricula became the basis of the modern-day liberal arts curriculum, which requires students to take courses in a broad range of subjects, including foreign language, composition, sciences, and quantitative reasoning, in addition to electing

1173-521: The Yale Corporation to oversee the affairs of each college. Residential college deans, who are supervised by the Dean of Yale College, are in charge of undergraduate academic oversight. Each residential college is governed by its Head of College, Dean, and Fellows, and has a college council of students with limited jurisdiction over student affairs. Issues affecting multiple colleges are governed by

1224-501: The academic departments of Classics, English, History, Comparative Literature, and Philosophy. Fourteen buildings—including eight dormitories and two chapels—surround a 4-acre (1.6 ha) courtyard with a main entrance from the New Haven Green known as Phelps Gate. The Old Campus comprised most of Yale College's grounds between its arrival in New Haven in 1718 and its 20th-century expansion. Yale's first building in New Haven,

1275-426: The beginning of sophomore year. Students assigned to Silliman , Timothy Dwight , Benjamin Franklin , and Pauli Murray live in their colleges for all four years. Since the 18th century, Yale's Commencement ceremony has been held on the grounds of the Old Campus. Every May, approximately 10,000 chairs are set up for the event and college's Class Day, held the day before and featuring a distinguished speaker. During

1326-411: The century, William Graham Sumner , the first professor of sociology in the United States, introduced studies in the social sciences. These expanding fields of study were integrated with graduate schools of the university and amalgamated into a course of liberal arts education , which presaged the advent of divisional majors in the twentieth century. The relaxation of curriculum came with expansion of

1377-466: The college an early hub of scientific education, a curriculum which was grafted into Yale's Sheffield Scientific School in 1847. As in many of Yale's sister institutions, debates about the expansiveness of the undergraduate curriculum were waged throughout the early 19th century, with statements like the Yale Report of 1828 re-asserting Yale's conservative theological heritage and faculty. Later in

1428-470: The colleges were intended to be the social and residential centers of undergraduate life while leaving academic programs under the oversight of university's departments. Two additional colleges were built by 1940, two more ( Ezra Stiles College and Morse College ) opened in 1962, and two more ( Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College ) in 2017. For most of its history, study at Yale

1479-638: The dormitory in 1761. During a 1792 disagreement over whether the next building should follow a linear pattern, preferred by Yale President Ezra Stiles , or right-angular pattern, preferred by the Yale Corporation and the town, Stiles commissioned James Hillhouse and John Trumbull to draft first college campus plan in the United States. Trumbull's drawings chose Stiles' linear pattern, interleaving narrow, steepled buildings between long student dormitories. By 1824, Old Brick Row included four student dormitories, then known as "colleges," and between them

1530-554: The earliest still in print, the Yale Literary Magazine , was founded in 1836 and is believed to be the oldest surviving literary review in the United States. Undergraduate publications like the Yale Banner , a yearbook, and The Yale Record , a humor magazine, followed suit, often around the same time similar publications were established at Harvard and Princeton. The Yale Daily News , established in 1878,

1581-503: The extracurriculum. Student literary societies emerged as early as 1750, singing groups and student publications in the early 1800s, fraternities and secret societies in the mid-nineteenth century, and intercollegiate athletics by the century's end. Participation and leadership in these groups was an important social signifier and a route to induction into prestigious senior societies. Thus extracurricular participation became central to student life and social advancement, an ethos that became

Manuscript Society - Misplaced Pages Continue

1632-410: The first secret society at the university, Skull and Bones . Skull and Bones "tapped" select juniors for membership as seniors, a ritual later adopted by all undergraduate senior societies. Since then, senior societies have proliferated at Yale, with recent estimates of 41 existing societies and senior class membership ranging from ten to fifty percent of each class. Although once carefully guarded,

1683-399: The first Jew to graduate from Yale. Though his maternal ancestry is disputed, he may have also been the first person of African-American descent to graduate from any American college. In 1854, Yung Wing graduated from the college and became the first student from China to graduate from an American university, and in 1857, Richard Henry Green became the first African-American man to receive

1734-452: The fraction of international students admitted between 1993 and 2013. Yale College is a constituent school of Yale University and contains a dependent system of residential colleges . Its executive officer is the Dean of Yale College, who is appointed to a five-year term by the Yale Corporation . The dean oversees undergraduate academic curriculum, extracurricular activities, and student discipline, but does not have direct control over

1785-399: The functions of the college: student rooms, a library, and a combined chapel and dining hall. Falling into disrepair, this building was torn down in stages from 1775 to 1782. Beginning in 1750 with the state-financed construction of Connecticut Hall , a student dormitory, the buildings of Old Brick Row were built over the next one hundred years. A chapel, later known as the Atheneum, joined

1836-586: The last several decades. The semi-secrecy and influential membership of Yale's older senior societies has attracted wide interest and scrutiny, particularly when both 2004 U.S. presidential candidates were members of Skull and Bones. Old Campus (Yale University) The Old Campus is the oldest area of the Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut . It is the principal residence of Yale College freshmen and also contains offices for

1887-671: The late 19th century, the Old Campus hosted an annual Tap Night for the upperclassmen on the Old Campus, where juniors were inducted into secret societies. An echo of the event occurs with the annual fall a cappella rush, where singing groups race to freshman dorms to choose new members. Old Campus hosts several curricular activities, including Freshman Olympics, a competition among the residential colleges, and Spring Fling, an outdoor concert. There are bronze statues on Old Campus of Nathan Hale (1913, Bela Pratt ), Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1896, John Ferguson Weir ), and Abraham Pierson (1874, Launt Thompson ). There are also statues of lions at

1938-482: The new dormitories became fashionable as the preserve of seniors. When Yale's residential colleges were opened in 1933, the Old Campus transitioned to a home for the common Freshman Year, with upperclassmen living in the colleges. In 1833, a picket fence encircling the campus was replaced with a rail fence, causing a major shift in the social patterns of the Old Campus. The Yale Fence, a wood fence with square posts and round rails that ran three sides of Old Brick Row,

1989-455: The normal departmental structure of the university, and the Heads of College host lectures and teas for the colleges that attract high-profile visitors. Harkness' gift built and endowed eight colleges, completed from 1932 to 1934. Additional colleges were opened in 1935 ( Timothy Dwight College ), 1940 ( Silliman College ), 1962 ( Morse College and Ezra Stiles College ), and 2017 ( Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College ), bringing

2040-734: The present-day number to fourteen. The first ten colleges were designed in Collegiate Gothic and Georgian Revival styles; the two colleges built in the 1960s are Modernist reinventions of the college plan. In 2007, Yale announced the construction of two additional Collegiate Gothic residential colleges near Science Hill , which opened in 2017. Residential colleges are named for important figures or places in university history or notable alumni; they are deliberately not named for benefactors. Yale College has been called "the epicenter of college singing," both for its long history of singing groups and its centrality in establishing collegiate

2091-711: The purview of academic departments , divisions of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences which offer undergraduate and graduate curricula. In addition, the faculties of three Yale professional schools , the School of Art , School of Architecture and School of Forestry & Environmental Studies , also offer undergraduate programs. Residential colleges, which are funded and controlled by the university, have separate administration and limited self-governance. The Heads of College (before 2016 called Masters ), usually tenured faculty members, are appointed to renewable, five-year terms by

Manuscript Society - Misplaced Pages Continue

2142-414: The recruitment of a racially, economically, and geographically diverse student body. This meritocratic transition encouraged the university to establish the first need-blind admissions policy in the United States. After several decades of debate about coeducation , Yale College admitted its first class of women in 1969. In recent years, the college has focused on international recruitment, quadrupling

2193-670: The residential colleges. The position is currently held by Pericles Lewis , professor of comparative literature . All of the college's faculty are members of the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences and are thereby jointly affiliated with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences . Tenured members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences constitute the Board of Permanent Officers, who govern the school's curriculum and programs. Most undergraduate courses and majors are offered under

2244-674: The society also retained close connections with the campus literary society Chi Delta Theta , which formed in 1821 Manuscript Society is part of a four-society "Consortium" with the Aurelian Honor Society , Book and Snake , and Berzelius . The society holds the number 344 to be sacred. It supposedly holds Enlightenment ideals, and the sun and sunflowers are both important symbols to members. The society holds an annual gathering in its tomb on Halloween. Its members also invite guests to events featuring notable alumni. Designed by King-lui Wu , Manuscript's white granite tomb

2295-486: The top colleges in the United States. Originally established to train Congregationalist ministers, the college began teaching humanities and natural sciences by the late 18th century. At the same time, students began organizing extracurricular organizations: first literary societies , and later publications, sports teams, and singing groups. By the middle of the 19th century, it was the largest college in

2346-497: The town jail and poorhouse. On newly acquired land surrounding Old Brick Row, administrators built the Trumbull Gallery (1832), Divinity College (1835), the College Library (1849), and Alumni Hall (1850). Of the fourteen Yale buildings completed by 1850, only two, Connecticut Hall and the College Library (now Dwight Hall), would stand fifty years later, and both survive today. In 1870, Yale President Noah Porter announced

2397-476: Was a relative latecomer but became the flagship campus daily, and continues to publish during every weekday of the undergraduate academic term. These publications have been joined by many 20th-century debuts, including The Yale Herald and The New Journal . In 1832, a rift over Phi Beta Kappa inductions between the college's two debating societies, Linonia and Brothers in Unity , caused seniors to establish

2448-439: Was almost exclusively restricted to white Protestant men, often the children of alumni. Documented exceptions to this paradigm include Hawaiian native Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia , who became a student of Yale President Timothy Dwight in 1809, and black abolitionist James W. C. Pennington , who was allowed to audit theology courses in 1837. Moses Simons , a descendant of a slave-holding South Carolinian family, has been suggested to be

2499-422: Was built in 1952. The tomb is mid-century modern , unusual amid other societies' elaborate mid-to-late-19th century buildings. It featured a circular intaglio mural in white-glazed brick that was designed by Josef Albers . The circle, which is only visible in direct sunlight, symbolizes the bond connecting the members. It appears from the outside to have only one level, yet conceals several subterranean floors and

2550-534: Was named in its memory. The fence currently lining the Old Campus' interior courtyard is modeled after the old fence, and pieces of the original are held in Sterling Memorial Library . Old Campus houses freshmen from ten of Yale College 's fourteen residential colleges. These students are assigned a residential college before starting their studies at Yale, live in Old Campus dormitories during their freshman year, and move into their colleges at

2601-402: Was the college's primary gathering place thereafter. Students would claim sections by class year, with seniors taking choice seats along Chapel Street. However, as the modern quadrangle took form, the fence was gradually uprooted. In 1888, the displacement of its last section for Osborn Hall caused 2,100 alumni to write in protest. The Yale Fence Club, an undergraduate fraternal organization,

SECTION 50

#1732782584899
#898101