The Board, seeing greater opportunities for student labor on a farm, began negotiations which, as has been seen, resulted in the purchase of the Payne property in 1826. Lack .of tools arid planned work led a few students, in August 1827, to form the Philoponian Society: the Greek name meaning “industrious” or “loving labor.” They stated in their constitution that they found by experience “that a suitable portion of exercise, is desperately necessary, to preserve the health of students & render their minds vigorous and active.”*By the end of the year a majority of their colleagues had joined the society.
Members were required to exercise outdoors an hour and a half each day, weather permitting. At the direction of their president, they assembled in the basement of West Hall and, tools in hand, marched to work under the supervision of monitors. In good weather they cultivated the farm or cut timber in the surrounding woods. They also leveled the ground around the new buildings and in other ways improved the campus. In bad weather they practiced gymnastics. At a special meeting in May 1828, when spring fever doubtless was virulent, they “Voted to erect a dam previous to commencement to raise a pond for bathing.”
The profits of the Philoponian Society went into a common fund which was divided each May according to the amount of work each member had done. The officers of the Education Society repeatedly commended the manual labor organization, furnished necessary tools, and required all beneficiaries to become members. One student in 1830 wrote to his brother at school in Peekskill, “labour is valued very high here and enables us to study more than if we laboured not. I advise you by all means to labour an hour or more every day.” By 1832, however, the Board, believing this extracurricular activity took too much time from studies and desiring labor for students which would be more profitable and independent of weather and seasons, established a window-sash factory on the campus. The Trustees planned to use its products in the present East Hall which they then contemplated building. The Philoponian Society reorganized into a “Judiciary Board of the Sash Factory” which lasted until 1833 when the factory seems to have been discontinued.
Wasting time or “loafing and inviting one’s soul” the authorities of the Institution discouraged. The following is the schedule of a student in 1831:
*[Colgate University], Philoponian Society, Record Book, 1827-32, Constitution
