Tag Archives: Hamilton Female Seminary

Fraternity houses built (p. 307)

Posted on June 21, 2012 by | Comments Off on Fraternity houses built (p. 307)

organized in 1923, became Gamma Omicron of Sigma Chi in 1930 and Delta Pi Sigma, a local founded in 1928, which became Alpha Upsilon of Phi Kappa Tau in 1937. Thanks to the loyalty of alumni brothers and mortgages, nine of the original eleven fraternities constructed new houses during the period-Beta Theta Pi, 1923; Phi Gamma Delta, 1924; Theta Chi, 1926;  Nu, 1927; Phi Delta Theta, 1927; Alpha Tau Omega, 1928; Lambda Chi Alpha, 1930; Kappa Delta Rho, 1930; and Delta Upsilon, 1931. The Theta Chi house has the distinction of having been the old Hamilton Female Seminary building until that school closed in 1891; it was subsequently used as a summer boarding house and in its later years stood abandoned.

Non-fraternity men had formed various loosely knit organizations to meet their social needs and had been given the use of the social room in West Hall. It was not until 1927, however, that, under the leadership of Edward M. Vinten, ’28, they succeeded in establishing a permanent group, the Colgate Commons Club. It had exclusive use of the West Hall lounge and provided fellowship and recreation for many students who could not afford fraternity membership or for other reasons had not joined the Greek letter societies.

To assist the local chapters in dealing with their problems, several alumni in 1928 formed the Fraternity Alumni Council of Colgate University (Interfraternity Alumni Council) with Frank M. Williams, ’95, as president and Carlton O. Miller, ’14, as secretary. They sought through a sharing of ideas and experience to encourage scholarship among the undergraduate brothers, to assist in constructing fraternity houses and improving business practices, to bring about a more satisfactory tax policy on their real estate, to improve communication and relations among fraternity alumni, parents, faculty, administration and local residents, to aid bringing new fraternities to the campus, and to promote good fellowship among alumni of all the fraternity groups. Their work was to be most helpful.

Dissatisfaction with rushing and pledging procedures eventually led, in 1934, to an investigation by a Trustee Committee headed by William M. Parke, ’00. The committee concluded that the problem stemmed primarily from the inability of fraternities, through lack of facilities, to accommodate more than 60 percent of the student body though a great many more wanted the advantages of fraternity life. Drawing on the experience of Dartmouth they recommended that the rushing and pledging be deferred until the end of the freshman year,

Comments Off on Fraternity houses built (p. 307)

Posted in Chapter 14, p. 307, The Cutten Period 1922-1942

Tagged , , , ,

The first band (p. 235)

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | Comments Off on The first band (p. 235)
Glee Club, 1891. First known picture.
Picture of Glee Club

be disassociated from Patrons’ Day it remained a highlight of the spring calendar and became the antecedent of “Spring Party.”

After the spring of 1891 students could no longer look to the Hamilton Female Seminary for dates because that school had come to an end. For a brief period in the middle ’90’s, a successor, Emily Judson Hall, was in operation, but for the most part, they turned to local girls or, for special occasions, they sometimes invited guests from outside. There were the perennial suggestions for coeducation or even what might be called a “co-ordinate college” but all of them were rejected by the Trustees who in 1892 voted that no women should be accepted as students in any department though the few young ladies already in the Academy might complete the course. Perhaps the most compelling reason for this attitude was the difficulty of finding additional funds which educating women at Colgate would require when they were already having problems in meeting regular expenditures.

Throughout the ’90’s student publications and musical groups-the glee club and others-continued to flourish. The editors of the Madisonensis called for new Colgate songs and vainly attempted to revive the old “Alma Mater” of the 1860’s. In the fall of 1895 the first

Comments Off on The first band (p. 235)

Posted in Chapter 11, Colgate in the 1890's, p. 235, timeline

Tagged , ,

p. 209 – Student Life, 1869-1890

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 209 – Student Life, 1869-1890

“tunk,” which means a masculine social occasion, often in the evening, at which food and non-alcoholic drinks were served. The earliest reference found, which is in 1882, suggests that the word had been in use for some time. It might have been derived from a term in early Welsh history meaning “food-rent.” The second was “bum,” such as “sugar bum” or “cider bum,” which were excursions by sleigh, carriage or on foot, to a farmer’s home where warm maple sugar, or maple syrup, and biscuits would be served in the spring or to a cider mill for draughts of fresh apple juice in the autumn. Also, as early as 1882 students took a “run”, i.e., dismissed themselves, when a professor was late or absent from his class, and would “bohn,” or study, on occasion.The latter term originated with Bohn’s Classical Library which contained reprints of authors studied in Greek and Latin courses.

College spirit and especially class unity, students felt, were promoted by the cane and salt rushes. Also since the class seldom exceeded 30 the members could know each other quite intimately and often enjoyed seeking amusement as a group. Their sugar and cider bums and banquets, supplemented sometimes by a literary program, helped to reduce the monotony of the long winter months. The Class of 1887, after their last examination in the spring, instituted Senior Pipe Day, somewhat in imitation of practices on other campuses. Seated in a circle out-of-doors, with a large can of lemonade in the center, they smoked and passed around a large Indian pipe and then each smoked his own pipe, meanwhile tasting and drinking the lemonade. To conclude their ceremony, they all joined hands around a grave in which they buried a hatchet and promised to forget all animosities which had grown up among them the past four years.

Individual leisure time activities included long walks, hunting and fishing, chess, and sometimes card playing, an amusement the “authorities” frowned on, though perhaps less seriously than in an earlier day. Village and faculty homes were often open to students and there were occasionally social clubs in the village where students could meet the local young people and the Hamilton Female Seminary girls. Professor and Mrs. Myron M. Goodenough who maintained the Hamilton Female Seminary arranged for formal social and literary occasions to which they regularly invited large numbers of students.

Celebrating Washington’s Birthday with a literary entertainment, a practice begun in 1867, the juniors perpetuated until 1890. The

Comments Off on p. 209 – Student Life, 1869-1890

Posted in Chapter 10, p. 209, Student Life, 1869-1890

Tagged , , ,

p. 161 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 161 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

The Steward also provided furnishings and bedding for the dormito­ry rooms until the late ’50’s; the occupants were left to supply wood or coal for their stoves and tallow· candles and sperm oil lamps for illumination. Flowers and plants, occasionally found in the windows, afforded a homelike touch. Bathing facilities consisted bf a bath house to which spring water was piped down the hill. In winter some Spartan youths took morning showers in the ice-cold water, roaring with pain at the shock, and then wrapped in overcoats, they dashed to their warm rooms to recover.

To relieve the tedium of study in the long winter months, there were innocent amusements such as skating on the Chenango Canal, coasting, or bees to fill the Steward’s ice-house, followed by a savory supper. In summer, students took long walks, often stopping to pick strawberries, or went on brief camping trips to nearby ponds. Then, too, there were opportunities throughout the year for the companionship of the young ladies in the Hamilton Female Seminary, or “Ham Fem Sem” as it was popularly known, which local citizens had established in 1856. Its receptions were social highlights to which the young men eagerly sought invitations and reciprocated by taking the girls to campus events such as the literary societies’ public exhibitions and baseball games. Some village homes, especially Deacon Charles C. Payne’s, welcomed the boys from the Hill. They also found diversion and stimulation at public lectures by such noted men as Emerson, Beecher, Gough, and George William Curtis.

The pronounced religious atmosphere which had pervaded campus life from the 1820’s moderated somewhat after 1850 as a result of the growing number of non-ministerial students and of outside pressures, particularly the issues which led to the Civil War and the effects of that conflict. Most students were church members, however, and participated in prayer meetings and other religious exercises; the Students Association annually elected a theologue to deliver a sermon at one of its assemblies. With the dissolution of the Seminary Church in 1851, all members of the University attended morning services with the village Baptist congregation and shared in their five stirring re­vivals in the ’50’s and ’60’s. Frequently the faculty supplied the pulpit, but Walker R. Brooks, pastor from 1856 to 1873, made the most profound intellectual and spiritual impression. William Newton Clarke, Class of 1861, who was to become one of the most eminent theologians of the Baptists, once said that sometimes as he sat in the

Comments Off on p. 161 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 161, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869

Tagged , , , , ,