Rollins College
Encyclopedia
Rollins College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college
Liberal arts colleges in the United States
Liberal arts colleges in the United States are certain undergraduate institutions of higher education in the United States. The Encyclopædia Britannica Concise offers a definition of the liberal arts as a "college or university curriculum aimed at imparting general knowledge and developing general...

 located in Winter Park, Florida
Winter Park, Florida
Winter Park is a suburban city in Orange County, Florida, United States. The population was 24,090 at the 2000 census. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 estimates, the city had a population of 28,083. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee Metropolitan Statistical Area...

 (a suburb of Orlando, Florida
Orlando, Florida
Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...

), along the shores of Lake Virginia.

Rollins is currently ranked by U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report is an American news magazine published from Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek it was for many years a leading news weekly, focusing more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories...

as the number one regional educational institution in the South, a ranking held for seven consecutive years now. Rollins held the number two spot on that list for the ten consecutive years prior to that.

Rollins is a member of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), National Association of Schools of Music, American Chemical Society, Florida Department of Education, American Association of Museums, AACSB International-The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, Council for Accreditation of Counseling, and Related Educational Programs.

History

Rollins was founded by New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 Congregationalist
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....

s who sought to bring their style of liberal arts education to what was then the Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 frontier
Frontier
A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary. 'Frontier' was absorbed into English from French in the 15th century, with the meaning "borderland"--the region of a country that fronts on another country .The use of "frontier" to mean "a region at the...

. It is the oldest post-secondary institution in the state of Florida, and has been independent, nonsectarian, and coeducational from conception.

Academics

Rollins has three divisions that offer a variety of programs: College of Arts and Sciences, Crummer Graduate School of Business, and Hamilton Holt School.

College of Arts and Sciences

The College of Arts and Sciences has 1,773 students and a student to faculty ratio of 10 to 1. Ninety-two percent of the faculty possess a Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 or the highest degree in their field. The College
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...

 offers twenty-eight undergraduate majors and a variety of interdisciplinary programs that allow students to design their own courses of study.

Like many liberal arts programs, the College of Arts & Sciences operates on the philosophy that students should receive a well-rounded education regardless of their chosen specialty. As such, completion of a Bachelor of Arts degree requires the 140 credits required for graduation to be approximately evenly derived from general education courses, major/minor courses, and elective courses.

Classes in the College of Arts and Sciences are typically worth four credits
Credit (education)
A course credit is a unit that gives weighting to the value, level or time requirements of an academic course taken at a school or other educational institution.- United States :...

, in contrast to the traditional 3 credits per class structure of many American Universities. The college also requires 140 credit hours to graduate instead of the traditional 120.

Crummer Graduate School of Business

The Crummer Graduate School of Business offers a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) through four different programs:
  • The Early Advantage MBA Program is a 21-month full-time program designed for recent college graduates with little to no work experience.
  • The Corporate MBA Program (formerly Executive MBA program) is a 19-month program designed for current or potential senior executives with classes meeting on alternating Fridays and Saturdays.
  • The Professional MBA Program is a 32-month evening program designed for working professionals who wish to advance their careers to a management and/or executive level.
  • The Saturday MBA Program is a 19-month program designed for current managers, entrepreneurs, or executives with several years of work experience. Classes meet all day on Saturdays only.


The Crummer School also offers a Management and Executive Education program. This program targets organizations that wish to provide training and development to their current or future managers and executives. While courses in this program do not generally lead to a degree, they are tailored to the specific requests of the client organizations. Courses may be single-day training workshops or a long-term program of study, such as their 18-week Mini-MBA
Mini-MBA
“Mini-MBA” is a term used by many non-profit and for-profit institutions to describe a training regimen focused on the fundamentals of business. Mini-MBA programs are typically non-credit bearing programs that require less than 100 hours of total learning....

, and they may be conducted on the college campus or another site selected by the client.

Hamilton Holt School

Adult education courses at Rollins were initially only offered to returning World War II veterans. On September 7, 1960, the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of Rollins College gave formal authorization for the Institute for General Studies to award degrees upon completion of program requirements. On November 6, 1987, the school's name would be changed to Hamilton Holt School, in honor of Rollins’ eighth president.

The Hamilton Holt School offers Bachelor of Arts degrees in a variety of majors as well as several graduate degrees. Like the College of Arts & Sciences, the undergraduate program at the Hamilton Holt School requires a combination of general education courses, major/minor courses, and electives. Unlike its residential counterpart, however, the Hamilton Holt School's focus is on the non-traditional student, identified as a working individual seeking professional advancement and therefore schedules most courses in the evenings and on weekends. Students enrolled in the Hamilton Holt School pay tuition per credit hour and are not eligible for on-campus housing, although surrounding communities offer off-campus housing specifically for Rollins students.

The Hamilton Holt School requires 140 hours to graduate and will also transfer up to 64 credit hours or equivalent to an A.A. degree from a 2 year community college. Students can also transfer in courses from 4 year colleges and universities. In addition, the program allows for students to register for the course load suitable to their schedule during any of the Hamilton Holt School's three semester terms (Fall, Spring, Summer). Taking smaller course loads will extend the students completion date.

Graduate programs offered through the Hamilton Holt School include:
  • Master of Arts in Mental Health Counseling
  • Master of Arts in Teaching Elementary Education (for new uncertified graduates)
  • Master of Education in Elementary Education (for established certified teachers)
  • Master of Human Resources
  • Master of Liberal Studies
  • Master of Planning in Civic Urbanism

Special Programs

Rollins also has four special programs: the Rollins College Conference, Honors Degree Program, Accelerated Management Program, and International program.

Rollins College Conference (RCC)

The Rollins College Conference, taken in the first semester of a student's freshman year, is required of all non-transfer students in the College of Arts and Sciences. The course serves as both an orientation course and a topic course in a student's area of interest. The professor for this course will serve as the enrolled students' academic advisor until they select a major and choose a new advisor from the corresponding department. One or two peer mentors (upperclassmen with special training) join the course and offer counseling and support to the new students. The conference also contains a fourth hour time block each week where students participate in bonding and socialization activities.

Honors Degree Program

The Honors Degree Program allows the top students in each entering class of the College of Arts and Sciences to complete a series of special interdisciplinary seminars, which replace approximately two-thirds of the school's general education requirements. To earn an honors degree, students must also complete a thesis in their major field during their junior and senior years.

Accelerated Management Program (AMP)

The Accelerated Management Program allows selected students to earn both a BA from the College of Arts and Sciences and an MBA from the Crummer Graduate School of Business in a total of five years. Students enrolled in this program must complete all general education and major/minor requirements prior to the conclusion of their third year. In their fourth year, students take courses from the Early Advantage MBA program, from which credits are applied to both their undergraduate and graduate transcripts. Upon completion of the fourth year, AMP students graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences and walk with their class at commencement. In the fifth year, students complete the MBA degree and graduate a second time.

International programs

All three schools at Rollins offer international courses to destinations such as London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Sydney, and Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, among others. Some programs are offered directly through Rollins, while others are offered through partnerships with other colleges and universities. Students may study abroad for a week or an entire semester.

Athletics

Rollins participates in NCAA Division II's Sunshine State Conference
Sunshine State Conference
The Sunshine State Conference was originally formed in 1975 as an NCAA Division II men's basketball conference. It has since expanded to sponsor championships in 14 sports, including men's and women's basketball, baseball, men's and women's golf, women's rowing, men's and women's soccer, softball,...

. It's athletic teams are called the Tars (an archaic name for a sailor).

The school sponsors twenty-two varsity teams:
  • (M) Baseball
    Baseball
    Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

     – NCAA Division II's Sunshine State Conference
  • (M), (W) Basketball
    Basketball
    Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

     – NCAA Division II's Sunshine State Conference
  • (M), (W) Cross country
    Cross country running
    Cross country running is a sport in which people run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain. The course, typically long, may include surfaces of grass and earth, pass through woodlands and open country, and include hills, flat ground and sometimes gravel road...

     – NCAA Division II's Sunshine State Conference
  • (M), (W) Golf
    Golf
    Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

     – NCAA Division II's Sunshine State Conference
  • (M), (W) Lacrosse
    Lacrosse
    Lacrosse is a team sport of Native American origin played using a small rubber ball and a long-handled stick called a crosse or lacrosse stick, mainly played in the United States and Canada. It is a contact sport which requires padding. The head of the lacrosse stick is strung with loose mesh...

     – NCAA Division II's Sunshine State Conference
  • (M), (W) Rowing
    Rowing (sport)
    Rowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on rivers, on lakes or on the ocean, depending upon the type of race and the discipline. The boats are propelled by the reaction forces on the oar blades as they are pushed against the water...

     – NCAA Division II's Sunshine State Conference (W only), Southern Intercollegiate Rowing Association, Florida Intercollegiate Rowing Association
  • (M), (W) Sailing
    Sailing
    Sailing is the propulsion of a vehicle and the control of its movement with large foils called sails. By changing the rigging, rudder, and sometimes the keel or centre board, a sailor manages the force of the wind on the sails in order to move the boat relative to its surrounding medium and...

     – South Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association
  • (M), (W) Soccer – NCAA Division II (Sunshine State Conference)
  • (W) Softball
    Softball
    Softball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of 10 to 14 players. It is a direct descendant of baseball although there are some key differences: softballs are larger than baseballs, and the pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand...

     – NCAA Division II (Sunshine State Conference)
  • (M), (W) Swimming
    Swimming (sport)
    Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

     – NCAA Division II (Bluegrass Mountain Conference)
  • (M), (W) Tennis
    Tennis
    Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

     - NCAA Division II (Sunshine State Conference)
  • (W) Volleyball
    Volleyball
    Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...

     – NCAA Division II (Sunshine State Conference)
  • (C) Waterskiing – National Collegiate Water Ski Association
  • (C) Muggle Quidditch
    Muggle Quidditch
    Muggle Quidditch is a sport based on Quidditch, the fictional sport developed by British author J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series of novels. It is popular with fans of the novels, aficionados of fictional sports, and children. The sport was created in Advance, North Carolina.In Muggle...

    - Florida Qudditch

Fox Day

Fox Day is an annual tradition at Rollins. Since 1956, each spring, the President cancels all classes, providing students with a surprise day off to explore local beaches and amusement parks, together as a college, returning in the late afternoon for a barbecue. It's known as Fox Day, because a statue of a fox is placed on Mills Lawn (the school's main lawn), signifying the day off.

In the past, most students waited for the fox statue by camping out on Mills Lawn. In 2010, a student with a dorm room directly overlooking Mills Lawn, pointed an HD camera at the site, and streamed the video feed digitally at FoxDayCam.com, so that students could monitor the site for the arrival of the fox statue from their dorm room. With an undergraduate population of 2,331, the site had 3003 unique IP viewers its first year.The site is currently running for 2011 and will end on Fox Day.

Bach Festival

Since 1935, the Winter Park Bach Festival, the third-oldest continuously operating Bach festival in the United States, has brought some of the highest caliber of classical performers from around the world to campus, for a two week event. The 150-voice Bach Festival Society is regarded as one of the finest oratorio societies in America.

Campus

The Rollins 70 acres (283,280.2 m²) campus contains a range of amenities, including a theater for performing arts, the Cornell Campus Center, and the Alfond Sports Center.

Peace Monument

In 2000, the Rollins College's Peace Monument was featured in a New York Times article.

Erected in 1938 and dedicated on Armistice Day by college president Hamilton Holt, it consists of a German artillery shell, surrendered by Germany at the end of the First World War, mounted on a pedestal, bearing this inscription:
Pause, passerby and hang your head in shame

This Engine of Destruction, Torture and Death Symbolizes:
The Prostitution of the Inventor
The Avarice of the Manufacturer
The Blood-guilt of the statesman
The Savagery of the Soldier
The Perverted Patriotism of the Citizen
The Debasement of the Human Race

That it can be Employed as an Instrument of Defense of Liberty, Justice and Right in Nowise Invalidates the Truth of the Words Here Graven.

—Hamilton Holt


The top half of the monument was stolen by vandals during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, but the bottom half survives and is in the stairwell leading to the second floor of the Mills Memorial building.

Winter Park Institute

The Winter Park Institute located on campus, brings scholars, leaders, and artists from diverse fields of disciplines and expertise, to Rollins grounds for symposiums
Academic conference
An academic conference or symposium is a conference for researchers to present and discuss their work. Together with academic or scientific journals, conferences provide an important channel for exchange of information between researchers.-Overview:Conferences are usually composed of various...

, seminars, lectures, interviews
Interviews
Interviews is:# the plural form of "interview"# a compilation album by Bob Marley & the Wailers, see Interviews # a C++ toolkit for the X Window System, see InterViews...

, exhibits, readings
Reading (process)
Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of constructing or deriving meaning . It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas...

, and master classes, that are also open to the Winter Park community. It launched in the fall of 2008, the first guest being U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins
Billy Collins
Billy Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida...

, who has returned every year since. Other guests include environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to singer-songwriter Paul Simon
Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...

.

Olin Library

Rollins' Olin Library was dedicated in 1985, with a $4.7 million gift from the F.W. Olin Foundation. It is four stories high, with 54000 square feet (5,016.8 m²) of over 280,000 volumes, 1,500 periodical subscriptions, 700 serial subscriptions, 4200 periodicals and 4200 serials available through electronic resources, 74,000 government documents, a number of special collections, and hundreds of compact discs, videodiscs, and videotapes.

Olin Electronic Research and Information Center

The Olin Electronic Research and Information Center was also established with a second gift of $2.7 million from the F.W. Olin Foundation. The center features the latest technology, including computer stations, color printers, scanners, audio and video digitizers, compact discs, videodiscs, and videotapes. These tools facilitate creativity as students pursue research questions, prepare multimedia presentations, and create Web pages.

Bush Science Center

The Bush Science Center at Rollins has state of the art SMART classrooms, faculty offices, and 38 teaching and research laboratories for the physical and behavioral sciences, mathematics, and computer science. The science center is where Donald J. Cram
Donald J. Cram
Donald James Cram was an American chemist who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jean-Marie Lehn and Charles J...

 launched his chemical studies, becoming the 1987 Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winner in Chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

.

Cornell Fine Arts Museum

The Cornell Fine Arts Museum
Cornell Fine Arts Museum
The Cornell Fine Arts Museum is located at 1000 Holt Avenue, Winter Park, Florida on the Winter Park campus of Rollins College. It houses works of art from antiquity to modern times...

 is located on school grounds and contains works of art and objects from antiquity to the 21st century. The museum was built instead of what would have been the Ackland Art Museum
Ackland Art Museum
The Ackland Art Museum is a museum and academic unit of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was founded through the bequest of William Hayes Ackland to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is located at 101 S...

 at Rollins; millionaire and amateur art collector William Hayes Ackland wanted to leave his fortune to a Southern university for an art museum and narrowed his choices to Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

, and Rollins, in that order. After Ackland's death, Duke refused the request and UNC and Rollins, excised from Ackland's final will, both brought suit to locate Ackland's museum on their campuses. In a case that went to the United States Supreme Court, Ackland's trustees sided with UNC, but a lower court ruled for Rollins; a higher court finally granted the bequest to UNC. Rollins was represented in the case by former U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings.

Annie Russell Theatre

The Annie Russell Theatre
Annie Russell Theatre
The Annie Russell Theatre is a historic theater in Winter Park, Florida, United States. The theatre was named after the English-born actress Annie Russell in 1931, and designed by the German-born architect Richard Kiehnel of Kiehnel and Elliott. It is located on the premises of Rollins College. On...

 is a historic theater in Winter Park, Florida, located on the premises of Rollins College. The theatre was named after the English-born actress Annie Russell in 1931, who taught at Rollins until she died of lung disease in 1936. It was designed by the architect Richard Kiehnel of Kiehnel and Elliott. On July 15, 1998, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

.

Knowles Memorial Chapel

The Knowles Memorial Chapel
Knowles Memorial Chapel
Knowles Memorial Chapel, built between 1931 and 1932, is an historic Mediterranean Revival building located on the campus of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, in the United States...

 is a historic chapel
Chapel
A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...

 on the Rollins campus. On December 8, 1997, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

.

Walk of Fame

The Rollins Walk of Fame consists of more than 500 stones taken from houses of historic people including Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement...

, and many others.

Controversy

  • In October 1994, the school made international headlines when the government of Japan
    Japan
    Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

    , per the request of its Okinawa Prefecture
    Okinawa Prefecture
    is one of Japan's southern prefectures. It consists of hundreds of the Ryukyu Islands in a chain over long, which extends southwest from Kyūshū to Taiwan. Okinawa's capital, Naha, is located in the southern part of Okinawa Island...

    , asked for the return of a statue that was taken as war loot
    War loot
    War loot refers to goods, valuables and property obtained by force from their lawful owners via looting during or after warfare. These "spoils of war" differ from tributes or other payments extracted after the fact by a victorious nation in that their extraction is largely arbitrary and immediate,...

     after the Battle of Okinawa
    Battle of Okinawa
    The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945...

     in 1945 by Clinton C. Nichols, a then-lieutenant commander
    Lieutenant Commander
    Lieutenant Commander is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander...

     in the United States Navy
    United States Navy
    The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

     and a Rollins graduate. Nichols had presented the statue of Ninomiya Sontoku
    Ninomiya Sontoku
    , born Ninomiya Kinjirō , was a prominent 19th century Japanese agricultural leader, philosopher, moralist and economist.-Life:Ninomiya Sontoku was born to a poor peasant family with a name of Kinjiro in Kayama Ashigarakami-gun Sagami province. His father died when he was 14 and his mother died...

    , a prominent 19th century Japanese agricultural leader, philosopher, moralist and economist
    Economist
    An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

     to then-President Hamilton Holt
    Hamilton Holt
    Hamilton Holt was an American educator, editor, author and politician.-Editor:...

     who promised to keep the statue permanently in the main lobby of the Warren Administration Building. At first, the school rejected the offer made by Okinawan officials, who suggested that a replica of the statue will be presented to the school if the original was returned to the island; however, after consulting both with the U.S. State Department
    United States Department of State
    The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...

     and the school's board of trustees, then-President Rita Bornstein accepted the offer and the statue was returned to Okinawa in 1995 in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II
    World War II
    World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

    . In addition to providing the school with a replica of the original statue, the government of Okinawa and Rollins signed an "an agreement of cooperation" that pledges to develop additional cooperative projects between the College and Shogaku Junior and Senior High School, the Okinawan school where the original statue has been placed.

  • On March 31, 1998, the body of Jennifer Leah Kairis, a sophomore
    Sophomore
    Sophomore is a term used in the United States to describe a student in the second year of study at high school or university.The word is also used as a synonym for "second", for the second album or EP released by a musician or group, the second movie of a director, or the second season of a...

     student, was found in her Ward Hall dormitory
    Dormitory
    A dormitory, often shortened to dorm, in the United States is a residence hall consisting of sleeping quarters or entire buildings primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people, often boarding school, college or university students...

     room by a residential assistant. Kairis, who had attended a fraternity party held by the Tau Kappa Epsilon
    Tau Kappa Epsilon
    Tau Kappa Epsilon is a college fraternity founded on January 10, 1899 at Illinois Wesleyan University with chapters in the United States, and Canada, and affiliation with a German fraternity system known as the Corps of the Weinheimer Senioren Convent...

     chapter on campus hours before she had died, was both legally intoxicated and had a large amount of prescription drugs in her system. At first, the assistant medical examiner at the Orange County
    Orange County, Florida
    Orange County is a county located in the U.S. state of Florida and is part of the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford Metropolitan Statistical Area . As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 1,145,956....

     coroner's office ruled Kairis' death as a homicide
    Homicide
    Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...

    . However, that conclusion was quickly changed after Dr. Shashi Gore, the county's chief medical examiner ruled that she had died as a result of an accidental prescription drug overdose. Kairis' parents, who always believed their daughter was raped and murdered by her college boyfriend, requested a lengthy state investigation into their daughter's death due to their belief that the Winter Park Police Department botched the case. On March 4, 2004, Dr. Bruce Hyma, the Miami-Dade County
    Miami-Dade County, Florida
    Miami-Dade County is a county located in the southeastern part of the state of Florida. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 2,496,435, making it the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States...

     chief medical examiner and expert toxicologist hired by State Attorney Lawson Lamar ruled that Kairis had committed suicide via a prescription drug overdose. The seven year investigation was officially closed on April 13, 2005. Regardless of the investigation's outcome, the Kairis family asked then Governor Jeb Bush
    Jeb Bush
    John Ellis "Jeb" Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd Governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. He is a prominent member of the Bush family: the second son of former President George H. W. Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush; the younger brother of former President George W...

    , to bring in an outside medical examiner to take another look at the case and autopsy results and order an independent investigation of their daughter's death to resolve what they called the "Dueling Medical Examiners."

  • In March 2011, the school generated plenty of media coverage after an op-ed article published in the school's newspaper, "The Sandspur," and written by freshman student writer Jamie Pizzi resulted in an outcry by many students and faculty members at the school. In the article, Pizzi compared illegal aliens
    Illegal immigration to the United States
    An illegal immigrant in the United States is an alien who has entered the United States without government permission or stayed beyond the termination date of a visa....

     to home intruders and criticized the automatic citizenship that children born in the U.S. whose parent(s) are undocumented immigrants (commonly known in the media as "anchor babies") received as a result of present Jus soli
    Jus soli
    Jus soli , also known as birthright citizenship, is a right by which nationality or citizenship can be recognized to any individual born in the territory of the related state...

     laws that apply to the acquisition of U.S. citizenship
    United States nationality law
    Article I, section 8, clause 4 of the United States Constitution expressly gives the United States Congress the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. The Immigration and Naturalization Act sets forth the legal requirements for the acquisition of, and divestiture from, citizenship of...

    . Appearing on Fox & Friends
    Fox & Friends
    Fox & Friends is an American morning television show on the Fox News Channel.-History:The show begins at 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time with the latest Fox News Live headlines and analyzes the news of the morning...

     which airs on the Fox News Channel
    Fox News Channel
    Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...

     as well as on the local Fox affiliate station in Orlando
    WOFL
    WOFL, channel 35, is the Fox owned-and-operated television station serving the Orlando, Florida metropolitan area. It is licensed to Orlando, with studios located in Lake Mary. It broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 22. On cable, WOFL-TV is currently seen on channel 3 for subscribers of...

    , Pizzi apologized for her choice of words when describing the offspring of illegal aliens, however, she stood by her opinion that Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
    Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
    The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...

    should be revised and change.

  • In September 2011, as a result of fleeing criminals using the campus to hide from law enforcement officers and the armed robbery of two students who were sitting in a car outside their dormitory within one week, the school's administration is considering new security measures, including blocking or limiting access to four of the school's entrances and installing new security cameras to assure student and faculty safety on campus.

External links

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