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Washington and Lee University
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Washington and Lee University is a private liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia, United States.
The classical school from which Washington and Lee descended was established in 1749 as Augusta Academy, about north of its present location. In 1776 it was renamed Liberty Hall in a burst of revolutionary fervor. The academy moved to Lexington in 1780, when it was chartered as Liberty Hall Academy, and built its first facility near town in 1782.
In 1796, George Washington endowed it with the largest gift ever given to a college (at the time): $20,000 in stock, rescuing it from near-certain insolvency.
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Encyclopedia
Washington and Lee University is a private liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia, United States.
The classical school from which Washington and Lee descended was established in 1749 as Augusta Academy, about north of its present location. In 1776 it was renamed Liberty Hall in a burst of revolutionary fervor. The academy moved to Lexington in 1780, when it was chartered as Liberty Hall Academy, and built its first facility near town in 1782.
In 1796, George Washington endowed it with the largest gift ever given to a college (at the time): $20,000 in stock, rescuing it from near-certain insolvency. In gratitude, the trustees changed the school's name to Washington Academy; it was subsequently chartered as Washington College. Dividends from Washington's gift continue to pay about $1.87 a year toward the cost of each student's education. Robert E. Lee was its president after the Civil War until his death in 1870, after which the school was renamed Washington and Lee University.
Washington and Lee's motto is Non incautus futuri, meaning "Not unmindful of the future." It is an adaptation of the Lee family motto.
One quarter of W&L's undergraduates participate in varsity athletics, three quarters in club or intramural programs. There are more than 120 student organizations and publications, and approximately 80 percent of undergraduates belong to fraternities or sororities.
W&L is a member of the Associated Colleges of the South.
Campus
The row of brick buildings that form the Front Campus, which trace to 1824, is a U.S. National Historic Landmark named Washington and Lee University Historic District. Separately, the Lee Chapel is also a National Historic Landmark.
The noted British writer John Cowper Powys once called W&L the "most beautiful college campus in America." The poet and dramatist John Drinkwater remarked, "If this scene were set down in the middle of Europe, the whole continent would flock to see it!"
Since the '70s, the university has invested massively in upgrading and expanding its academic, residential, athletic, research, arts and extracurricular facilities. The new facilities include an undergraduate library, gymnasium, art/music/theater complex, dorms, student center, student activities pavilion and tennis pavilion, as well as renovation of the journalism and commerce buildings and renovation of every fraternity house and construction of several sorority houses. Lewis Hall, the 30-year-old home of the law school, as well as athletic fields and the antebellum Historic Front Campus buildings, are all currently undergoing major renovation.
In 1977 The New Yorker published a cartoon showing a family in a car in front of the Washington and Lee campus. The caption was: "The College of Your Choice."
Academics
Today the university has about 1,780 undergraduate students and 400 in the School of Law. Both the undergraduate and law schools are in the top 25 rankings of U.S. News and World Report (2007) for national liberal arts universities and law schools, respectively. The undergraduate school as of 2008 is ranked #15.
The admissions rate for the class of 2012 was 15.1%, a record-high selectivity for the university.
Washington and Lee is divided into three schools: (1) The College, where all undergraduates begin their studies, encompassing the liberal arts, humanities and hard sciences, with notable interest among students in pre-health and pre-law studies; (2) the Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics, which offers majors in accounting, business administration, economics, politics, and public accounting; and (3) the School of Law, which offers Juris Doctor and Master of Laws degrees.
More than 1,100 undergraduate courses are offered. There are no graduate or teaching assistants; every course is taught by a faculty member. The undergraduate library has more than 700,000 volumes (and a vast electronic network). The law library has more than 400,000 volumes as well as extensive electronic resources.
Washington and Lee offers 42 undergraduate majors (including interdisciplinary majors in neuroscience, Medieval and Renaissance studies, and Russian area studies) and additional interdisciplinary programs in African-American studies, East Asian studies, environmental studies, Latin American and Caribbean studies, poverty and human capability studies (,and women's studies. No minors are offered.
Despite the university's refusal to provide data to Princeton Review since 2003, PR's 2006 edition of The Best 357 Colleges ranked W&L highly in its for "Best Overall Academic Experience," "Professors Get High Marks," and "Professor Accessibility." In the 2007 edition, Washington and Lee was ranked 4th in "Professors Get High Marks" and 6th in "Professor Accessibility." Combining academics with an active social culture, Washington and Lee ranked 14th in "Best Overall Academic Experience for Undergraduates."
It is 15th in the 2008 US News and World Report ranking of national liberal arts institutions and 25th in the 2008 US News ranking of law schools.
The undergraduate calendar is an unusual three-term system with 12-week fall and winter terms followed by a six-week spring term. (The faculty recently approved a change to a four-week spring term beginning in 2010.) The spring-term courses include topical often-unique seminars, faculty-supervised study abroad, and some domestic and international internships. The law calendar consists of the more traditional early-semester system.
History
Liberty Hall Academy became a college when it granted its first bachelor of arts degree in 1785, making it the ninth oldest institution of higher education in the country. George Washington gave the school its first significant endowment in 1796, $20,000, at the time the largest gift ever given to an educational institution in the United States, and Washington's gift continues to provide nearly $1.87 a year toward every student's tuition. Trustees changed the name of the school to Washington Academy, and later Washington College, to honor him. Among many alumni who have followed in Washington's footsteps by donating generously, Rupert Johnson, a 1962 graduate who is vice chairman of the $600-billion Franklin Templeton investment management firm, gave $100 million to Washington and Lee in June 2007, establishing a merit-based financial aid and curriculum enrichment program.
Liberty Hall is said to have admitted its first African-American student when John Chavis, a free black, enrolled in 1795. Chavis accomplished much in his life including fighting in the American Revolution, studying at both Liberty Hall and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), becoming an ordained Presbyterian minister, and opening a school that instructed white and poor black students in North Carolina. He is believed to be the first black student to have earned a degree in the United States. Washington and Lee enrolled its next African-American student in 1966 in the law school. The next African-American students admitted were in 1968, two men who grew up in Lexington.
The campus took its current architectural form in the 1820s when a local merchant, "Jockey" John Robinson, an uneducated Irish immigrant, donated funds to build a central building. For the dedication celebration in 1824, Robinson supplied a huge barrel of whiskey, which he intended for the dignitaries in attendance. But according to a contemporary history, the rabble broke through the barriers and created pandemonium, which ended only when college officials demolished the whiskey barrel with an ax. A justice of the Virginia State Supreme Court, Christian Compton ('50 undergraduate, '53 law), re-created the episode in 1976 for the dedication of the new law school by having several barrels of Scotch imported (without the unfortunate dénouement).
The Lee Years
After the American Civil War, General Robert E. Lee turned down several financially tantalizing offers of employment that would merely have traded on his name, and instead accepted the post of college president for three reasons. First, he had been superintendent of West Point, so higher education was in his background. Second, and more important, he believed that it was a position in which he could actually make a contribution to the reconciliation of the nation. Third, the Washington family were his in-laws: his wife was the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. Lee had long looked on George Washington as a hero and role model, so it is hardly surprising that he welcomed the challenge of leading a college endowed by and named after the first president.
Arguably Lee's finest achievement was transforming a small, not particularly distinguished Latin academy into a forward-looking institution of higher education ("not unmindful of the future"). He established the first school of professional journalism education in the country and he added both a business school and a law school to the college curriculum, under the conviction that those occupations should be intimately and inextricably linked with the liberal arts. That was a radical idea: Journalism and law had always been considered technical crafts, not intellectual endeavors, and business was even worse. Yet Lee's concept has become universally accepted, and today it would seem subversive if anyone suggested that education in journalism, business, and law should be kept separate from the liberal arts and sciences.
Lee was also the father of an Honor System and a speaking tradition at Washington College that continue to the present time. And, ardent about restoring national unity, he successfully recruited students from the north as well as the south.
Lee died on October 12, 1870, after just five years as Washington College president. The school's name was almost immediately changed to link his with Washington's. His son, George Washington Custis Lee, followed as the school's next president. General Lee and much of his family - including his wife, his seven children, and his father, the Revolutionary War hero "Light Horse Harry" Lee - are buried in the Lee Chapel on campus, which faces the main row of antebellum college buildings. Robert E. Lee's beloved horse, Traveller, is buried outside, near the wall of the Chapel.
Honor System
Washington and Lee maintains a rigorous Honor System that traces directly to Robert E. Lee, who said, "We have but one rule here, and it is that every student must be a gentleman." Students, upon entering the university, vow to act honorably in academic and nonacademic endeavors. The Honor System means that a Washington and Lee student must never lie, cheat, or steal, that they must respect other people, their opinions and their property, and that they must always act like a gentleperson.
The Honor System has been run by the student body since 1905. Any student found guilty of an Honor Violation by his or her peers is subject to a single penalty: expulsion. The Honor System is defined and administered solely by students, and there is no higher review. A formal review, occasionally including referenda, is held every three years to refine the tenets of the Honor System. Students continue to support the Honor System and its single penalty overwhelmingly, and alumni regularly point to the Honor System as one of the distinctive marks they carry with them from their W&L experience.
Washington and Lee's Honor System is distinct from others such as those found at the neighboring Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia because it is not codified. That is to say, unlike those others, Washington and Lee's does not have a list of rules that define punishable behavior.
The Honor System encompasses fundamental honesty and integrity. Other disciplinary frameworks exist to address lapses of social and behavioral standards that do not fall into the category of a student's basic honor (Cheating on an exam or taking a book from the library without checking it out are examples of possible Honor Violations; Going 55 in a 50-mph-zone would not be considered an Honor Violation).
As a result, a sense of trust and safety pervades the community. The faculty and staff always take students at their word (and indeed, local merchants accept their checks without question; many also extend credit). Exams at W&L are ordinarily unproctored and self-scheduled. It is not unusual for professors to assign take-home, closed-book finals with an explicit trust in their students not to cheat.
The Honor System is strongly enforced. In most years, only a very few students withdraw in the face of an honor charge or after investigations and closed hearings conducted by the Executive Committee, the University's elected student government (with the accused counseled by Honor Advocates, usually law students). In recent years, an average of 4-5 students leave each year, with the same number typically leaving from each entering class. Students found guilty in a closed hearing may appeal the verdict to an open hearing before the entire student body, although this option is rarely exercised. If found guilty at an open trial, the student is dismissed from the university permanently.
Alumni of note
- William E. Brock 1953 — former Senator from Tennessee (1971-77), chairman of the National Republican Party (1977-81), U.S. Trade Representative (1981-85), and Secretary of Labor (1985-87)
- Fielder Cook 1946 — three-time Emmy Award-winning director and producer, perhaps best known for directing The Homecoming (TV, 1971), which begat the long-running series The Waltons
- James H. Cooper 1967 — Rector of Trinity Church in New York City, the historic Episcopal church that looks down Wall Street from lower Broadway, a wealthy parish with a substantial social outreach program thanks to its substantial real-estate holdings in lower Manhattan.
- Joseph L. Goldstein 1962 — Won Nobel Prize for Medicine for research in cholesterol metabolism and discovery that human cells have low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors that extract cholesterol from the bloodstream.
- H. F. Lenfest 1953 — philanthropist and CEO of Lenfest Group; gave the second largest donation in W&L's history, at $33 million, on March 21, 2007
- Meriwether Lewis 1793 — soldier, private secretary to Thomas Jefferson, and explorer who was sent by Jefferson to explore the lands the United States had recently acquired through the Louisiana Purchase. This expedition is now remembered as the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
- Paul Maslansky 1954 — producer of the "Police Academy" movie series, among other films
- Terry Brooks 1969 (law) — Author of fantasy fiction; 12 million copies in print
- Sydney Lewis '40 — founder of Best Products, which invented the big-box retail concept; recipient with his wife, Frances, in 1987, of the National Medal of the Arts
- J. Michael Luttig '76 — Attorney, former United States Circuit Court of Appeals judge. Twice considered by President George W. Bush for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Robert Mosbacher '47 Undergraduate '49 Law School — Secretary of Commerce between 1989 and 1992
- Roger Mudd '50 — Congressional Correspondent for CBS and PBS; Host on the History Channel He was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity.
- Donald D. Hook 1950 — Professor emeritus at Trinity College, Hartford; author of "Madmen of History" and "Clerical Failure."
- Mark Richard '86 — Author and Winner of the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award
- Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon 1996 — Poet
- Tom Wolfe 1951 — writer (created New Journalism) and author of numerous books including The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and The Bonfire of the Vanities, with his most recent novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, chronicling college life. A former trustee, he is a frequent visitor to campus and, in 2005, became the only outside speaker in recent times to deliver the undergraduate commencement address.
- Hatton C.V. Smith 1973 — President & CEO, Royal Cup Coffee, Inc.
Student activities
The school's teams are known as "The Generals" and compete in NCAA Division III in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. The student body is relatively balanced in its political outlook compared to most elite colleges and universities. Every four years, the school sponsors the Washington and Lee Mock Convention for whichever political party (Democratic or Republican) does not hold the Presidency. The Convention has received gavel-to-gavel coverage on C-SPAN and attention from many other national media outlets. The convention has correctly picked the out-of-power nominee for 18 of the past 23 national elections. It has been wrong twice since 1948, including its incorrect choice of Hillary Clinton in 2008. In 1984, the failure of the scoreboard significantly slowed the vote tally process and almost led to a wrong selection. The Washington Post declared Washington and Lee's Mock Convention "one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious mock conventions."
Demographics
Washington and Lee was all male until 1972, when women were admitted to the law school; the first female undergraduates enrolled in 1985. This anomaly survived as long as it did largely because, within an hour's drive of Washington and Lee, a large number of all-women's colleges existed (and still do): Randolph College in Lynchburg (formerly Randolph-Macon Woman's College), Sweet Briar College, just north of Lynchburg, Hollins University near Roanoke, and Mary Baldwin College in Staunton.
As of 2005, the University is 49% female, 51% male. In 2006, the number of women receiving undergraduate degrees exceeded the number of men for the first time in the school's history.
The University has also attempted to increase the number of minority faculty and students. The student body, once totally white, has somewhat diversified. The proportion of minority students now comprise approximately 10% of the student body.
The university's students have generally been known for conservative politics. In recent years, however, the campus has become far more diverse in its political thought. Groups like Campus Democrats and GSA (W&L's Gay-Straight Alliance) are active, the Office of Multicultural Affairs is recruiting a more racially and religiously diverse student body, and speakers like Spike Lee fill the seats of Lee Chapel. The faculty and curriculum reflect a strong global and progressive consciousness, as evidenced by the strength of unique curricular options such as the Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty and Human Capability.
Fraternities and sororities
Greek letter organizations play a major role in Washington and Lee's social scene. The following is a list of active, recognized fraternities and sororities.
Fraternities and Chapter Titles
The Kappa Alpha Order, one of the Lexington Triad, was founded at W&L.
Dormant fraternity chapters at Washington and Lee also include Alpha Tau Omega, Chi Phi, Delta Sigma Phi, Delta Tau Delta, Delta Upsilon, Theta Delta Chi. Kappa Sigma, Psi Upsilon, Phi Epsilon Pi and Zeta Beta Tau.
Sororities
Media and culture
A Washington and Lee art history professor, Pamela Hemenway Simpson, in 1999 wrote the only scholarly book on linoleum, giving it the title The book also examines other home-design materials once used by the lower classes to emulate their betters.
The widely acclaimed photographer Sally Mann got her start at Washington and Lee, photographing the construction of the law school. The photos became the basis of a one-woman exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C..
Washington and Lee is home to perhaps the finest collection of 18th- and 19th-century Chinese and European porcelain in America, the gift of Euchlin Dalcho Reeves, an eccentric 1927 graduate of the law school, and his well-matched wife, Louise Herreshoff. In 1967, Mr. Reeves contacted Washington and Lee about making "a small gift," which turned out to be a collection of porcelain so vast that it filled two entire houses which he and his wife owned in Providence, R.I. A number of dirt-covered picture frames, found in the two houses, were put on the van along with the porcelain. Soon it was discovered that the frames actually contained Impressionist-like paintings created by Louise as a young woman in the early days of the century. Mrs. Reeves had, it turned out, been a painter of stupendous talent, certified when in 1976 the Corcoran Gallery in Washington mounted a posthumous one-woman exhibition of her works. is helped by the fact that he ("Boy") was almost 30 years younger than she ("Dol").
The world's first recorded streaker — his name was George William Crump — was a student at Washington College, in 1804. He later became (perhaps inevitably) a Congressman as well as America's ambassador to Chile.
Music
Before it morphed into a swing, Dixieland and bluegrass standard, "The Washington and Lee Swing" was one of the most well known — and widely borrowed — football marches ever written, according to Robert Lissauer's Encyclopedia of Popular Music in America. Schools and colleges from Tulane to Slippery Rock copied it (sometimes with attribution). It was written in 1910 by Mark W. Sheafe, '06, Clarence A. (Tod) Robbins, '11, and Thornton W. Allen, '13. It has been recorded by virtually , including Glenn Miller (with Tex Beneke on vocals), Louis Armstrong, Kay Kyser, Hal Kemp and the Dukes of Dixieland. "The Swing" was a trademark of the New Orleans showman Pete Fountain. The trumpeter Red Nichols played it (and Danny Kaye pretended to play it) in the 1959 movie ( is an audio excerpt from a 1944 recording by Jan Garber, a prominent dance-band leader of the era. is an exuberant instrumental version by a group called the Dixie Boys, which YouTube dates to 2006.)
The "Swing" was parodied in "" by Ray Brown and Lew Henderson. "Dummy" was recorded by NRBQ, and Glenn Miller's vocal jazz group, the Modernaires, among many others, and was used in the movie You've Got Mail.
Washington and Lee in fiction
- Professor Lawrence Edward Watkin's 1940 novel Geese in the Forum is an allegory about campus politics (the geese were the faculty).
- In 1949, The Hero, by Millard Lampell, who did not attend Washington and Lee, was published; it told the story of a New Jersey boy who went south to attend Jackson University in Geneva, Virginia, and found epic difficulty in balancing academics, athletics and a social life. The book is dedicated to Richard Pinck, '41, who played football in the days when Washington and Lee competed in Division I and went to bowl games (or at least to one, the Gator Bowl on New Year's Day in 1951, before a cheating scandal in the early 1950s caused the university to abandon subsidized athletics). Lampell adapted his own book for the movies in 1950; it became Saturday’s Hero, starring John Derek and Donna Reed.
- A Sound of Voices Dying, by Glenn Scott, was published in 1954, the year its author graduated from Washington and Lee. It’s set at Philips-Whitehead University in Concord, Virginia. A year later it was issued in paperback – but in search of a broader audience, it was retitled Farewell My Young Lover and given a lurid cover illustration showing a woman tugging at her bathrobe belt and a young man, holding a bottle of liquor, who can't believe his good luck.
- In 1986, the French novelist and film director Philippe Labro, of the class of 1958, wrote L'Étudiant étranger (The Foreign Student), for which he won Europe’s Prix Interallié. It was both a coming-of-age novel and a love letter to American popular culture of the 1950s – Buicks and Jack Kerouac and, far from least, girls of all classes and races. In 1994 the novel was made into an English-language movie with Marco Hofschneider playing Labro.
- The protagonist in the 2004 coming-of-age novel American Blue Blood, by William C. Codington, attended W&L and recounts scenes from his days there in the 1970s. The protagonist introduces himself as follows: "I, Thomas Williamson Lightfoot, was in college in Lexington, Virginia, and my roommate...."
- In Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series, the Confederate States of America wins the American Civil War, and during the Second Great War the Confederacy bases its atomic bomb program at "Washington University" in Lexington, Virginia.
External links
- Virtual Tour of the University (Flash plugin required)
- - Radio Station located at and owned by Washington & Lee
- - Student-operated local news web site and broadcast
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