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Colgate University

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Colgate in mid-August, towards the end of Summer.
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Colgate in mid-August, towards the end of Summer.

Colgate University is a private liberal arts college located in the Village of Hamilton in Madison County, New York.

Some 2,750 undergraduates are enrolled in 51 programs. The student-faculty ratio is 10:1. Student-athletes compete in 23 NCAA Division I sports.

Contents

Brief Timeline of the University

Facts (as of 2006)

Academics

Colgate offers 51 majors[link] leading to a Bachelor of Arts degree, all of which are registered officially with the New York State Department of Education. The three most common majors are biology, economics, and political science. In addition, Colgate has strong foreign language, psychology/neuroscience and geology departments.

In addition to the courses, the university offers several study abroad groups, including programs in Australia, China, Japan, London, Washington, DC, and the National Institute of Health. About 95% of seniors graduate, and most alumni proceed to graduate schools in law, administration, engineering, medicine, the arts and the sciences, as well as to financial, administrative or scientific occupations. There is hardly a walk of life where alumni of Colgate University are not represented. However, a significant clustering occurs in the media business and the life and earth sciences.

Athletics

Colgate's athletic logo
Colgate is part of NCAA Division I for all sports except football, which is Division I-AA. The athletic teams are called the "Raiders," and the team colors are maroon and gray. Colgate plays as part of either the Patriot League or the ECAC Hockey League, depending on the sport.

For much of its history, Colgate's sports teams were called the "Red Raiders." The origin of the name is disputed -- some claim it was in reference to the school color, maroon, while others say that it was a reference to the team's ability to defeat its much larger rival, the Cornell University "Big Red." In the 1970s, the school debated changing the name because of concerns that it was offensive to Native Americans. At that time the name was kept, but the mascot was changed from a Native American to a hand holding a torch. In 2001, a group of students approached the administration with the concern that the name "Red Raiders" still implied a Native American mascot. The school agreed to drop the word "Red" from the team name starting in the 2001-02 school year, due to concerns about the lingering association of "Red" with previously used Native American iconography (whether or not the use of the term "Red" was intended as such) [Maroon News editorial, 27 April 2001]. Some local TV outlets still use the logo with "Red Raiders" on it. A new mascot is to be introduced in 2006-07.

In the 2003 season, for the first time, the Raiders made it to the NCAA I-AA championship game in football, where they lost to the University of Delaware. Their season record was 15-1. At the time, they had the longest winning streak in all of Division I football, including one win over a Division I-A team, SUNY Buffalo.

Cornell is a common rival in all sports, while most of the teams other than football, golf, and hockey also compete annually against Syracuse University. Cornell and Syracuse are both within an hour or two of Colgate's campus. Colgate and Syracuse were once fierce rivals in football (there are some old traditions related to their game), but a variety of factors, probably including the splitting of Division I football into Division I-A and Division I-AA (wins against I-AA opposition do not help a I-A team gain BCS eligibility) helped end the rivalry. The schools have not scheduled a football game against each other in many years. Their lacrosse rivalry resumed in 2006, after the teams had not met for a few years.

The Controversy over Greek Reorganization

In 2005, the Colgate administration required the Greek organizations to sell or donate their houses to the University, under the threat of being unrecognized by the school. Supporters of this plan see it as an appropriate response to a "pattern of behavior that included repeated alcohol abuse, violent fighting, sexual assault, hazing" and the deaths of four persons in a 2000 [car crash] in which the driver had been drinking at both a fraternity and a local bar. [link] Opponents see these actions as part of a plan to eliminate Greek life at Colgate altogether. As of March 2006, Colgate fraternities and alumni have filed three lawsuits against Colgate, all of which have been dismissed. Opponents have also sought, unsuccessfully, to have the University charged with criminal coercion in pressuring Greek organizations to transfer their properties to Colgate. [link]

Notable Alumni

Colgate University has produced a remarkable number of alumni who have made important contributions in areas such as journalism, business, entertainment, government, science, and sports. There are easily recognizable names, such as 60 Minutes commentator and columnist Andy Rooney ’42, and others that are less so. Trivia buffs, for example, might not know that two Colgate alumni – Ed Werner ’71 and John Haney ’72 – were part of a group of four friends who invented the Trivial Pursuit game.

The Arts

Business

Education

Government

Journalism

Literature

Religion

Science and Medicine

Sports

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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