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Washington and Lee University

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Washington and Lee University is a private liberal arts college in Lexington, Rockbridge County, Virginia, located adjacent to Virginia Military Institute. Known as one of the most politically conservative liberal arts colleges in the country, the classical school from which it is descended was founded in 1749 as Augusta Academy but was defiantly renamed Liberty Hall in 1776. The academy moved to Lexington in 1780 and built its first facility near town in 1782.

George Washington endowed it with the largest gift ever given to a college (at the time), and Robert E. Lee was its president after the Civil War until his death.

Today the university has about 1,750 undergraduate students and 400 in the School of Law.

The law school, tiny and selective, offers Juris Doctor and Master of Laws degrees.

At the undergraduate level, Washington and Lee is divided into two divisions, the College [of arts and sciences], with majors in the humanities, arts, journalism and natural and social sciences with a notable emphasis in pre-medical studies, and the School of Commerce, Economics and Politics. In all, more than 1,000 undergraduate courses are taught. The undergraduate library has almost 700,000 volumes (and a vast electronic network). The law library has more than 400,000 volumes (and ditto).

The row of brick buildings that form the Front Campus, which trace to 1824, is a National Historic Landmark. Separately, the Lee Chapel is also a National Historic Landmark. By all accounts, the campus is architecturally stunning and the natural surroundings even more so.

In recent years, Washington and Lee has undertaken a colossal building program, adding impressive academic, cultural, social, athletic and residential facilities.

Washington and Lee's motto is Non incautus futuri, meaning "Not unmindful of the future."

The university prides itself on the caliber of its students and professors -- and on the strength of their relationships, which typically extend beyond the classrom. Washington and Lee accepted only about 29 percent of those who applied (class of 2009), and the successful applicant had a median 1390 SAT. The student-faculty ratio is 1:11. There are no graduate or teaching assistants; every course is taught by a faculty member.

A quarter of undergraduates participate in varsity athletics, 75% in the club or intramural programs. There are more than 120 student organizations and publications, and approximately three-quarters of undergraduates belong to fraternities or sororities. If The Princeton Review is to be believed, Washington and Lee proves the truth of the cliché about students who work hard and play hard. In that publication's 2006 edition, Washington and Lee scores 4th in "high marks for professors" and 7th in professors' accessibility. The University ranks 2nd in prevalence of hard liquor and 12th in beer.

W&L is a member of the Associated Colleges of the South.

Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia
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Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia

Contents

Academics

The University is a liberal arts college divided into three schools. These schools are: (1) The College, in which all students begin their undergraduate studies in the liberal arts, sciences, and humanities; (2) the AACSB-accredited Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics, which offers majors in accounting and business administration, business administration, economics, politics, public accounting, and public policy; and (3) The School of Law. Washington and Lee offers 40 undergraduate majors and the following interdisciplinary, non-major programs: African-American studies, East Asian studies, environmental studies, Russian area studies, and the Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty and Human Capability. The university was ranked highly by the Princeton Review in its 2006 edition of The Best 357 Colleges for "Best Overall Academic Experience," "Professors Get High Marks," and Professor Accessibility.

The undergraduate calendar is an unusual three-term system with 12-week fall and winter terms followed by a required six-week spring term. Spring term is reserved for special topic courses, faculty-supervised study abroad, and internships both domestically and abroad. The law calendar follows a more traditional two-semester system.

History

Liberty Hall Academy became a college when it granted its first bachelor of arts degree in 1785, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher education in the country. George Washington gave the school its first significant endowment in 1796, $50,000, at the time the largest gift ever given to an educational institution in the United States, and Washington's gift continues to provide nearly three dollars a year toward every student's tuition. The board of trustees changed the name of the school to Washington Academy, and later Washington College, to honor him.

Liberty Hall 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 Academy (now Washington and Lee University) and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), becoming an ordained Presbyterian minister, and opening a school which 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.

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.

Arguably Lee's finest achievement was to transform 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 trades 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 also implemented an Honor System and Speaking Tradition at Washington College that continue to the present time. And, ardent about national unity, he successfully recruited students from the north.

After his death, after just five years as Washington College president, the school's name was changed to link his with Washington's. His son, George Washington Custis Lee, followed as the school's next president. Lee; his wife; his son; his father "Light Horse Harry" (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) and much of the Lee family 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 near the wall of the Chapel.

Honor System

Washington and Lee maintains a rigorous and unique Honor System. The original form of the system was implemented by Robert E. Lee, who said "We have but one rule here, and it is that every student must be a gentleman."

The Honor System has been run by the student body since 1906. Students vow, upon entering the University, to act honorably in both academic and nonacademic activities. While this is often interpreted as meaning that students should never lie, cheat, or steal in any way, the White Book governing the W&L Honor System directs that dishonorable behavior consists only of what the student body at any given time considers to be dishonorable. Any student who is found guilty of an Honor Violation by his or her peers is subject to the single sanction of the Honor System: expulsion. This process is overseen by the Executive Committee, a group of 13 students elected by the student body, which also serves as the general student government. The students' decision on expulsion for an honor offense is not reviewable by the faculty or administration.

The W&L Honor System is distinct from other academic Honor Systems such as those found at the neighboring Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia because it is not codified: that is to say, it does not have a concrete set of rules that define punishable behavior. The Honor System extends only to fundamental issues of honesty and integrity; other (more rigidly codified) disciplinary frameworks exist to address lapses of social and behavioral standards. Periodically, student-body-wide referenda are held to gauge each generation's appetite to maintain the System and its single penalty; the students always re-ratify the Honor System by a wide margin.

As a result, a sense of trust and safety pervades the campus. The faculty and staff always take students at their word (and indeed, local merchants unquestioningly accept their checks and extend credit). Exams at W&L are unproctored and self-scheduled. It is not unusual for professors to assign take-home, closed-book finals with an implicit -- no, explicit -- trust in their students not to cheat.

The infrequent student disregards the Honor System. Each year, a small number are expelled after trials conducted by the elected student government (with the accused usually counseled by law students). Recently, expulsions have ranged from 8 in the 2003-2004 school year to a more modest 2 in the 2004-2005 year. Students found guilty can appeal the verdict to the entire student body, although this daunting option is not often exercised.

Alumni of Note

Donald D. Hook, '50, Professor _emeritus_ at Trinity College, Hartford, and author of some 34 books and over 100 articles on various subjects. W & L tradition being upheld by granddaughter Catherine Hook, a sophomore! In total 27 alumni have served in the United States Senate, 67 have served in the United States House of Representatives, 31 have served as governor of a state, and 4 have served as Supreme Court Justices.

Student Activities

Washington and Lee's Trident Athletic Logo
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Washington and Lee's Trident Athletic Logo

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 conservative 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 receives gavel-to-gavel coverage on C-SPAN and attention from many other national media outlets.

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-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Sweet Briar, just north of Lynchburg, Hollins University near Roanoke, and Mary Baldwin in Staunton.

As of 2005, the University is 49% female, 51% male. [link] In 2006, the number of women receiving diplomas 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 formerly consisted of more than 95% white students. In recent years, that number has steadily decreased. The student body remains mostly white, but the number is currently a hair below 87%. [link]

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

Sororities

Sidelights

["The Washington and Lee Swing"] is one of the most well known — and widely borrowed — football marches ever written, according to Lissauer's Encyclopedia of Popular Music in America.

A Washington and Lee art history professor, Pamela Hemenway Simpson, in 1999 wrote the only scholarly book on linoleum, giving it the sublime title [Cheap, Quick and Easy.] The book also examines other home-design materials once used by the lower classes to emulate their betters.

"On Borrowed Time" by Professor Lawrence Edward Watkin (1937) was turned into an exceedingly sentimental but successful [Broadway play]. Watkin's next novel, "Geese in the Forum" (1940), was an allegory about campus politics (the geese were the faculty), and soon thereafter he left academia for Hollywood, where he wrote [screenplays] for Disney.

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. After their deaths, which occurred almost simultaneously in 1967, it emerged that in the early days of the century Louise Herreshoff Reeves had also secretly been an Impressionist painter of stupendous talent, certified when in 1976 the Corcoran Gallery in Washington mounted a posthumous one-women exhibition of her works. [Their story] is helped by the fact that he ("Boy") was almost 30 years younger than she ("Dol").

In 1913 a New York advertising executive and avid Civil War buff, Robert Doremus, and his wife visited the campus. A student came up to them and asked if he might show them around. The Doremuses were so impressed at this act of spontaneous friendliness that they bequeathed almost $1.5 million to the University, although they had no other connection to it.

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 in 1824, Robinson supplied a huge barrel of whisky, 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 whisky barrel with an ax.

The world's first recorded streaker — his name was William Crump — was a student at Washington College, in 1804. He later became a Congressman and America's ambassador to Chile.

External links

 

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