Bates College

Main article: History of Bates College Origins While attending and leading the Freewill Baptist Parsonsfield Seminary , Bates founder, Oren Burbank Cheney worked on various racial and gender equality, religious freedom, and temperance issues. [ 13 ] In 1836, Cheney enrolled in Dartmouth College , due to the school's significant support of the abolitionist cause against slavery. [ 13 ] After graduating, Cheney was ordained a Baptist minister and began to establish himself as an educational and religious scholar. [ 13 ] Parsonsfield mysteriously burned down in 1854, allegedly due to arson by opponents of abolition. [ 14 ] [ 13 ] The event caused Cheney to advocate for a new seminary in a more central part of Maine. [ 13 ] With Cheney's influence in the state legislature, the Maine State Seminary was chartered in 1855 and implemented a liberal arts and theological curriculum, making the first coeducational college in New England . [ 15 ] [ 16 ] Soon after establishment several donors stepped forward to finance portions of the school, such as Seth Hathorn , who donated the first library and academic building, which was renamed Hathorn Hall . [ 13 ] The Cobb Divinity School became affiliated with the college in 1866. Four years later in 1870, Bates sponsored a college preparatory school, called the Nichols Latin School . [ 13 ] The college was affected by the financial panic of the later 1850s and required additional funding to remain operational. [ 13 ] Cheney's impact in Maine was noted by Boston business magnate Benjamin Bates who developed an interest in the college. Bates gave $100,000 in personal donations and overall contributions valued at $250,000 to the college. [ 17 ] The school was renamed Bates College in his honor in 1863 and was chartered to offer a liberal arts curriculum beyond its original theological focus. [ 18 ] Two years later the college would graduate the first woman to receive a college degree in New England, Mary Mitchell .

[ 19 ] The college began instruction with a six-person faculty tasked with the teaching of moral philosophy and the classics. From its inception, Bates College served as an alternative to a more traditional and historically conservative Bowdoin College . [ 20 ] [ 21 ] There is a complex relationship between the two colleges, revolving around socioeconomic class, academic quality, and collegiate athletics. [ 22 ] [ 23 ] The college's garnet gateways in 1906 The college, under the direction of Cheney, rejected fraternities and sororities on grounds of unwarranted exclusivity. [ 22 ] He asked his close friend and U.S. Senator Charles Sumner to create a collegiate motto for Bates and he suggested the Latin phrase amore ac studio which he translated as "with love for learning" which has been taken as "with ardor and devotion," [ 24 ] or "through zeal and study." [ 25 ] Prior to the start of the American Civil War , Bates graduated Brevet Major Holman Melcher , who served in the Union Army in the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment . He was the first person to charge down Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg . [ 26 ] The college graduated the last surviving Union general of the American Civil War , Aaron Daggett . The college's first African-American student, Henry Chandler , graduated in 1874. [ 27 ] James Porter , one of General Custer 's eleven officers killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 was also a Bates graduate. In 1884, the college graduated the first woman to argue in front of the U.S. Supreme Court , Ella Haskell . [ 28 ]

Robert F. Kennedy (second from left), in front of Smith Hall, during Winter Carnival , 1944 In 1894, George Colby Chase led Bates to increased national recognition, [ 29 ] and the college graduated one of the founding members of the Boston Red Sox , Harry Lord . [ 30 ] [ 31 ] In 1920, the Bates Outing Club was founded and is one of the oldest collegiate outing clubs in the country, [ 32 ] the first at a private college to include both men and women from inception, and one of the few outing clubs that remain entirely student run. [ 33 ] The debate society of Bates College, the Brooks Quimby Debate Council , became the first college debate team in the United States to compete internationally, and is the oldest collegiate coeducational debate team in the United States. [ 34 ] In February 1920, the debate team defeated Harvard College during the national debate tournament held at Lewiston City Hall. In 1921, the college's debate team participated in the first intercontinental collegiate debate in history against the Oxford Union 's debate team at the University of Oxford . [ 35 ] Oxford's first debate in the United States was against Bates in Lewiston, in September 1923. [ 36 ] In addition during this time, numerous academic buildings were constructed throughout the 1920s. In 1943, the V-12 Navy College Training Program was introduced at Bates. Bates maintained a considerable female student body and "did not suffer [lack in student enrollment due to military service involvement] as much as male-only institutions such as Bowdoin and Dartmouth." [ 34 ] During the war, a victory ship was named the SS Bates Victory , after the college. [ 37 ] It was during this time future U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy enrolled along with hundreds of other sailor-students. [ 38 ] [ 39 ] The rise of social inequality and elitism at Bates is most associated with the 1940s, with an increase in racial and socioeconomic homogeneity.

The college began to garner a reputation for predominately educating white students who come from upper-middle-class to affluent backgrounds. [ 40 ] The New York Times detailed the atmosphere of the college in the 1960s with the following: "the prestigious Bates College—named for Benjamin E. Bates , whose riverfront mill on Canal Street in Lewiston was once Maine's largest employer—provided an antithesis: a leafy oasis of privilege. In the 1960s, it was really difficult for most Bates students to integrate in the community because most of the people spoke French and lived a hard life." [ 41 ] View from the steps of Hathorn Hall in 2015 During this time the college began to compete athletically with Colby College , and in 1964, with Bowdoin created the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Consortium . [ 42 ] In 1967, President Thomas Hedley Reynolds promoted the idea of teacher-scholars at Bates and secured the construction of numerous academic and recreational buildings. [ 43 ] In 1984, Bates became one of the first liberal arts colleges to make the SAT and ACT optional in the admission process. [ 44 ] Reynolds began the Chase Regatta in 1988, which features the President's Cup that is contested by Bates, Colby, and Bowdoin annually. In 1989, Donald West Harward became president of Bates and greatly expanded the college's overall infrastructure by building 22 new academic, residential and athletic facilities, including Pettengill Hall, the Residential Village, and the Coastal Center at Shortridge. [ 45 ] [ 46 ] During the 1990s and mid-2000s, Bates consolidated its reputation of being a "playground for the elite", [ 47 ] by educating upper-middle-class to affluent Americans, [ 48 ] [ 49 ] [ 50 ] which led to student protests and reforms to make the college more diverse, both racially and socioeconomically. [ 51 ] [ 52 ]