Williams College

Colonel Ephraim Williams was an officer in the Massachusetts militia and a member of a prominent landowning family. Williams was killed at the Battle of Lake George on September 8, 1755. His will included a bequest to support and maintain a free school to be established in the town of West Hoosac, Massachusetts, provided the town change its name to Williamstown. [ 8 ] Members of the Williams family first attempted to found Queens College in Hatfield, Massachusetts , in 1762. The charter was revoked within a year when Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard succumbed to pressure from Harvard College , which opposed the creation of a second institution of higher learning in the colonial-era Province of Massachusetts Bay . In 1765, the west township was incorporated as Williamstown. Five years later, the town's proprietors brought the executors of Williams' estate before the General Court to dispute the delay in establishment of the free school, and in 1795, the Massachusetts legislature finally granted the school its charter. [ 9 ] The Williamstown Free School opened with 15 students on October 26, 1791. The first president was Ebenezer Fitch . Not long after its founding, the school's trustees petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to convert the free school to a tuition-based college. The legislature agreed and on June 22, 1793, Williams College was chartered. It was the second college to be founded in Massachusetts. Depiction of West College, which composed the entire college in its early years. At its founding, the college maintained a policy of racial segregation, refusing admission to black applicants. This policy was challenged by Lucy Terry Prince , who is credited as the first black American poet, [ 10 ] when her son Festus was refused admission on account of his race.

[ 11 ] Prince, who had established a reputation as a raconteur [ 12 ] and rhetorician, delivered a three-hour speech before the college's board of trustees, quoting abundantly from scripture, but was unable to secure her son's admission. [ 11 ] Later scholarship questions whether these events occurred as Festus Prince may have been refused entry for an insufficient mastery of Latin, Greek, and French, all of which were necessary for successful completion of the entrance exam at the time, and which would most likely not have been available in the local schools of Guilford, Vermont , where Festus was raised. [ 13 ] In 1806, a student prayer meeting gave rise to the American Foreign Mission Movement. In August of that year, five students met in the maple grove of Sloan's Meadow to pray. A thunderstorm drove them to the shelter of a haystack, and the fervor of the ensuing meeting inspired them to take the Gospel abroad. The students went on to build the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions , the first American organization to send missionaries overseas. The Haystack Monument near Mission Park on the Williams Campus commemorates the historic " Haystack Prayer Meeting ". Zephaniah Swift Moore, the second president of the college and first president of Amherst College By 1815, Williams had only two buildings and 58 students and was in financial trouble, so the board voted to move the college to Amherst, Massachusetts . In 1821, the president of the college, Zephaniah Swift Moore , who had accepted his position believing the college would move east, decided to proceed with the move. He took 15 students with him, and re-founded the college under the name of Amherst College . Some students and professors decided to stay at Williams and were allowed to keep the land, which was at the time relatively worthless. Moore died just two years later after founding Amherst, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey , a trustee of Williams College.

[ 14 ] Thompson Memorial Church, early 20th century Edward Dorr Griffin was appointed President of Williams and is widely credited with saving Williams during his 15-year tenure. A Williams student, Gardner Cotrell Leonard, of Albany, New York, whose family owned the city's Cotrell & Leonard department store, designed the gowns he and his classmates wore to graduation in 1887. [ 15 ] Seven years later he advised the Inter-Collegiate Commission on Academic Costume, which met at Columbia University , and established the current system of U.S. academic dress . [ 16 ] One reason gowns were adopted in the late 19th century was to eliminate the differences in apparel between rich and poor students. [ 17 ] Gardner Cotrell Leonard went on to edit the book The Songs of Williams , a collection of songs sung at the college. During World War II , Williams College was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. [ 18 ] Originally a men's college , Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this period, beginning in 1962. [ 6 ] Following a liberal arts curriculum, Williams College provides undergraduate instruction in 25 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs including 36 majors in the humanities , arts , social sciences , and natural sciences . Williams offers an almost entirely undergraduate instruction, though there are two graduate programs in development economics and art history . [ 19 ] The college maintains affiliations with the nearby Clark Art Institute and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), and has a close relationship with Exeter College , Oxford University , where the school runs a year-long study abroad program for juniors. The college competes as the Ephs in the NCAA Division III as a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference .

Their athletic program has been highly successful, winning 22 of 29 College Directors' Cups for NCAA Division III. [ 20 ] Williams is a highly selective school with an acceptance rate of 8% for the Class of 2025. [ 21 ] It has ranked first in U.S. News & World Report' s rankings of National Liberal Arts Colleges every year since 2004. [ 22 ] In April 2022, Williams transitioned to an all grants system for financial aid, one of the few institutions of higher learning in the United States to do so. [ 23 ] Coeducation Though Williams College officially began the process of coeducation in the late 1960s, women integrated the college as early as the 1930s. Beatrice Irene Wasserscheid (née Acly) was the first woman to be awarded a Williams degree after successfully petitioning the trustees to pursue a master of arts degree in American literature. [ 24 ] She received her master's degree in June 1931. That same decade, in 1935, Emily Cleland became the first woman to teach at Williams when she finished teaching her late husband's geology course after he died in an accident. [ 25 ] The first tenured woman faculty member at the college, Doris DeKeyselingk, oversaw the Russian department beginning in 1958. [ 26 ] During his time as president of Williams College, John E. Sawyer officially initiated the process of coeducation. After overseeing the abolition of fraternities, Sawyer created a faculty-trustee committee, the Committee on Coordinate Education and Related Questions, in 1967 to explore options for coeducation and co-ordinate education. [ 27 ] In response to the Committee on Coordinate Education's final report, the trustees voted in June 1969 to regularly admit women undergraduate students in fall 1971. [ 26 ] The college welcomed 137 women as first-year students in fall 1971.