Reed College

Reed College is a liberal arts college with 1341 students as of the fall of 2004 (45% men and 55% women), located in Portland, Oregon in the Eastmoreland neighborhood. In August of 2005, The Princeton Review ranked Reed number 1 in its category "Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates."

Distinguishing features

Reed is one of the most unusual institutions of higher learning in the United States. It features a traditional liberal arts curriculum, requiring freshmen to take Humanities 110 - an intensive introduction to the Classics. Hum 110 (pronounced, "Hume"), as most students refer to it, covers ancient Greece and Rome as well as the Bible and ancient Jewish history. Its program in the sciences is likewise unusual -- Reed's TRIGA research reactor makes it the only school in the US to have a nuclear reactor operated almost entirely by undergraduates. Reed is also one of the few remaining schools that require all students to complete a thesis (a two-semester-long research project conducted under the guidance of professors) during the senior year as a prerequisite of graduation.

Related Topics:
United States - Classics - Greece - Rome - Bible - Ancient Jewish history - TRIGA - Nuclear reactor

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Reed is considered a haven for intense intellectuals and idealists. It promotes its dedication to "the life of the mind" to a greater degree than other liberal-arts colleges, and emphasizes its differences -- in both pedagogy and student life -- from similar institutions. Reed maintains a 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio, and its small classes emphasize a "conference" style, in which the teacher often acts as a mediator for discussion rather than a lecturer. While large lecture-style classes exist, Reed emphasizes its smaller lab and conference sections. Reed's high admissions standards also contribute to the intensity of the environment. Until relatively recently, the college accepted a large percentage of total applicants, due to the school's "self-selecting" nature - typically, only qualified, highly-motivated students submitted an application, leading to an acceptance rate of over 75%. This encourages the blossoming of many scholars inspired by the extremely intense academic experience, but also leads to some attrition even though the five-year graduation rate exceeds the national average. The class of 2009's average SAT score is 1368 and high school GPA was 3.9, with 44 percent of applicants accepted.

Related Topics:
Intellectual - Idealists - SAT - GPA

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Reed has no fraternities, sororities, or NCAA sports teams; all of which, in theory, allows students to concentrate as much of their energies as possible on studies. This has contributed to the stereotypes of Reed students being highly unathletic; but in fact many students are excellent athletes and physical education classes are required for graduation. Reed's ultimate frisbee and rugby teams have recently defeated teams from much more sports-centric schools.

Related Topics:
Fraternities - Sororities - NCAA - Ultimate frisbee - Rugby

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Reed is also one of the few colleges operating under an Honor Principle. First introduced as an agreement to promote ethical academic behavior, with the explicit end of relieving the faculty of the burden of policing student behavior, the Honor Principle was extended to cover all aspects of student life. There are few codified rules governing behavior; the onus is on students individually and as a community to define which behaviors are acceptable and which are not. "Honor Cases" (or discrete cases of grievance) are adjudicated by the "J-Board" (or Judicial Board), which consists of nine full-time students. There is also an "Honor Council" which consists of students, faculty, and staff, designed to educate the community and mediate conflict between individuals. Currently it only serves in the latter function. Commentators have noted that the only other institute of higher education to employ a student-run Honor Principle as successfully is West Point.

Related Topics:
Honor - Grievance - Higher education - West Point

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The official mascot of Reed is the griffin (pictured above). In mythology, the griffin often pulled the chariot of the sun, making the griffin the symbolic "protector of knowledge and bane of ignorance". The griffin was featured on the coat-of-arms of founder Simeon Reed and is now on the official seal of Reed College.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The official school color of Reed is called richmond rose, possibly in part because Portland is the City of Roses. Over the years, institutional memory of this fact has faded and the color appearing on the school's publications and merchandise has darkened to a shade of maroon, which many people now consider the de facto school color.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Reed College Canyon - a natural wilderness area - bisects the campus, separating the academic buildings from many of the dormitories (the so called cross-canyon dorms). A hallmark of the campus, the Blue Bridge or Sky Bridge, spans the canyon. It appears on almost every viewbook that the college circulates. The Blue Bridge did not always have blue lighting. For several years this was only done during Renn Fayre adding to the magical transformation of the campus.

Related Topics:
Reed College Canyon - Blue Bridge

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Unofficial mottos and folklore

An unofficial motto of Reed is "Communism, Atheism, and Free Love," and can be found in the Reed College Bookstore on sweaters, t-shirts, etc. The motto arose on t-shirts made in the mid-70's in ironic testament to the passing values of the 1960's, and has persisted to this date. An alternative motto appeared on shirts in the late 1980s as "Capitalism, Avarism, and Free Beer", but never overtook the original in popularity.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The college's least-loved dorm complex, MacNaugton and Foster-Scholz, is known on campus as "Asylum Block" because of its dated and unfriendly post-WWII modernist style.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Every year's Reed College Student Handbook (a manual on student life written by students, not to be confused with the College Handbook, which is written by college officials) contains a test called the "Reed College Immorality Quotient" that tests an individual's immorality on topics such as sex, theft, and drug use.

Related Topics:
Immorality - Sex - Theft - Drug use

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One of the unofficial symbols of Reed is the Doyle Owl, a roughly 280 pound (127 kg) concrete statue that has been continuously stolen and re-stolen since 1913. The on-campus folklore of events surrounding the Doyle Owl is sufficiently large that, in 1983, a senior thesis was written on the topic of the Owl's oral history. The original Doyle Owl was almost certainly destroyed many years ago, but a number of replicas (of varying degrees of quality) remain in circulation, contributing to the frequency of its appearance.

Related Topics:
Doyle Owl - 1983 - Oral history

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Famous on-campus myths claim there exist an intact MG under the concrete foundation of the college library, an underground primate lab working exclusively with snow monkeys under the Psychology building (the legend states that the presence of this lab was discovered when a snow monkey escaped into the Canyon and necessitated the closing of the facility), and a four-story lab/habitation arcology under the Physics building. There are many other such stories, often referred to as Reed legends.

Related Topics:
MG - Snow monkey - Arcology - Reed legends

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(Note: Unlike the circumstances of most Reed legends, there are still alumni alive who will vouch for the veracity of the MG story. Specifically, the vehicle's alleged owner claims that while he was abroad playing Capoeira in Europe one summer, several inbrebriated friends thought it might be funny to push his car into the foundation. . . and then could not remove it. Though the story cannot be confirmed, the alumnus still lives in Portland and is still pissed about the whole event.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The placement of a copper time capsule in Eliot Hall is suggested in the blueprints but has not been confirmed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~