The Oregonian wishes Reed a happy 100th and discusses Reed's relationship with Portland.
oregonlive.com“What to make of college students who play rugby in prom dresses or, in the absence of big-time sport teams, have as a Friday night football cheer: “Schopenhauer, Marx, Kant, Spinoza/Come on Reed, hit ‘em in the nosa!” Or better yet, the all-occasion, all-purpose mantra: “Atheism, Communism, Free Love!”
Then again, what to make of college students who spend their senior year in the grip of original research and write book-length manuscripts with titles such as “The effect of inorganic shell growth on exciton recombination rates in CdSe quantum dots” or “Persistence, parental cultivation of capital, and racial inequality in elite higher education”?
At the elite Reed College in Portland, it doesn’t quite matter. What does matter is the uncompromised quest and unvarnished wit – however irreverent – that goes along with it.”
OPB's latest episode of the Oregon Experience is a documentary about Reed College.
opb.orgThere’s footage of all kinds (from interviews with C-Divvy and alumni to a recent Thesis Parade) and all sorts of good information about Reed’s history, heritage, and mission.
“I hope that Reed will continue to stand staunchly, and if necessary, stand alone, for whatever Reed college considered right.” — William Trufant Foster
The description from OPB’s website:
OREGON EXPERIENCE: REED examines the history of a college striving to live up to its founders’ ideals while continually confronting a wide range of public opinion.
Just before the turn of the century, Thomas Lamb Eliot, a young minister in Portland, had a vision of creating a college in the growing city. He shared that dream with Simeon Reed, a wealthy friend and confidant. Reed, one of the founders of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, made a bequest in his will for the establishment of an institution of higher learning in Portland. His widow, Amanda, was determined to fulfill her husband’s wishes, but when she died, the convoluted terms of the will took years to unravel. In the end, it was decided that Reed would be a liberal arts college where students would come to learn “for the sake of learning.”
Its first young president, William Trufant Foster, was determined to make Reed an intellectual hot house of academic freedom. He recruited faculty from around the country. With an average age under 30, this new guard soon began to achieve renown.
From its early days, there was a complicated town/gown relationship between Reed and Portland. From radicalism to financial crises to unconventional teaching methods to experiments with co-ed living arrangements as early as the 1950s, there has been no shortage of controversy associated with Reed. But with the third highest percentage of students in the country going on to obtain their Ph.D. degrees, along with an extraordinary number of Rhodes and Fulbright Scholars and other honors, Reed is considered among the nation’s academic elites. And, unlike most of its peer institutions, Reed, with an enrollment of about 1,400 students, still has no varsity sports teams, fraternities or sororities.
The story is richly woven together with interviews from Reed alumni from over the years, and photos and film from the archives of Reed College.
A current junior on longing for class.
“Daydreaming of Sitting in Class” from Voices from Reed, by Robert Shyrock ‘13
This blog post intends to dismantle a myth about Reed. The myth is that Reedies don’t do anything except work, that they never leave the library—that they read a million pages a night and write a hundred pages a day. I can disprove this myth simply using my current schedule. I’m taking three classes, two of which are as hard as any class I’ve taken. At the same time, I’m working as an Editor of theQuest (which consumes anywhere from 8 to 15 hours a week), as an Admissions Intern (6 hours a week) and as a Phonathon caller (6 hours a week). And I’ve still had ample time to watch old episodes of Hey Arnold! and Play Civilization V. I’ve had time to play with my cat, roast coffee, and learn how to knit.
The whole reason that I took on so much non-academic work (besides the obvious monetary benefits) was that I thought it would provide an engaging break from my academics. And it does. Getting to know prospective students at the admissions office reminds me of the exciting times of my own college search. Talking to alumni on the phone reassures me that I’ll probably be able to get a job when I graduate. Being a Quest editor, if nothing else, has taught me that the Quest Office is an excellent place for power naps.
But lately, I’ve had a problem.
I find myself longing for academics during my breaks. Sometimes, as I talk to alumni I find myself pondering what the thesis of my final paper should be. Should it be “Prayer has the power to both unite and divide a community” or “Prayer shuts the door of the status quo but opens the windows of dissent?” Sometimes, as I’m writing an article for the Quest, I’ll think about how Reed emulates utopian communities from places as disparate as 19th century America and the 8th century Middle East. So instead of sitting in class and daydreaming of sitting on the front lawn, I’m sitting at work and daydreaming of sitting in class. And I realized that sometimes, even when all my work is done, I’d rather be doing an extra bit of studying than anything else.
To me, this shows something really great about Reed - namely, that academic engagement doesn’t end when one walks out of the classroom. I still feel engaged with what I’ve learned in class after I leave. So I won’t be running for re-election for theQuest Board next semester- not because I’m too busy to get the work done, but because I want to be able to spend that extra hour on the reading I really love, or to be able to grab a secondary source from the library to add some context to my paper. The biggest myth about work at Reed is that Reedies have too much assigned work to be able to do anything else. In my case, and I feel this is the case for many Reedies, I spend an extra hour in the library because its what I love to do, not because its what I have to do.
