Earlham College

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For other places with the same name, see Earlham (disambiguation).

**Earlham College**

Motto	Engagement with a Changing World
Established	1847
Type	private coeducational
Endowment	$384 million^[1]
President	Douglas C. Bennett
Faculty	93^[2]
Undergraduates	1,185^[3]
Location	Richmond, IN, USA
Campus	large town: 800 acres (3.2 km²)
Athletics	16 Division III NCAA teams
Colors	maroon and white
Nickname	The Hustlin' Quakers^[4]
Mascot	Mr. Quaker
Affiliations	Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
Website	www.earlham.edu

Earlham College is a national, selective Quaker liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It was founded in 1847 and has approximately 1,200 students. The current president is Douglas C. Bennett. In keeping with Friends belief in equality, everyone addresses each other at Earlham by his/her first name, without the use of titles, such as 'Doctor'/'Professor.'

While Earlham is primarily a residential undergraduate college, it does have two graduate programs — the Master of Arts in Teaching and the Master of Education — which provide a route for teacher licensure to students with liberal arts undergraduate degrees. Additionally, there are two associated institutions located adjacent to the Earlham campus: Earlham School of Religion, a Christian graduate theological school in the Quaker tradition, and Bethany Theological Seminary, an independent Brethren institution offering graduate and non-degree programs.

1 Campus, Curriculum and Community
2 Athletics
3 Trivia
4 Non Consensus Issues
- 4.1 Student Life Issues
- 4.2 Visiting Speakers
5 Notable Earlhamites
- 5.1 Notable Alumni
- 5.2 Notable Faculty
6 External links
7 References

[edit] Campus, Curriculum and Community

Earlham College sits on an 800 acre (3.2 km²) campus, the majority of which is undeveloped forest and meadow. The undeveloped 'back campus' area is criss-crossed by trails for the enjoyment of the student body as well as serving as a readily accessible outdoor classroom. Earlham is nationally recognized for its strong programs in Biology, Japanese Studies,and Peace and Global Studies. The Earlham Libraries are known for their course-integrated program of information literacy instruction. Notably, Earlham ranks 8th in the nation (out of 1,302 colleges and universities) in its percentage of graduates who go on to receive a Ph.D. in the Biological Sciences and 26th in the percentage of students going on to Ph.D. programs in all fields.

Earlham has an extensive Outdoor Education program which features its own indoor climbing wall. Tucked into Earlham's 'back campus' is a high and low ropes challenge course. Earlham was one of the first colleges in the country to send students on wilderness backpacking trips, known as August Wilderness (either to the Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah for the 'mountain program' or to Wabakimi Provincial park in Ontario, Canada for the 'water program') or other outdoor adventures during first-year orientation. (August Wilderness is not a prerequisite for entry, however). Today many colleges have adopted such programs. Earlham also has a state-of-the-art equestrian center that is student-run.

Earlham ranks high among liberal arts schools of its size with regard to student body diversity. Earlham has sizable black and Jewish populations. International students comprise 10% of the student body. There are small numbers of Catholics, Unitarian Universalists, Muslims, Buddhists, Evangelical Protestants, United Church of Christ and Bahá'í students, and a large number of students affiliated with mainline Protestant denominations. There are also atheists, agnostics, and non-denominationalists. Between 10 and 20 percent of the student population belongs to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

The faculty at Earlham provide a rigorous curriculum and engage students in collaborative research. The student to faculty ratio is approximately 12:1.

Earlham College has a high number of faculty-led off-campus programs. Almost two-thirds of Earlham students go on a semester-length off-campus program to such destinations as Mexico, Vienna, Martinique, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, the Southwestern U.S., Japan and Tanzania. In addition, there are a number of shorter off-campus May Terms, with destinations both within the US and abroad (Galapagos, Senegal, Menorca, Turkey as recent examples). Earlham has a formal exchange program with Waseda University in Japan, which has existed informally for decades. Each year about a dozen students from each school experience a year of student life at the other university. In addition, Earlham College works with the SICE program in Morioka, Japan, a program in which about twelve to fourteen students teach English in grade schools in Morioka.

Earlham College is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association.

Earlham is unique in that it has an entirely student-managed public radio station, WECI 91.5FM.

The Joseph Moore Musem is a natural history museum located on campus and run by students and Biology department faculty. The focus is Indiana's natural history. It is open to the public (free of charge) and tours are available upon request.

[edit] Athletics

Earlham College is also a member of the North Coast Athletic Conference. While not an outstanding athletic school, Earlham has won championships in men's cross country and has an Ultimate team. The athletics teams are known as the Quakers. They originally had been the Fightin' Quakers; although the name was meant tongue-in-cheek, it was changed in the 1980s to the Hustlin' Quakers after the college's board of regents decided that it was inappropriate for Quakers to fight. In the 1990s, the name was changed again to simply Quakers. Amongst the student-body, the chant sometimes sung publicly is

Fight, Fight, Inner Light!

Kill, Quakers, Kill!

Knock 'em Down, Beat 'em Senseless!

Do It til We Reach Consensus!

Also:

Fight, Fight, Inner Light!

Kill, Quakers, Kill!

Beat 'em, Beat 'em, Knock 'em Senseless!

Tell Me, Do We Have Consensus?

[edit] Trivia

Earlham has the only student-run Hash House Harriers running group, founded in 1989 and still continuing at present. Loosely connected with national organizations, the student group maintains weekly runs and has been described by visitors as the "Galapagos of Hashes" for the creativity and development of hashing practices. The "Hash" run takes place nearly every Saturday afternoon on the 'back campus' during all seasons.

Weekend entertainment is brought by the Student Activities Board. The 2005-2006 school year featured performances by Aesop Rock, RJD2, Xiu Xiu, Jens Lekman, Cunninlynguists, Taylor Mali and Enon.

The Joseph Moore Museum is home to one of the most complete giant beaver (Castoroides ohioensis) skeletons in the world. Recognising its value, a student rescued the skeleton from a burning building during the Lindley Hall fire in 1924.[[1]]

In April 2004, a highly disorganized student prank turned all of the books in the main Lily Library right side up . To the dismay of the pranksters, all of the books were turned upside down by May 2004.

Earlham College remains the only American university allowing one to study aardvarks extensively in their native habitat in the Kakamega Forest. [2]

[edit] Non Consensus Issues

A great deal of effort is made at Earlham to stress its emphasis upon reaching consensus on any issue of import. For example, student organizations are strongly encouraged to not operate according to majority vote or steering committee but instead adopt Quaker-based consensus governance. This principle supposedly guides the institution as a whole [3]. In practice, Earlham is run according to a model indistinguishable from the majority of other colleges of its size, albeit claiming to do so in "the spirit of consensus-seeking".

Therefore, when matters exist for which consensus is not reached among all members of the Earlham community, the lack of consensus, in and of itself, can become an issue. Thus, these matters are known as "non consensus issues".

[edit] Student Life Issues

Earlham's "dry campus" policy is controversial among members of the student body and some faculty members. Drinking is fairly commonplace, with some students referring to the campus as "pleasantly moist".

Tension sometimes arises between students and the Quaker Indiana and Western Yearly Meetings over issues of sexuality. Western and even more so Indiana Yearly Meeting tend to be more conservative on issues such as condom distribution, pregnancy, and homosexuality. This tension has been a recurrent feature of Earlham life for decades.

Earlham College only recently adopted a pregnancy policy, despite its progressive reputation. Before this there were no explicit guidelines in the event that a student became pregnant. The new policy states that pregnant women may reside in on-campus housing, but are also offered a housing exemption if they so desire.

Until lately the distribution of condoms (and other contraceptive devices) on campus was restricted to health services. Recently prophylactic devices have become available outside the room of each hall's Resident Assistant.

[edit] Visiting Speakers

Other points of contention were political, mostly involving conservative speakers invited to campus. While some students are hostile to these speakers because of their political views, other students enjoyed the chance to hear speakers with divergent points of view.

In late March of 2005, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard was hit in the face with an ice cream pie by a student during a lecture he gave on campus [4]. This event made national and international news and was carried by many leading news outlets. Many students and faculty at the lecture showed strong disapproval of the act and applauded when Kristol resumed his talk. The "pie-ing" quickly became a divisive issue among Earlham students and faculty. Some of the main areas of contention included whether or not throwing a pie is a violent act, how or whether the student that threw the pie should be punished for that action, the importance of free speech, how to improve political diversity on campus, and whether a Quaker-affiliated school should provide a venue and funding for a speaker who openly and avidly supports the Iraq War.

Other conservative (and libertarian) speakers have been welcomed at Earlham in the past, in spite of the trend for students and faculty at Earlham to have more liberal-left political leanings. Conservative speakers such as former U.S. President Richard Nixon (then a freshman Congressman and a lifelong member of a Quaker Meeting himself), Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar, Christina Hoff Sommers, Michelle Easton, Kay Hiemenowitz, Ward Connerly, Andrew Sullivan and Stanley Kurtz received warm receptions despite their different perspective from many students. Famed columnist and right-wing political pundit Ann Coulter's talk on campus in November of 2001 was more provocative. After the September 11th attacks on America, Coulter's weekly column ("This is War", 9/14/01), featured the statement that "we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." This statement bothered the student and faculty body alike greatly, and a student-organized, counter-project called H.A.H.A. (Help Ann Help Arabs) was devised to raise money (approximately $2000) to balance out the money needed to bring Coulter. During her talk, an array of folded peace cranes was dropped from the balcony and one student approached Coulter himself and put an orange on the podium, exclaiming "I disagree with you but I don't hate you..." (This action was prompted by the fact that some students at Cornell University - Coulter's alma mater, threw oranges at her during a speech she gave there). Despite her antagonism with a packed house of students, faculty and community members, Coulter was able to complete her lecture and take questions from the audience.

However, while there have been some notable exceptions, the majority of speakers that are invited to Earlham reflect leftist viewpoints. Major left-leaning personalities visiting campus in recent years include (in no particular order) Cornel West, Bell Hooks, Rashid Khalidi, Frances Moore Lappe, Ralph Nader, Jackson Katz, Angela Davis, Anthony Romero, Leslie Feinberg, Adam Shapiro, Malik Shabazz, Dianne Nash, George Lakoff, Victoria Jackson Gray Adams, Michael Shellenberger, Howard Zinn, Nikki Giovanni, Ali Abunimah and Margaret Cho. Every spring semester, typically in March, Earlham hosts the Carter Peace Lecture, a lecture devoted to the topic of peacemaking; recent speakers include John Perkins, Max Carter, and Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the S.O.A. Watch. In addition, Earlham has hosted a wide variety of well-known entertainers, often with a political theme, including Aretha Franklin, Bill Cosby, The Indigo Girls, David Sedaris, The San Francisco Mime Troupe, The Chicago Kings, Stacey Ann Chin, Melissa Ferrick, Jessica Delfino, The Trachtenberg Family Slide Show, Alix Olson, Joules Graves, The Guerrilla Girls, Doria Roberts, Bitch and Animal, and former student David Rovics.

[edit] Notable Earlhamites

[edit] Notable Alumni

C. Ernest Beane - General Counsel for MWABank. Also on its Board of Directors.
William Buskirk - Ornithologist and Professor of Biology at Earlham
Andres Thomas Conteris-Activist
David Denslow - Distinguished Service and Research Professor at the University of Florida
Jim Fowler, star of Wild Kingdom
Amos Glick - Collective Member, San Francisco Mime Troupe
Thomas Gottschalk - General Motors, Executive Vice President
Tim Grimm - Actor, appeared extensively with Harrison Ford in Clear and Present Danger
Rana K. Gupta - Director at Navigator Technology Ventures (NTV), an affiliate of Draper Laboratory. Started two companies: *IndoSine U.S. Link Ltd and International Solutions.
Michael C. Hall - Actor on HBO's Six Feet Under
Thomas J. Hochstettler - President, Lewis & Clark College
Deborah Hull - Former CEO of MedCases, Inc and Ovid Technologies
Charles A. Johnson, retired vice president for development, Lilly Endowment Inc.
Mat Johnson, African-American novelist.
Thomas Kirk, director of Earlham's Lilly Library
Frances Moore Lappé - activist and author of Diet For a Small Planet
John Loose - Corning, CEO [5]
James S. Malek - Provost, Ithaca College
Manning Marable - Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies at Columbia University
Jana Matthews - Boulder Quantum Ventures, CEO [6]
Elephant Micah- Lo-fi/indie recording artist
Steve Miller - Former Associated Press bureau chief in Germany.
Mark B. Myers - Xerox Corporation, Senior Vice President (1992-2000). Senior Fellow, Wharton Business School
Joanna Olmsted - Dean of College Faculty, University of Rochester.
Larry Overman - Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Steve Paulson - Radio Producer, Peabody Award winner
Polly Penhale - Environmental Officer, Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation
Robert Quine - influential punk guitarist and member of The Voidoids
David Rasmussen - Dean, College of Social Sciences, Florida State University.
Marc Reisner - Environmental writer; documentarian. Author of Cadillac Desert
Andrea Seabrook - Congressional reporter for National Public Radio
Stephen Schutt - President, Lake Forest College.
Wendell Stanley - winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
David C. Stump, M.D. - Human Genome Sciences, Executive Vice President
Edwin Way Teale - author and naturalist
Frederick Van Nuys, U.S. Senator from Indiana 1932-1944
Amy Walters - Producer, National Public Radio
Kenneth Wollack - President of the National Democratic Institute [7]
Zack Warren - Ran the Boston Marathon while juggling in 2 hours, fifty-eight minutes. [8]

[edit] Notable Faculty

Landrum Bolling - former president, Current Director at Large of Mercy Corps. Back channel between Yasir Arafat and Jimmy Carter.
Wayne C. Booth - (former) Professor of English- Literary Critic; author of The Rhetoric of Fiction and The Company We Keep.
Ferit Guven - Associate Professor of Philosophy. The author of Madness and Death in Philosophy.
Del Harris, former Earlham basketball coach; current NBA coach
John Hunt - (former) Professor of English, Faulkner Scholar.
Caroline Higgins - Professor of Peace and Global Studies and History, listed in The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America by David Horowitz
John Iverson - Professor of Biology. Turtle Expert. [9]
Paul Lacey - Professor Emeritus of English. Literary executor to the late poet Denise Levertov.
JoAnn Martin - Professor of Anthropology, The author of Tepoztlan and the Transformation of the Mexican State.
Peter Suber - Research Professor of Philosophy, creator of the game Nomic, and a leader in the open access movement.