Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Southern Ivies

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep (no consensus). Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:47, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Southern Ivies

This article was previously deleted in this AFD, but the page has brought up to Deletion review and some of the objections in the old afd (especially it being unsourced) were fixed. Since the page is substantially different, CSD G4 does not apply anymore. I'm relisting for courtesy, my vote is keep. Titoxd^(?!?) 06:29, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep How is this violating the rules for Wikipedia? They cite it as colloqiual and include an outside reference to the term. Maybe instead of deletion it should be marked for more information. Kstrubb
• Keep a fair article for the subject jnothman ^talk 07:06, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Phil Sandifer 07:12, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep legit topic. Dottore So 10:33, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Hipocrite - «Talk» 13:19, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: In what way does this substantially add to the article on ivy league universites? Just curious. Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] :: AfD? 13:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete This article seems to be based solely on subjective opinions about which Southern colleges are "Ivy league-caliber." To its credit, the article now states that this is a "colloquial term" and that "the designation of "Southern Ivy" has no official meaning." However, unlike other Ivy League colloquialisms with no official meaning, "Southern Ivy" does not appear to have published material ("Public Ivies"), historical context ("Jesuit Ivy") or documented usage ("Little Ivies") to support its listing as an encyclopedia article. The sources provided (an entry from a Job-Seeking chat room and a reference to a 1960's letter to the editor from a sports blog) suggest that "Southern Ivy" has very limited currency, official or otherwise. They also reemphasize how subjective this term is. In fact, the apparent "neutral" criterion for inclusion in the article--a ranking among the top-50 in US News & World Report--does not legitimize the term any more than a similar criterion would legitimize an article on the "Midwest Ivies," the "Harvard of the West," or other inherently subjective colloquialisms. 129.105.35.130 17:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep encyclopedic topic.--Dakota ^{t e} 18:06, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Comment The question on this one is whether or not this phrase really stands on its own, or whether calling a school a [name of region] "Ivy" is just a way of opining that it is a very good regional school. I am going to try a test. I do not know yet how it will turn out. I am going to try an online search of The New York Times for the exact phrase "Southern Ivy" and the exact phrase "Southern Ivies." If either of them gets any (relevant) hits, I'll vote keep, on the assumption that if it's really a well-defined, frequently used phrase at least one mention of it should have crept into The New York Timies sometime. Otherwise, I'll vote delete. Here goes. "Southern Ivy," 2000-2005: Nope. "Southern Ivies," 2000-2005: Nope. "Southern Ivy," 1857-2000: Three hits. One reference to "Southern Ivy" as a church Easter decoration in 1902; one to a horse named "Southern Ivy" that ran in a race at Aqueduct on Nov. 24, 1999; and one to an athletic sports meet listing "Automatic NCAA Bids" where a table in which "Appalachian State...Southern" and "Pennsylvania...Ivy League" was erroneously picked up by the search engine as a reference to "Southern Ivy." "Southern Ivies," 1857-2000 picks up exactly the same hits.

Before I act precipitously, a reality check on my self-chosen criterion. A search on "little Ivies" plus "Amherst" turns up a hit mentioning "Amherst College, a partner with Williams and Wesleyan in the Little Ivy League." "Public Ivies" turns up several relevant hits, with headlines like "Ivy League Finds Itself Locked in Bidding War For Prospective Students" and "An Eminent Voice Pleads for the Soul of Rutgers" and "Suddenly, State Universities Have More Allure." Dpbsmith (talk) 18:42, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. "Public Ivies" and "Little Ivies" are well-enough known and frequently-enough used to have been mentioned in the New York Times; "Southern Ivies" is not. You need not agree with my criterion, but that's the criterion I'm using. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:42, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Waffling. On the other hand, a search in Google Groups for exact phrase "Southern Ivy" gets 25 hits, which is reasonably high for Groups (other things being equal you usually get about 1/4 to 1/10 as many hits in Groups as in a Google Web search) and most of these are colloquial uses to describe Southern schools, although a couple are to the racehorse. There are a couple of posts that suggest there is a Southern Ivy League athletic conference; is that right? My vote above stands for the moment... Dpbsmith (talk) 18:50, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Comment From some of those hits I got the impression there might be an actual athletic Southern Ivy League, but there isn't. this 2004 web page, answers the query: "Is there any truth to the possibility of an Ivy League South forming? Baylor, Rice, Vanderbilt and other like schools like this would form the new division" with the reply "I have not heard any serious discussion about a 'southern ivy league' forming and believe it to be highly unlikely. I believe that most of the schools that would be under consideration for such a league are fully committed to their current conferences." A Google search on ncaa "Southern Ivy League" does show that such a conference has been frequently proposed. An article about Tulane says, for example, "From the late 1950s, there was growing talk that the Green Wave could no longer compete in the SEC. A 'Southern Ivy League' consisting of schools like Rice, Southern Methodist, Duke, Vanderbilt and Tulane was constantly advocated, but each of the other schools decided to stay in their league." I'm not changing my vote, at least not for the moment; delete, but allow re-creation without prejudice as a history of the various proposals and failed efforts to create a "Southern Ivy League" athletic conference, as such an article could obviously be objective, neutral and encyclopedic. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:02, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete: I still have to vote to delete. The meaning of the term is better covered at Wiktionary. The question is whether there is substance for an encyclopedia article on the Southern Ivies as they are. Since who they are is still and evermore shall be a debate (is Emory one? why not? is Tulane one? why? is Davidson one? why and why not?), there is little chance to talk definitively about what they are and what they do and what they hope for. The context is virtually impossible to establish, other than as a testimony to the inferiority complex we in the South have been handed about our schools. Geogre 19:03, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, recreation of previously-AFD'd article. The speedy deletion should have been maintained. User:Zoe|^(talk) 01:36, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, poorly defined, currently just shy of a definition. - brenneman^(t)(c) 02:21, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't see any definition at all. The present article could just as well be moved to List of Southern colleges ranking in the U. S. News and World Report Top 50 or Private Southern colleges that Wikipedia editors think are really really good or Harvards of the South. Dpbsmith (talk) 03:05, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Umm, that's exactly what I meant. Must practice my english. - brenneman^(t)(c) 03:41, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, again. Seems very close to the just-deleted Southern Ivy League article to me. If there's now a bit of evidence this phrase is, in fact, occasionally used, I don't yet see evidence that there's enough to say about it to provide even the most minimally interesting of encyclopedia articles. And it still smacks of me-too boosterism to me. -- Rbellin|Talk 03:22, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. This is not an article, it's boosterism. WP:NOT and all that. Friday (talk) 03:28, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, perfectly valid topic. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:48, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep a legit topic Fertray 15:43, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
  • User's 10th edit -- previous 9 all to AFD. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:33, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• keep this please the topic is valid Yuckfoo 01:02, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. If indeed there is "no official meaning," and this is just a way of saying "what some people consider to be prestigious universities in the south" then this does not merit an entire Wikipedia article. Perhaps an entry in Wiktionary? -172.146.86.158 03:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
• Comment Have a look at my proposal at Wikipedia:Ivies. Comments welcome at Wikipedia_Talk:Ivies. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:55, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Southerners know this term...it's used often. Just leave it alone and let a legitimate part of our culture have its place. - Vandy

If it's well-known, used often, and a part of southern culture, than it should not be difficult to provide much better source citations than the very sketchy ones we presently have. Find me a couple of good ones and I'll change my vote. I personally made a good-faith, due-diligence effort to find evidence that it is a recognized idiom in reasonaly widespread use, and did not succeed.

Let me try one more. Once again, I haven't tried this yet and don't know yet how it will turn out. To see whether the University of Vermont calls itself a "public ivy," I will perform a Google site search for site:www.uvm.edu "public ivy". 38 hits (although interestingly enough the self-references seem to be mostly to its having formerly been a "public ivy!"). Now let's try a similar search on Duke: site:www.duke.edu "Southern Ivy". No hits.

If Duke doesn't even call itself a "Southern Ivy," then I don't think Wikipedia should. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:34, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

P. S. site:www.amherst.edu has no hits on "little Ivy" but one on "little Ivies" so I retried Duke using "Southern Ivies" Still no hits. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:33, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. Academic boosterism. An extremely rarely-used neologism with "no official meaning" and "which schools make up the list is a matter of opinion"? WP:NOT a dictionary, a propaganda machine, nor an indiscriminate collection of information. Dragonfiend 17:32, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: a JSTOR search for "southern ivy" gives meagre results, only two hits, but including the following, quoted with its most immediate context, indicating some degree of colloquial usage at the time (1967). FWIW. --u p p l a n d 18:24, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

The institutions of higher learning best understood by the North are the comparatively new private universities, such as Vanderbilt, Duke, and Emory, which are new in the sense that through large private endowments they have developed from small church colleges (Methodist in the case of the three mentioned). A university of this type will sometimes refer to itself as "the Princeton of the South" or as a member of the "Southern Ivy League." (J. Allen Smith, "The South and Foreign Affairs: The Hope for Subcultures" [review of Charles O. Lerche, Jr.: The Uncertain South, and Alfred O. Hero, Jr., The Southerner and World Affairs], in: World Politics, Vol. 19, No. 2. [Jan. 1967]. Quote from p. 349.[1])

Your search - site:www.vanderbilt.edu "southern ivy" - did not match any documents.

Your search - site:www.vanderbilt.edu "southern ivies" - did not match any documents.

Your search - site:www.emory.edu "southern ivy" - did not match any documents.

Your search - site:www.emory.edu "southern ivies" - did not match any documents.

It would seem that, as of 2005, they don't do it any more. In public, anyway.

Interestingly enough, "Princeton of the South" exact phrase gets quite a lot of Web hits, and a much larger cross-section of schools seem to get into the Princeton action than the Ivy action: Sewanee, Davidson, University of Richmond, Samford, Stewart, Rice, as well as Duke and UNC. Which leads to the question: should the Southern Ivies include all of the Princetons of the South? Dpbsmith (talk) 19:49, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

!!!!!! There are more hits on "Harvard of the South"than on "Southern Ivies." Maybe we should move this to Harvard of the South. See this site for an amusing discussion of "Harvard of the South." The writer says that "Of those eleven states, only Alabama does not claim to have a single HotS." Dpbsmith (talk) 19:52, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Only 37 on "Yale of the South." Some of the usual suspects appear, but here we also find "University of Louisville School of Law, the Yale of the South." Is the Yale of the South a Southern Ivy, then? How about the University of Arizona, another "Yale of the South?" This site calls Sewanee the "Cornell of the South;" This one calls Davidson the "Dartmouth of the South;" this one bestows that honor on Rice.

Well, is someone going to add Sewanee (my gosh, it's both the Princeton and the Cornell of the South), Davidson, Rice, University of Louisville School of Law, and University of Arizona to the article? And if not, why not? Dpbsmith (talk) 20:09, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Wow, I must admit I had never heard of some of these universities, such as Sewanee, for instance (but it looks nice, judging from their website). This was funny, but I can't really understand why anybody going to the University of Virginia would want to be at the Harvard of the South rather than at The University Actually Designed by Thomas Jefferson.

Perhaps, as a foreigner with no connection to either the American South or the Ivy League, I may be regarded as a somewhat neutral observer. My take on this issue is that an article like this should be about (an aspect of) academic boosterism, and about what appears to be a Southern inferiority complex, and include a discussion on the use of epithets referring to individual Ivy League universities, such as "Harvard/Yale/Princeton of the South", as well. u p p l a n d 21:23, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

As a U. S. citizen living in a state was not in the Confederacy: before checking our our article, I vaguely knew Sewanee as a "good small liberal-arts college." I'm surprised that they call themselves "The University of the South" and quickly peeking at their website I don't know where they get the "University" appelation; I suppose because they have a College of Arts and Sciences and a School of Theology. They are best known to me (and many others) as publishers of the "Sewanee Review," which carries some weight in lit-crit circles. It seems bizarre to me to make a serious comparison between it and Harvard or Princeton, unless you are only comparing undergraduate colleges... I suppose it might bear comparison to Williams or Amherst, which would presumably make it a "Southern Little Ivy..."

• Delete, neologism (gets 61 googles). I find the argument that the schools themselves don't use the term a compelling reason. Radiant_>|< 16:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.