History of Cornell University
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The history of Cornell University begins with the convergence of its two founders in the New York State Senate in January 1864. These two men, Andrew Dickson White of Syracuse and Ezra Cornell of Ithaca, would together establish Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1865.
The university was initially funded by Ezra Cornell's $500,000 endowment and by New York's 989,920-acre allotment of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862.
However, even before Ezra Cornell and Andrew White met in the New York Senate the two men each had separate plans and dreams that would draw them toward their collaboration in founding Cornell: White believed in the need for a great university for the nation that would take a radical new approach to education; and Cornell, who had great respect for education and philanthropy, desired to use his money "to do the greatest good." In the U.S. Congress, the events leading to the signing of Vermont Senator Justin Morrill's Land Grant Act into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 during the secession of the South — the bill had originally been introduced in 1857 and opposed by the Southern States — were critical to the formation of many universities in the post-Civil War era, including Cornell.
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[edit] Founders
As newly-elected members of the state senate, Cornell sat on the Committee of Agriculture and White was the chair of the Committee of Literature (which dealt with educational matters); thus, both took a prominent position when it came to allocating the land grant, which was to be used for instruction in agriculture, military tactics and the mechanic arts. Yet, their eventual partnership seemed unlikely. Although both valued egalitarianism, science, and education, they had come from two very different backgrounds.
Ezra Cornell, a self-made businessman and austere, pragmatic telegraph mogul, made his fortune on the Western Union Telegraph Company stock he received during the consolidation that led to its formation. Cornell, who had been poor for most of his life, suddenly found himself looking for ways that he could do the greatest good for with his money — he wrote, "My greatest care now is how to spend this large income to do the greatest good to those who are properly dependent on me, to the poor and to posterity." Cornell's self education and hard work would lead him to the conclusion that the greatest end for his philanthropy was in the need of colleges for the teaching of practical pursuits such as agriculture, the applied sciences, veterinary medicine and engineering and in finding opportunities for the poor to attain such an education.
Andrew Dickson White entered college, at the age of sixteen, in 1849. White dreamed of going to one of the elite eastern colleges, but his father sent him to Geneva College (later known as Hobart), a small Episcopal college. At Geneva, White would read about the great colleges at Oxford University and at the University of Cambridge; this appears to be his first inspiration for "dreaming of a university worthy of the commonwealth [New York] and of the nation"; this dream would become a lifelong goal of White's. After a year at Geneva, White convinced his father to send him to Yale University. For White, Yale was a great improvement over Geneva, but he found that even at one of the country's great universities there was "too much reciting by rote and too little real intercourse."
In the late 1850s, at the University of Michigan, where he had been appointed a professor of history, White's thoughts on a great American university continued to develop. He was influenced by both the curriculum, which was more liberal than at the Eastern universities, and by the administration of the university as a secular institution.
[edit] Conception
White had been duly impressed by a bill introduced by Cornell in one his first actions as a state senator: the incorporation of a large public library for Ithaca for which Cornell had donated $100,000. White was struck by not only his generosity, but also "his breadth of mind." He wrote:
The most striking sign of this was his mode of forming a board of trustees; for, instead of the usual effort to tie up the organization forever in some sect, party or clique, he had named the best men of his town — his political opponents as well as his friends; and had added to them the pastors of all the principal churches, Catholic and Protestant.
Yet, Cornell and White soon find themselves on opposite sides of a battle that would in the end lead to the creation of Cornell.
In 1863, the legislature had granted to proceeds of the land grant to the People's College in Havana, with conditions that would need to be met within a certain time frame. It seemed unlikely that the conditions could be met, so the legislature, which, under the Morrill Act, was given a total of only five years to appropriate the funds to a suitable college or risk losing the funds, felt urged to act. Initially, Cornell, as a member of its Board of Trustees, wanted the grant to go to the New York State Agricultural College at Ovid. However, White "vigorously opposed this bill, on the ground that the educational resources of the state were already too much dispersed." He felt that the grant would be most effective if it were used to establish or strengthen a comprehensive university.
Still working to send part of the grant to the Agricultural College, on September 25, 1864, in Rochester, New York, Cornell announced his offer to donate $300,000 (soon thereafter increased to $500,000) if part of the land grant could be secured and the trustees moved the college to Ithaca. White did not relent; however, he said he would support a similar measure that did not split up the grant. Thus began the collaboration between Ezra Cornell and Andrew D. White that became Cornell University.
[edit] Establishment
On February 7, 1865, Andrew D. White introduced an act to the State Senate "to establish the Cornell University," which appropriated the full income of the sale of lands given to New York under the Morrill Act to the university. But, while Cornell and White had come to an agreement, they faced fierce opposition, including from the People's College, the Agricultural College at Ovid and dozens of other institutions across the state vying for a share of the land grant funds; from religious groups, who opposed the proposed composition of the university's board of trustees; and even from the secular press, some of whom thought Cornell was swindling the state out of its federal land grant.
The bill was modified at least twice in attempts to attain the votes necessary for passage. In the first change, the People's College was given three months in which to meet certain conditions for which it would receive the land grant under the 1863 law. The second came from a Methodist faction, which wanted a share of the grant for Genesee College. They agreed to a quid-pro quo of $25,000 from Ezra Cornell in exchange for their support. Cornell insisted the bargain be written into the bill. The bill was signed into law by Governor Reuben E. Fenton on April 27, 1865. On July 27, the People's College lost its claim to the land grant funds, and the building of Cornell University began.
From 1865 to 1868, the year the university opened, Ezra Cornell and Andrew D. White worked in tireless collaboration to build their university. Ezra Cornell oversaw the construction of the university's first buildings, starting with Morrill Hall, and spent time investing in western lands for the university that would eventually net millions of dollars, while Andrew D. White, who was unanimously elected the first President of Cornell University by the Board of Trustees on November 21, 1866, began making plans for the administrative and educational policies of the university. To this end, he traveled to France, Germany and England "to visit model institutions, to buy books and equipment, to collect professors." White returned from Europe to be inaugurated as Cornell's president; he would remain leader of Cornell until his retirement from the presidency in 1885.
[edit] Opening
The university's Inauguration Day took place on October 7, 1868. One day earlier, each of the candidates who showed up in Ithaca was given an entrance examination. There were 412 successful applicants; with this initial enrollment, Cornell's first class was, at the time, the largest entering class at an American university.
On the occasion, Ezra Cornell delivered a brief speech. He said, "I hope we have laid the foundation of an institution which shall combine practical with liberal education. ... I believe we have made the beginning of an institution which will prove highly beneficial to the poor young men and the poor young women of our country."
Cornell was among the first universities in the United States to admit women alongside men. The first woman was admitted to Cornell in 1870, although the university did not yet have a women's dormitory. On February 13, 1872, Cornell's Board of Trustees accepted an offer of $250,000 from Henry W. Sage to build such a dormitory. During the construction of Sage College (now home to the Johnson School as Sage Hall) and after its opening in 1875, the admittance of women to Cornell continued to increase.
Significant departures from the standard curriculum were made at Cornell under the leadership of Andrew D. White. In 1868, Cornell introduced the elective system, under which students were free to choose their own course of study. Harvard University would make a similar change in 1872, soon after the inauguration of Charles W. Eliot in 1869.
It was the success of the egalitarian ideals of the newly-established Cornell, a uniquely American institution, that would help drive some of the changes seen at other universities throughout the next few decades, and would lead educational historian Frederick Rudolph to write:
Andrew D. White, its first president, and Ezra Cornell, who gave it his name, turned out to be the developers of the first American university and therefore the agents of revolutionary curricular reform.
In 1892, the University Library was opened. Today known as Uris Library, it was the result of a gift from Henry W. Sage in memory of Jennie McGraw. In Jennie McGraw's will, she gave away $300,000 to her husband, $550,000 to her brother Joseph and his children, $200,000 to Cornell for a library, $50,000 for construction of McGraw Hall, $40,000 for a student hospital, and remainder to the University for whatever use it saw fit. Due to university by-laws, Cornell could not accept the full amount of McGraw's gift. When Fiske realized that the university had failed to inform him of this restriction, he launched a legal assault to reacquire the money, known as The Great Will Case. The United States Supreme Court eventually decided against Cornell.[1]
[edit] Support from New York State
In his inaugural address as Cornell's third president on November 11, 1892, Jacob Gould Schurman announced his intention to enlist the financial support of the state. Cornell, which had been offering a four-year scholarship to one student in every New York assembly district every year and was the state's land-grant university, was determined to convince the state to become a benefactor of the university. In 1894, the State Legislature voted to give financial support for the establishment of the College of Veterinary Medicine and to make annual appropriations for the college. Thus, the precedents of the privately-controlled, state-supported statutory colleges and of cooperation between Cornell and the state had been set.
[edit] Willard Straight Hall Takeover
On April 19, 1969, during a parents' weekend, over eighty members of Cornell's Afro-American Society took over the student union building, Willard Straight Hall. The takeover was precipitated by increasing racial tension at the university and the students' frustration with the administration's lack of support for a black studies program. The specific catalysts for the takeover were a reprimand of three Black students for an incident the previous December and a cross burning in front of the Black women's cooperative and other cases of alleged racism.
By the following day a deal was brokered between the students and university officials, and on April 20, the takeover ended, with Cornell ceding to some of the Afro-American Society's demands. The students emerged making a black-power salute and with guns in hand (the guns had been brought into Willard Straight Hall after the initial takeover). James A. Perkins, president of Cornell during the events, would resign soon after the crisis.
[edit] References
- Becker, Carl L. (1943). Cornell University: Founders and the Founding. Cornell University Press. Available online: http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/184.
- Bishop, Morris (1962). A History of Cornell (1st ed.). Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-0036-8.
- Kammen, Carol (2003). Cornell: Glorious to View (1st ed.). Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-935995-03-X.
- Downs, Donald Alexander (1999). Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University (1st ed.). Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-3653-2.
- Rudolph, Frederick (1977). Curriculum: a history of the American undergraduate course of study since 1636 (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. ISBN 0-87589-358-9.
- Rudolph, Frederick (1990). American College and University: A History (2nd ed.). University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-1284-3. Available online: http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&id=3se-H1Y_l7kC.
- White, Andrew Dickson (1911). The Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White. Available online: Vol. 1, Vol. 2.
- History of the Cornell Presidency http://www.cornell.edu/president/history.cfm. Cornell University official site.
