Talk:Ivy League/Archive 2

message: Is this total land ownership, or simply the campus size? Because, the figures seem to be wrong either way.--AaronS 00:27, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Land ownership 

message: Contributors to this page may be interested in this article, which has been proposed for deletion:
Midwestern Ivy League
Please review the article and provide your input on that article's Votes for Deletion page. - 18.95.1.22 03:47, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Midwestern Ivy League" ? 

message: Looks like another fake Ivy League ... I started a deletion page: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Southern Ivy League 129.105.35.219 20:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[Southern Ivy League]]" ? 

message: Anyone else notice that University of Pennsylvania is mistaken as University of Philadelphia in the 3D image? --Liface 05:17, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  3D Map 

message: "In January of 2005, StudentsReview ranked the Ivy League schools independently of reputation (The Top Ivy), and found that students rated Harvard University's educational quality the most poorly of all Ivy League schools, including several similarly reputed schools such as NYU and Stanford."
clearly grammar of someone who did not attend an ivy. especially someone who finds NYU to be "similarly reputed" as harvard
moreover,
"Ironically, in student sponsored reviews which evaluate the education quality across all national schools, Ivy League schools perform more poorly than many state and local schools (Best All Around Education)."
Dartmouth is #1 and Brown is #4
there should be a more unbiased (read: non-ivy hater) person writing this section with accurate information and grammar. could perhaps find a better source than studentsreview.com
I really don't see how this could be accurate. The students at a state school probably never experienced an Ivy, so how could they judge? 72.68.167.49 02:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Reputation" 

message: In the second paragraph, it is pointed out that the ivy schools are 7 of the 9 colonial colleges, and then at the bottom of the same paragraph it is pointed out that they are some of the oldest college in the country, and all but Cornell were founded in the colonial era. I might be crazy, but this seems redundant. Cornellrockey 16:30, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redundancy 

message: I took classes at Harvard in the late 70s and at that time the accepted history was in reference to the Roman Numeral IV, as at the time the schools started playing sports with each other, they weren't the old ivy covered buildings, but new structures. The term IV, 4 schools, was around in sports history well before Harvard grew any vines. I would like to see more on the history of the Roman numeral version of the name.
---
The Roman numeral story seems to be a back-formation: people called the league "ivy," which sounds like "IV," and so they thought it must refer to four of something.  The buildings were ivy-covered very long before the league was formed.
 --Skog 10:07, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  IV vs. Ivy 

message: 165.123.139.14 has thrice broken the continuity of the first paragraph of the "History" section by moving the information about the founding of Penn to right after Yale, on the following dates:
*2:43, 30 January 2006 
*18:40, 30 January 2006  
*21:51, 28 April 2006
 
The paragraph is not a chronological ordering, because we already know the founding dates from the Members Table.  The whole point of the paragraph is to describe the family tree of the universities starting with Oxford University, and to show how each begat its progeny:
*Oxford
**Cambridge (child of Oxford)
***Harvard (1636, child of Cambridge)
  
****Yale (1701, child of Harvard)
*****Princeton (1749, child of Yale)
******Brown (1764, child of Princeton)
*****Dartmouth (1769, child of Yale)
*****Cornell  (1865, child of Yale)
*****Columbia (1754, "step-child" of Yale)
****University of Pennsylvania (1740/1749, through Dr. Franklin, a "child" of Harvard and Oxford) 
Adding the University of Pennsylvania last completes the circle by mentioning Oxford once again.  The paragraph  begins with Oxford; it ends with Oxford.  Therefore, the Ivy's are part of the same family tree and "share a common heritage", which is the assertion of the first sentence. 
4.228.213.16 09:24, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A common heritage

message: Because the language is so vague as to be vacuously true, and because the numbers that allow the reader to judge for themselves are there, I can't call the following statement "untrue." But it's about as untrue as a statement can be while still being true.
:they have relatively small undergraduate populations, ranging between 4,078 for Dartmouth College and 13,700 for Cornell University and modestly sized graduate student populations, ranging between 1,666 for Dartmouth and 14,692 for Columbia. 
How in the world can 13,700 undergraduates at Cornell University be called "relatively small" and 14,692 graduate students atf Columbia be called "modestly sized?"
Each of those numbers is larger than total enrollment at MIT. Cornell is quite comparable in size to the University of Mississippi which has something like 14,500 undergrads and 2000 grads .  
I say this sentence is nonsense. I get the impresssion that someone made a generalization about Ivy League colleges being "small," then found out it didn't hold up, but left it in anyway. My best effort to say something concise but accurate is:
:Their undergraduate colleges vary considerably in size, with undergraduate enrollment ranging from 4,078 for Dartmouth College to 13,700 for Cornell University, but are generally larger than the traditional "liberal arts college" (e.g. the "Little Ivies") while smaller than a typical public state university.
Dpbsmith (talk) 19:42, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Relatively small?" Relative to what?

message: This article currently suffers from a number of problems. It makes broad generalizations about the Ivy League which, in my opinion, are reasonably valid generalizations for Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—the schools that come first to most persons' mind—but don't apply very well to the others. 
The biggest problem is the assumption that premeates much of the article that the Ivies are a group primarily characterized by their academic excellence. The big issue being tap-danced around here is that, depending how you look at it, assuming you are not talking about the athletic conference, the Ivies are either a) a group of schools that are both academically excellent and socially elite (which IMHO is a legitimate third-millennium view), or b) a socially elite group of schools that is also academically excellent (which IMHO is the way they were regarded half a century ago). 
That the Ivies are socially elite is as close to an objective truth as anything outside physics can be, and would be agreed to both by those who disapprove of elitism and those who approve of it. 
Some of the Ivies do not have the same kind of ne plus ultra superlative academic excellence as the others. The Ivies are all academically excellent, and above excellent, but if you were going to try to find a cluster of schools that stand out from the rest based on academic excellence, you wouldn't end up with the Ivies. You'd have some Ivies in the list, but you'd almost certainly throw in some Johns Hopkinses and some Washington Universities and maybe a Duke or two.
The implications that the Ivies have a common heritage doesn't seem right, either. Historically, some were at religious odds with each other, some were more or less nonsectarian (Brown, Penn). Some of the ones founded before the Civil War had a very Oxford-Cambridge-classical-Latin-Greek type educational philosophy (Yale report of 1828), while Cornell (an outlier in many ways) was a most-Morrill-Act university in the "American University" mould. 
I take it very badly that someone has seen fit to copy a number of items from the table in Colonial Colleges without also copying the references and footnotes that explain some of the more controversial dates and designations. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:09, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutrality issues

message: I don't think it's important to include the date of chartering, but I do disagree with the edit comment made by someone who removed the charter dates, to the effect that "There was no government in place before 1776 to charter each istitution so one must use its founding date." Of course there was a government in place, it just wasn't the United States government. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:56, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Reminds me of the old puzzle about the child born in Boston, Massachusetts to parents who were both born in Boston, Massachusetts yet who is not a citizen of the United States.  Anville 10:39, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice! What famous prerevolutionary name is the canonical answer? Dpbsmith (talk) 12:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Charter dates 

message: 165.123.139.14 changed the listing for Penn's date of founding from "1740, named the 'Academy of Philadelphia' in 1749," with a long explanatory footnote, to "1740", with no footnote.
The edit comment is "only 1740 is listed in Pennsylvania State records located in Harrisburg."
I seriously question the edit comment and would like to see a source for this assertion. State records would, presumably, list the date of chartering," 1755 in Penn's case. I don't have time to track this down but I would be dumbfounded if Pennsylvania's seat of government in the 1700s was Harrisburg. And any state records would refer to Whitefield's planned-but-never-built charity school. But in any case, I don't see how state records could settle the matter, because the question is not "when did Philadelphia begin building a church for George Whitefield?" The answer to that question is 1740, and isn't disputed. The disputed question is "Is George Whitefield's church, with its planned charity school which was never built and never operated, the origin of the University of Pennsylvania?"
I support listing only the year 1740, but I think it is absolutely essential to add some kind of explanatory note. 
To recap the story for those who haven't followed this issue at University of Pennsylvania and Colonial Colleges, there is a longstanding dispute between Penn and Princeton boosters as to which is older. Princeton claims a founding date of 1746. Penn once claimed 1749, but since 1895 has claimed 1740. Founding date is an important point of institutional pride, among other things because it governs the order of march in academic processions. 
Neutral statements would be: 
*"Since 1895, Penn has stated 1740 as its year of founding," or
*"Penn claims 1740 as its year of founding." 
To simply report that Penn was founded in 1740 is not neutral.
(I'd add personally that while I think a case can be made for either 1740 or 1749, there is something a little dishonest about the way Penn presents things. Either it was founded in 1740 by George Whitefield as an Episcopalian institution, or it was founded in 1749 by Benjamin Franklin as a nonsectarian institution. Penn's campus sports statues of both gentlemen. But the thing is, when recounting its educational heritage, Penn prefers the Franklin/nonsectarian narrative, but when asserting seniority relative to Princeton it prefers the Whitefield's-school narrative).
Anyway, I think 1740-with-a-footnote is the best way to handle this. 1740 with no qualification or explanation won't do. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:34, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Why Penn's founding date needs a footnote

message: Benjamin Franklin's formal school was over by age ten. He attended Boston Latin as a grammar school student. He had no high school education, certainly not a university education of any kind. 
Franklin's honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Oxford, granted after he founded Penn, are about as relevant to Franklin's educational philosophy as Frank Sinatra's honorary Ph. D. from Stevens Institute of Technology is to Sinatra's vocal technique. Sinatra was not an engineer, and Franklin was not himself a product of the Ivy League (or the schools with were to form the Ivy League), nor was he a product of Oxbridge. I don't see any rationale for mentioning Franklin's honorary degrees in this article. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:09, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Franklin's honorary degrees 

message: User:Mercuryboard suggests that Violent crime and suicide at Ivy League universities should be merged here.
I don't think this is a good idea, because the length of that article would overwhelm the existing content.Articles on universities should not restrict themselves to happy-talk admissions-department content. However, violent crime and suicide are generally perceived to be negative, and I think some would perceive its inclusion to constitute a criticism of Ivy League universities, and that perceived problems with neutrality in the article would lead to instability in the article content. That's just my $0.02. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:15, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article tries to describe violent crime and suicide at 8 universities that happen to be in the Ivy League. Are the ivies notoriously dangerous? Is this list all-inclusive? If this information is even encyclopedia-worthy, it should be either expanded into an article about crime and suicide at all universities, or merged into Ivy League as a criticism of the Ivy League (if that's supposedly a common criticism). I considered nominating this article for deletion per WP:NOR. -mercuryboardtalk ♠ 16:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think it should be merged.  In addition to Dpbsmith's rationale above, the crime/suicide article is not about the league itself, but rather about events that happen at the individual schools.
I don't think the Ivies are notoriously dangerous, although some (like Penn and Yale) have certainly had that reputation in the past.
I disagree that the article should be expanded to include all universities, any more than the List of people who died in the bathroom should be expanded to include all people who died everywhere, because it makes bathrooms look dangerous.  Crime at a college or university is both notable and relevant--ask the parent of any college student.  I think don't think nominating the article for deletion is justified in this case.
A problem that most university articles in Wikipedia have (ask anyone who edits them regularly) is that they are largely written by students, employees, and alums, who obviously love their alma mater, and who write only positive facts, sometimes slipping into pure fluff and boosterism.  The Ivies are certainly no exception.  Few of them mention anything negative whatsoever (Penn and Yale are the only 2 I can think of), and anything perceived as critical is often removed as "not relevant".   It is in fact these main university articles which are generally biased, to the point that they sometimes look like puff pieces written by the admissions department for the school in question.  Trust me, I know: it's difficult not to get emotionally involved in an article about your own school, but the goal is to have fair and balanced (in the true sense, not the FOX news sense) articles.  A link to another article that mentions some unpleasant truths is not an unreasonable addition to any article. -Bindingtheory 17:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think the merge is a good idea, but that's primarily because in my opinion Violent crime and suicide at Ivy League universities is currently original research in the sense prohibited by Wikipedia's policy.  Its facts are correct, at least those of them that I know, but original synthesis of existing facts is still original.  Unless the ideas of "Ivy League suicide" or "Ivy League violent crime" (note that no argument or source connnects these two, a marker of the article's current idiosyncracy) can be documented (the way sources were found that at least minimally substantiated the "HYP" idea), the article doesn't belong on Wikipedia at all.  If it were established as a widely held idea worthy of encyclopedia attention, which seems possible to me, then a short summary with a link to a more detailed article would belong here.  -- Rbellin|Talk 17:24, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Please continue this discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Violent crime and suicide at Ivy League universities -mercuryboardtalk ♠ 17:57, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge from [[Violent crime and suicide at Ivy League universities]]

message: Please check out the page  in the Ivysport website.  Their description of the Ivy League seems to be completely lifted from this page, including logos and whatnot.  I'm not sure if this is something that Wikipedia looks at or is concerned about, but I thought I'd just bring it to the attention of other editors. Masonpatriot 20:27, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  IvySport.com 

message: ::Ah. This deserves being quoted at length: Lehigh, Scot (2000): "An (Ivy) League of Their Own: Never Before have Yale and Harvard So Clearly Dominated a Presidential Campaign." The Boston Globe, August 13, 2000, p. F1.
:::It's ability, not pedigree, that matters. Or so we're told. Believe that? Consider this.
:::Come fall of 2001, when "The Game" - the yearly gridiron clash between Harvard and Yale - rolls around, both the Democratic and Republican tickets could be there in the stands.
:::Of the four candidates, three are Yalies, one a Harvard man. Joseph Lieberman, Al Gore's running mate, has two degrees from Yale; George W., one from each school. Dick Cheney, Bush's second, did two years, on and off, at Yale before finishing at the University of Wyoming. Gore went to Harvard.
:::"The two major parties are competing to see who can pay greater homage to American diversity, and their own version of diversity is three guys from Yale and a guy from Harvard," jokes Ralph Whitehead, professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
:::Indeed, so exclusive is this particular election that even the third-party candidates have Ivy League diplomas. Green Party champion Ralph Nader got his undergraduate degree at Princeton before earning a law degree at Harvard. Pat Buchanan, who passes as the scrappy mutt in an Ivy League litter, went to Georgetown undergrad, before getting a master's at Columbia.
:::What makes the Ivy League's lock on the 2000 presidential campaign even more remarkable is that it comes when the elite schools are supposedly less revered in everyday American life.
::From the sublime to the ridiculous. Really, the title says all. Jabobs, Sally (1993) "Wanted: Smart Sperm Firm Welcomes Ivy League Donors." September 12, 1993; Metro section, page 1. "None [of Cryobank's activities] have generated as much discussion as the laboratory's active recruitment of Ivy League students. Some object to Cryobank's advertising the campuses where it does recruiting to the doctors who actually buy the sperm, arguing that it hints strongly of genetic selection. Just how consumers will respond to Ivy League sperm—which costs the same $135 to $165 per vial as the state college variety—if they know they have a chance of getting it from a Cryobank donor, remains to be seen.... 'I've had couples say, "I don't want Harvard sperm, I don't want some snobby donor," ' said Carol Frost Vercollone, an infertility counselor in Stoneham. 'What they say about MIT, I shouldn't even repeat it.'"
::A perception of Ivy League social elitism, even in recent years? I think so. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:18, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ivy Leage and the Presidency

message: There is a discussion to clarify our policy/guideline on the use of sports team logos.  Please see Wikipedia_talk:Logos#Clarification_on_use_of_sports_team_logos if you wish to participate in the discussion. Johntex\talk 16:40, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Logos

message: Should there be separate pages for the Ivy League, as in the athletic conference, and the Ivy League, as in the academic association? --Cliedl 22:29, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Athletics

message: I think this is original research and should be removed. If standard sources do not compute and present endowment per student, I don't think we should be computing them ourselves. Furthermore, I think it's a form of academic boosterism, specifically the kind that consists of a form of "selective citing:" compiling and/or citing oddly chosen or strangely restricted rankings in which the favored school does well... e.g. "MIT ranks #1 in library size among schools that have the word 'technology' or 'polytechnic' in their names." Dpbsmith (talk) 12:43, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Endowment per student

message: Here. Please offer your thoughts and ideas. --AaronS 17:10, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Ivy League business schools]] is up for deletion 

message: I wish to inform you that in keeping up with the currency of information served through wikipedia.org it is impreative that accurate data is reported at all times.
Cornell's endowment has swollen to a whopping $5 billion. This should be updated to accurately reflect this noble institution's financial standing.
Any changes to this should be verfied before being implemented. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kwadade (talk • contribs) 
: There's been a slow revert war going on about the endowment numbers for a while now, and it should be settled somehow. I'd first like to ask editors to recall Wikipedia:Avoid academic boosterism and remember that the "nobility" of no institution is in doubt here, nor is it a competitive matter to be settled by the size of their checkbooks.  Second, though I'm unaware of the specifics here, it seems to me that piecemeal revisions of these numbers ought to be avoided, and a single neutral source should be used for all of them if possible rather than relying on press releases from each.  If using slightly older numbers is the only price we pay for a uniform and reliable source for endowments, then I'm all for it.  This is an encyclopedia, not a breaking-news site. -- Rbellin|Talk 19:03, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cornell University endowment