Talk:University of Chicago/Archive 1

message: It is both inconsequential and being sold. It should not be included other than under an operated by notation.
:It's of historic importance. It was a very important observatory for half a century. For a decade it was the biggest telescope ever built, and it is still the biggest refractor ever built. And its importance is connected to its time as a working observatory operated by the University of Chicago, not to whatever future it may have as an historic monument.
:To omit it from an article about the University of Chicago makes about as much sense as omitting mention of Stagg Field on the basis of its having been torn down a long time ago. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:54, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yerkes Oberservatory?

message: I've just updated the enrollment statistics from 4,100 undergrads to 4,400, and 8,889 professional/grad students to 9,000 as per the University of Chicago's website.
-user:terranwannabe
I attended the University of Chicago, but had never heard of Richard McKeon until reading this article.  Is McKeon that important?  
-user:dinopup
I'm sorry, I just had to get rid of the text about a de-facto ivy.  As students, we don't consider ourselves to be ivy leaguers, and we all come in with complexes about it, even if some of us had Ivy League choices.  (And I don't know about Rice either, but...).  In any case, if it means a lot to someone, maybe we can hash out some verbaige?  As for me, I'm just pushing to get people to recognize we're not UIC.
-user:nwt
On the University of Michigan page someone calls it "The Harvard of the Midwest".  Isn't the University of Chicago a better recipient of that epithet?
  -- Mike Hardy
Well, we like to think of ourselves as a bit better than Harvard, with less grade inflation and more of an intellectual atmosphere.  Of course, I'm a pretentious bastard, so...  That said, with the possible exceptions of Northwestern and WashU, I think it's us or no one in the Midwest.  Certainly Chicagoans, and the scientific community in general, hold the U of C to a higher regard than the others...
-user:nwt
Many schools claim to be "The Harvard of the ...", more snobby/better recognized institutions simply go by their name and are known for it. Chicago is in at least one of these categories. Pdbailey 20:37, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Old Conv.

message: To the anonymous IP contributor, thanks for all your contributions, but please note that links to articles on Wikipedia are lowercase unless they are proper nouns, and all names of fields of study should be in lowercase, i.e. sociology, not Sociology.  Please consult the Manual of Style.  Thanks. --Lexor|Talk 23:23, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Casing of sections

message: Spikebrennan 13:51, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As a Notre Dame football fan, I must regretfully agree with Ltv100's assertion. The University of Chicago has an all-time undefeated record against Notre Dame, but is not the only school to do so. See the following page for a reference: http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div_ia/independents/notre_dame/opponents.php . I'm going to edit the page to reflect this. MysteryDog 14:24, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Sports and Traditions

message: Why does someone keep deleting Washington University in St. Louis from the list of schools founded in the 19th and early 20th centuries?  It seems appropriate to me.  Uchicago999, please explain.
I do not consider washu a peer school, therefore I think it should be left off the list.
-uchicago999
It seems that if USC, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie Mellon are on there, then WashU certainly deserves to be on there as well.  Perhaps a better solution would be to shorten the list to just include Stanford and MIT.
--Boreas231 16:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  WashU Reference 

message: Just to be a tad more accurate, I changed the statement under "Location and Campus" to read "the buildings and layout of the Main Quadrangle have been deliberately patterned after Oxford and Cambridge from the beginning..." (Previously, only Cambridge was mentioned.)  Actually, the Oxford influence is far more pronounced: the Tower Group is deliberately modelled on Oxford buildings (Mitchell Tower after Magdelen Tower, Oxford; Hutchinson Commons after Christ Church Hall, Oxford). Bob66 14:18, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Architecture 

message: The last sentence in the first paragraph gives a rather distorted view of the University of Chicago. To partially compensate I added Chandrasekhar, who was certainly far more of an "intellectual titan" than any of those listed -- all of whom, additionally, seem to be right-wingers, and none of them in the "hard sciences" (yes, I know that Kass was briefly a biologist); thus the list is far from representative of politics at the University of Chicago or of the University's fields of distinction. Wikipedia is not intended to be a platform for dogma.Bob66 19:02, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you can make improvement, feel free to do so.  Be Bold.  As for my own changes, I chose people who fit four categories: academic (professors only), recent/living, listed on wikipedia, and well-known to the general public.  In your list, only Lane, Rowley, and Rice have non-stub articles (and Rice only has an article because I made it), and I don't think any of them would be known outside of their communities (except maybe Rowley?).  Allan Bloom may be political/controversial/full of crap, but his "Great Books" educational philosophy matches the educational philosophy at Chicago, especially in the undergrad college, and he was a bestseller with wide name recognition.  And please, assume good faith.  If I wanted to make this edit a "political football", I would have included John Ashcroft or Robert Bork.DirectorStratton 22:46, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Intellectual titans" 

message: Spikebrennan 02:11, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Presidents of the University of Chicago 

message: There is a redundancy in listing famous faculty at both the top and bottom of the article.  I'd like to keep it as it originally was (a brief listing at the top) although as I have stated before I am certainly open to changing the list if desired.  But it seems silly and confusing to have two listing, especially when the top listing has different current faculty than the bottom listing (Friedman, Coates, etc.). DirectorStratton 05:47, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As I pointed out,  the list in the introduction is one of past faculty of world renown. For example, Allan Bloom is dead and Milton Friedman hasn't been with the U of C for years. The later list is one of present faculty who, despite not being as significant as Friedman or Bloom, are leaders in their field in the present day. There is a distinct difference. — Dan | Talk 07:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notable faculty, intellectuals, etc.

message: Since there are a large number of U of C faculty are notable enough to have their own wikipedia pages, should we create a list to complement this article?  Based on recent editing it has struck me as something which would be valuable. DirectorStratton 03:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: List of University of Chicago faculty

message: A good example of a peacock term. 
This shouldn't go in unless it's a quotation with a cited source.
I have no idea how one would even begin to judge such a thing. Personally, I would have to wonder whether there isn't a good case to be made for St. John's College as being "the most intellectual," since Chicago and most other universities have many courses of study with direct, career-oriented practical application, while St. John's does not. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:02, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: It is often renowned as the most intellectual of the American schools.

message: I snipped the bit about the University of Chicago being called "teacher of teachers." It can probably go back as soon as someone finds a good source. Googling on "teacher of teachers" mostly turns up individual teachers; Googling on "teacher of teachers" Chicago turns up relevant hits, but a quick eyeballing seems to show that a) they do not give sources (who calls it "teacher of teachers?") and b) they all seem to originate with the University of Chicago itself (which presumably writes the blurb for its listing in HigherEdJobs, etc.)
If someone can find a good verifiable source for someone reasonably famous, other than the university itself, calling it "teacher of teachers," that should certainly go in the article. If the only good sources that can be found are the university itself, then the sentence should not read "is called 'teacher of teachers'" but "calls itself 'teacher of teachers.'" 
I think "teacher of teachers" is likely for real and should go in the article but not until someone locates a good source. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:22, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Teacher of teachers" 

message: Re the paragraph in the lead:
:Historically it is particularly noted for its unique undergraduate "core curriculum," and other educational innovations introduced by Robert Maynard Hutchins during the 1930s; for its contributions to the Manhattan Project during the Second World War; and for its School of Economics, influential in shaping U. S. national policy in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
In case it isn't clear what I'm doing here, I'm mentioning three things about the University of Chicago that are important on a national historical level:  one educational achievement, one research achievement, and one national policy achievement.
Wikipedia articles are based on verifiable sources, but necessarily involve editorial judgement in their synthesis into an article. I think a paragraph like this one is important to the lead because it explains what is well known and important about the University of Chicago as an institution. 
Obviously I've used judgement in deciding which educational achievement, which research achievement, and which national policy achievement are the ones that should be mentioned and I'm certainly open to suggestions that e.g. some other specific Chicago educational landmark is more important than the Robert Maynard Hutchins curriculum. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:40, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brief "historical" notes in lead 

message: The various rankings I've tagged with the citation needed are probably accurate, but do not meet the policies of WP:CITE or WP:V. It's just not good enough to reference the "Gourman report." The citation has to be good enough to enable a curious reader to look up the actual fact. Either a web link to a reliable website or an actual citation in proper style (year, month if appropriate, page number, etc.) is needed. I'm going to remove these in about a week if no citations are provided. Does the University of Chicago has a press release on the Web that mentions all these rankings? If so, it would do as a reference for the general assertion that all these schools are "highly ranked" but not for the individual rankings unless it gives good citations itself. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:23, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsourced rankings 

message: On Jan 19th, I tagged this as citation needed. The tag was removed a few days later by an anon. Removal of the tag was probably an oversight involving a series of edits including a reference to (unsourced) material about "beer goggles." 
But in any case, it's gone unsourced for a week, so I'm snipping this amusing and colorful bit of campus lore, that would be well worth having in the article if sourced per verifiability policy. 
I'm not challenging the truth of these statements. Anyone interested in reinserting, please review the verifiability policy, linked to at the bottom of every edit box, and be aware that "verifiable" does not mean "true," it means has "already been published by a reputable publisher." 
:Popular among students are University of Chicago t-shirts with various self-deprecatory sayings on them, including: "U of C: Where fun comes to die"; "U of C: Where the end of the world began! (with appropriate mushroom cloud picture)"; "U of C: The level of hell that Dante forgot"; "U of C: Where the squirrels are more aggressive than the guys"; "U of C: Where the squirrels are cuter than the girls"; "U of C: If it were easy, it'd be your mom"; and "U of C: Where the only thing that goes down on you is your GPA"; "U of C: Our Ivory Tower is bigger than yours." While these slogans might appear to reflect a weak social life on campus, the school does possess a vibrant social life, due in part to the available urban culture of Chicago, Greek community, and liberal campus envirorment .
Dpbsmith (talk) 13:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Will the Maroon (student newspaper) do? — Dan | talk 14:38, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure. Works for me anyway. Put it back and use that citation. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:41, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: P. S. But leave out that last sentence, "While these slogans might appear to reflect a weak social life on campus, the school does possess a vibrant social life, due in part to the available urban culture of Chicago, Greek community, and liberal campus envirorment," unless you can find a source for that. OTOH you can quote anything else that seems relevant, e.g. "The Maroon quoted a student as claiming to have chosen Chicago because of the “twisted and fun sense of humor the student body has here." Dpbsmith (talk) 14:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: P. P. S. Just to be explicit: the "reasons" it works for me is because a) the source is easily verifiable, being web-based; b) a student newspaper is "reasonably" reputable as testimony to student life; c) It is almost certain that this qualifies as a print source, i.e. the text that appears on the web page almost certainly appears as ink on paper, giving it a bit more permanence and future traceability; and d) most important, the source has a reporter's name, that name is probably the real identity of a real-world person, and therefore the information is traceable to an authority of sorts with a known identity. So I think it's fully in accord with the letter and spirit of the verifiability policy. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:48, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  T-shirt slogans: removed pending source citation 

message: I'm snipping this, pending someone finding a source.
*The  Divinity School is considered 'the' pacemaker in academic study of religions.
I did do some quick Googling, and a search on the UChicago site for divinity pacemaker and couldn't find it. So I'm snipping it for now.
Anyone who knows who called the Divinity School a pacemaker and can cite a source, by all means reinsert it with the source. 
Blessed are the pacemakers? Dpbsmith (talk) 19:30, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Divinity School characterization as "pacemaker?" 

message: Am I missing something, or does the article completely fail to mention the first University of Chicago, established 1857, closed 1886? Is there a different article on this? Dpbsmith (talk) 20:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old University of Chicago. 

message: I'm snipping these for now, they've remained unsourced about a week since I requested sources. Anyone who believes they are important to have in the article should find sources before putting them back; per the verifiability policy the "the burden of evidence lies with the editors who have made an edit or wish an edit to remain." Supplying a source of course means identifying the specific place where the specific fact can be found and reviewed.
:The University is ranked amongst the top 15 institutions worldwide according to the The Times Higher Education Supplement, as well as among the top 10 by The Economist/Shanghai World Rankings . 
:The Princeton Review in 2004 rated the University as having the "Best Overall Educational Experience" for undergraduates among all American universities and colleges, while U.S. News and World Report currently ranks the College at 15th in the nation.
If the Times itself presents the "top 15" as a grouping, I would accept the characterization "among the top 15." If, however, there is no such grouping or breaking in their presentation of the list, and if this is just a way to "spin" a ranking that isn't in the top 10, then I would strongly oppose it. 
It my own opinion that "finishing in the money" (top 3) counts as a notable and specific characteristic of an institution, but that "also rans" (7th, 22nd, etc.) are not valuable to have; people interested in that level detail are going to be going directly to the sources, not reading multiple encyclopedia articles and compiling their own table. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing items pending provision of source citations 

message: Shouldn't the Mascot in the info box be Maroons?  In the context, it seems that it should refer to the name of the athletic teams.  The about page (http://www.uchicago.edu/uchi/about/) of the university also lists The Maroons, but doesn't mention a Phoenix.  Aardhart 07:30, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mascot 

message: I don't think an ever-spreading blue blob of names in the main article is much good to anyone. It's just an invitation to include personal favorites. For those who are interested, the List of University of Chicago people is superior in every way. What good is a random selection of unidentified bare names? In the case of the University of Chicago, even the list of Nobel laureates is unmanageably long. 
The List of University of Chicago people bills itself thus: "The following people have at some point in their careers been affiliated with the University of Chicago, whether as alumni, faculty, researchers, or students." Presently it contains only alumni, but others should be added to List of University of Chicago people, not presented as bare names in the University of Chicago article.
If people feel strongly that a list of eighty-five bare names is performing a useful service to the reader, I'd like to know what that service is. I can only think of one practical use for it: measuring one's general knowledge by seeing how many of the names one can identify. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:49, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Faculty and alumni section

message: This article failed due to lack of references. Tarret 19:48, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added 22 sources to the article, one to accompany every potentially-questionable fact. I have also renominated the article. Crimson3981 22:33, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Failed GA

message: "University" should be capitalized when it is part of the university's name, "University of Chicago." As the University of Chicago is neither deity nor a force of nature, when the word "university" is simply functioning as an ordinary noun, it should not be capitalized. There may be a few places where the word "university" appears by itself where it is clearly and obviously just a short form of the full name, and capitalization would be appropriate, but this should be done very selectively and only with good reason.
People do refer to University of Virginia as The University, but most people outside Virginia regard this particular custom as overweening and pretentious. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:30, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The university and the University

message: We've now been through several cycles in which people attempt to single out a short list of especially notable University of Chicago people. These lists have tended to be wildly unstable and grow without bounds as people wander in and add their personal faves. 
If we are going to have a short list, rather than just a link to List of University of Chicago people, I want to see it developed here in Talk and I want to see consensus reached on a stable list, and agreement that once stabilized it should not be altered without further discussion and consensus.
If it turns out that it is not possible to reach consensus on this, then no such short list should go in the article. (I note in passing that "stability" is one of the criteria for a featured article). 
As a starting point, I propose three principles and a list.
Principles:
*The list should contain no more than ten names.
*The list should not consist just of names, but should briefly identify each.
*The identification should avoid peacock terms, i.e. "Economist Milton Friedman," not "World-famous Nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman."
For the list, I propose as a starting point a recently-added list of names that was selected by User:Crimson3981, which happens to meet the criterion of not exceeding ten names. (Personally I don't think Carl Sagan belongs because I associate him more with Cornell than with the University of Chicago...)
:Current Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens, economist Milton Friedman, film director Mike Nichols, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, astronomer Carl Sagan, and journalist Seymour Hersh.
::Is there consensus that these are the most stellar of the stars? Dpbsmith (talk) 13:36, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Such a short list of people associated with the university definitely would not hurt the article. I am in full support of adding a short one consisiting of ten or so of the most notable people. I was bothered by the previous list, though, since it seemed that it was a little excessive. Onto this proposed list I would add author Kurt Vonnegut, current Senator Barack Obama, current Justice Antonin Scalia, economist Gary Becker, physicist Enrico Fermi, and possibly philosopher John Dewey. mcshadypl 21:02, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That list should definitely be used. I fully support adding those 12 very notable names to the article. '12' is not, by any means, excessive.   04:44, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requesting discussion: a short list of superstars? 

message: Where was the $4.5 billion endowment sum obtained from? I'd like to update the Wiki page at , but a more specific figure is needed.   mcshadypl 21:03, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current endowment figure source? 

message: A recently added reference for some University of Chicago traditions, http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0408/features/index-print.shtml , says:
:Another landmark that fascinates the student body is Virginio Ferrari’s sculpture Dialogo outside Pick Hall. Locals say that every May 1—International Workers’ Day—the four-piece bronze sculpture casts a shadow that unmistakably resembles the Soviet hammer and sickle. Alas, this past May 1 was overcast, so the tale couldn’t be confirmed firsthand. But some administrators, such as Rockefeller’s assistant to the dean for external affairs Lorraine Brochu, swear to the story’s truth. The mystery is whether the shadow was intentional and whether the date is significant. 
Oh, please, please, someone get a picture of this. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:30, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Dialogo'' statue with hammer-and-sickle shadow: someone PLEASE get a picture of this!

message: This was added in an edit with no comment, 01:42, 10 June 2006 70.240.117.78. What do people know about this? A big wave of coeducation was rolling across the U. S. at the time and I have to notice that our Coeducation article does not single out Chicago for any special mention. I have to wonder whether this statement, assuming it is correct, doesn't depend on some very nuanced definition of "major" or "university" or "equal basis," and whether it involves "winning by a nose" (admitting its first woman minutes ahead of Stanford or something like that). 
And how is Chicago earlier than Cornell, which was chartered as coeducational and admitted its first women in 1870?
The University of Chicago has certainly been a major university for a long time, but I also wonder whether it can be said to have been a major university at the instant when it became coeducational... or whether it merely hoped and expected to become one. How many women graduated in the first graduating class? How did it compare with, say, the number graduating from Oberlin the same year? 
Random factoids:
*The University of Chicago's first president accepted coeducation only with reluctance: "all my feelings have been opposed to coeducation.... In all events the matter has been decided.... the requirements of the charter will be carried out in the letter and in the spirit." 
*"The admission of women did not insure solvency, however; in fact, the old University of Chicago closed in 1886 despite female tuition fees. But by 1890 coeducation represented a well-established feature of western education, a necessary if not sufficient condition of financial solvency...." 
*"It is no coincidence that all of the fourteen institutions characterized by Edward Slosson in 1910 as 'the great American universities'—California, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Harvards, Johns Hopkins, Illinois, Michican, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Stanford, Wisconsin, and Yale—were the largest and were coeducational or had affiliated women's colleges."
In other words, I currently think it would be better to present Chicago as just being in tune with the times and generally in the vanguard, rather than trying to give it some kind of dubious "first" status. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:02, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "first major university to enroll women on an equal basis with men."