Oxford College of Emory University (Oxford College) is a residential college of Emory University. Oxford College is located in Oxford, Georgia, on Emory University's original campus east of Emory's current Atlanta campus. It specializes in the foundations of liberal arts education. Students who enroll in Oxford College complete an associate of the arts degree there, after which they can continue their studies at Emory's Atlanta campus to pursue a bachelor degree without any additional applications.
Oxford College has an enrollment of nearly 1,000 freshman and sophomore students. Campus organizations include community service groups, interest clubs, and social clubs, the school's replacement for traditional fraternities and sororities. The college participates in NJCAA Division III sports, with the men's and women's tennis teams having won national championships multiple times. The university-wide unofficial mascot, a skeleton named "Lord Dooley", has its origins in the Oxford campus.
History Founding and early history In 1833, the Georgia Methodist Conference considered establishing a church-sponsored manual labor school where students would combine farm work with a college preparatory curriculum. Two years later, the Conference opened the Georgia Conference Manual Labor School, but the institution soon faced financial challenges and disbanded. After the labor school's failure, the Conference granted Methodist preacher Ignatius Few a charter to establish a new college named after John Emory, a Methodist bishop who was involved in the labor school's founding but had died in a carriage accident before it opened. In 1836, the new school, Emory College, was established on a tract of land in Newton County, one mile north of Covington, Georgia. The site was chosen because of its distance from the city, which the school's founders feared would be a source of distraction for its students. The campus and the immediate surroundings were planned and built in 1837 by Edward Lloyd Thomas, a Georgia land surveyor who also planned the city of Columbus, Georgia. On 23 December 1839, the state legislature incorporated the city of Oxford, named after the alma mater of the founders of the Methodist movement, Charles and John Wesley, the University of Oxford. Because the college and town were founded only three years apart, many of the town's early residents were involved in the college's founding and continued to be involved in its daily activities.
On 17 September 1838, two years after the college's chartering, President Ignatius Few and three faculty members welcomed fifteen freshmen and sophomores into its inaugural class. To raise money to maintain the school, Few began selling lots around the college to local citizens. The founders envisaged a curriculum that would rest squarely on the classics and mathematics, with four years' study of Greek, Latin, and mathematics, and three years' study of the English Bible and the sciences of geography, astronomy, and chemistry. According to historian Henry M. Bullock, the founders intended Emory to be, "in the fullest sense of the term, a Christian college".
Literary societies
Sometime in 1837, a year before the inaugural class of students were enrolled, the new student body founded the Phi Gamma literary society on campus. Phi Gamma Literary Society is Oxford's oldest club. The society adapted the motto: Scientia et Religio Libertatis Custodes ("Science and Religion – Freedom Guardians"). In 1851, Phi Gamma Hall was constructed and remains the oldest structure still standing on Oxford's campus. A few years later, Phi Gamma decided it needed a rival society to compete with. Consequently, fourteen members withdrew from Phi Gamma to establish Few Society, named after Ignatius Few. The facilities and libraries of each debate society were open to members of either society. The two halls oppose each other across the quad, and both buildings are variations of two-story Greek Revival structures with temple form designs and columned porticos. Debate topics included the justifiability of war, women's suffrage, the morality of slavery, and prohibition.
In 1850, members of the two literary societies debated whether Georgia should secede from the Union. A vote on the matter by members of both societies resolved for Georgia to remain in the Union. However, when the American Civil War broke out, both debate societies temporarily suspended their activities as members left school to fight in the war. Both Phi Gamma and Few Hall were used as infirmaries for wounded soldiers.
Civil War and Reconstruction Financial tension had reduced the college's income and student body prior to the outbreak of hostilities. When war broke out in the summer of 1861, the college's administration decided to temporarily cease all academic operations, and Emory College remained closed for the duration of the fighting. During the war, college facilities were used by both Northern and Southern soldiers as military headquarters and infirmaries, and many deceased soldiers are buried near campus. The school's library and other archives were damaged and later destroyed due to mishandling by military generals. It was not until the summer of 1866 that the campus was able to return to its academic functions, reopening with twenty students and three professors. Emory College continued to struggle with financial hardships after the war, and was only able to continue operations with the aid of a state G.I. Bill.
In 1880, the school's fortunes reversed when College President Atticus G. Haygood delivered a Thanksgiving Day sermon expressing gratitude for the end of slavery and calling on the South to put the past behind it to "cultivate the growth of industry". The speech captured the attention of George I. Seney, a Brooklyn banker and Methodist. He initially gave Emory College $5,000 to repay its debts, $50,000 for construction, and $75,000 to establish a new endowment. In total, Seney invested more than $250,000 in Emory College, helping to erect the Victorian Gothic-style administrative building in the center of Oxford College that bears his name. The bell in the Seney Hall clock tower is the oldest permanent monument at Emory University today. Cast in 1796, the bell was a gift from Alexander Means, the fourth President of Emory College, who had received it from Queen Victoria.
Move to Atlanta By the turn of the 20th century, Emory College had produced several notable graduates. Alben W. Barkley, who graduated in 1900, represented Kentucky in the United States House of Representatives and in the Senate. In 1949, at age 71, he became the oldest Vice President of the United States in history. Thomas M. Rivers became one of the nation's premier virologists at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, investigating encephalitis and smallpox and later leading the National Science Foundation's quest for a polio vaccine. Dumas Malone went on to become the head of Harvard University Press, one of the nation's leading academic publishers, and completed a Pulitzer Prize-winning six-volume study of Thomas Jefferson when he was over 90 years of age.
Wilbur A. Carlton, a student at Emory College in 1910, described his experiences at the school at the time:
Soon, the Georgia Methodist Conference began discussing transforming Emory College into a university, with Birmingham and Atlanta bidding to host the proposed institution. Atlanta was chosen as the home of the new Emory University after Asa Griggs Candler, then-president of the Coca-Cola Company, deeded the university of land near the city's downtown and contributed $1 million to the school's endowment. Candler had been reluctant to donate money to a project that he called "a crumbling castle", but his brother, Warren Candler, convinced him otherwise. Asa Candler served as chair of the Emory University Board of Trustees and his brother later served as university president.
The Oxford campus continued to be used after the school's move to Atlanta in 1915. At first, the site was organized into the Emory University Academy, a preparatory school modeled after Phillips Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy to respond to the failure of the state's public high schools. By 1921, the academy had reached its peak enrollment of three hundred, doubling its previous enrollment record as a college. Due to financial concerns, including the loss of third-party financial support, Emory University cut programs for all academic divisions at the academy, laid off faculty, and raised tuition. By the mid-1930s, with the introduction of college-level curriculum, the University Academy was renamed Emory Junior College at Oxford and the site was reorganized into a two-year junior college. In 1947, influenced by the experimental models of integrating secondary and post-secondary education at the University of Chicago, Emory and Oxford leaders reorganized the Oxford curriculum into the South's first accredited four-year junior college. The curriculum combined an accelerated program for the last two years of high school with the first two years of college. It ended in 1963 after facing enrollment shortages. In response, Dean Virgil Eady recommended a name change to Oxford College of Emory University and advocated the position that Oxford is part of Emory University and not a "quasi-independent college at Oxford". The new college was then set up as a two-year liberal arts program, similar in concept to the original Emory College model.
Campus
Oxford College is located on of land in Newton County, approximately east of Emory's Atlanta campus. It is in the center of Oxford, a town located about half a mile north of Interstate 20, and is directly bounded by Georgia State Route 81 (signed as Emory Street) to the east and the Fleming Woods to the west. Emory University's bus routes provide service from Oxford to the Atlanta campus, local shopping centers, and Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority stations.
The college campus and surrounding city of Oxford was planned by surveyor Edward Thomas with input from Ignatius Few. The original plan included five north–south streets radiating from the campus in the south, although the topography to the west of the campus prevented two of those streets from being developed. Today, much of the college is organized around a pedestrian-only quadrangle in the center, surrounded by a few nearby streets and hiking trails that make up the Fleming Woods. The college also owns and operates an 11-acre (4.5 hectare) organic farm that was established in 2014. It is utilized as both an educational environment for related courses, and as a functioning farm that sells its produce at local farmers' markets. In 1975, the campus and many of its older buildings, such as Phi Gamma Hall and Seney Hall, and other surrounding structures were listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as the Oxford Historic District.
In 1885, the Grand Masonic Lodge of Georgia erected a white marble obelisk in memory of Few in the center of the quad. Directly south of the monument is Seney Hall, a five-story Victorian Gothic-style building topped by a clock tower and bell. At the end of every academic year, the bell is rung once in honor of each graduating student. Seney Hall is flanked to the west by Hopkins Hall and the Williams Gymnasium, and to the east by Language Hall, which was recently renovated and restored in 2013. Further to the east sits Candler Hall, which was built in the Neoclassical architectural style and served as the school library until 1970. Today it is a student center and houses a bookstore. Phi Gamma Hall and Few Hall, which used to house the college's literary societies, sit across from each other on the quad.