From Ripon College Catalog, 1995-96

The College and the city of Ripon share a noteworthy history. Both have matured gracefully in the pleasant natural surroundings of central Wisconsin; both originated in the minds of visionaries and pioneers.

The first white people to settle the Ripon area were members of the Wisconsin Phalanx -- 19 men and one boy led by young Warren Chase, who often called himself "The Lone One" or "The World's Child." Inspired by the philosophy of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier, as interpreted in the pages of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, the Phalanx set out from Kenosha to found a commune far from "the world of Jargon, Contention, and Confusion." On May 27, 1844, they staked their claim and began translating their motto -- "Diligence, Vigilance, Perseverance, and Progress" -- into the community of Ceresco, named for the Roman goddess of the harvest.

Before long, Ceresco was the home of more than 200 idealists of various sorts. Sharing labor and the fruits of labor, the settlers built a thriving community around two large buildings which housed all community activities. The Long House, in which meals were served and meetings held, still stands on the west edge of the city.

But Ceresco could not sustain its selfless idealism or its profit margin for more than seven years. Warren Chase, who had meanwhile helped to found the state of Wisconsin, wrote the epitaph for Ceresco in 1851: "It was prematurely born, and tried to live before its proper time, and of course, must die and be born again. So it did and here it lies." In the same year, Ripon College was granted its charter from the Wisconsin legislature.

The founding of the College hastened the absorption of the Ceresco Commune by the city of Ripon. The city had been founded in 1849, when Captain David P. Mapes (whose steamboat and worldly fortune had recently sunk in New York's East River) trudged out to Wisconsin, looked over the land adjacent to Ceresco, and decided that it was the perfect place to start building a new life. Ripon was named for the cathedral city in England where the seventh-century ecclesiastical statesman and scholar Wilfrid of Ripon conducted a school which influenced almost every great university in Europe. For two years, a rivalry flourished between Mapes and Chase over the future of their adjacent communities. But after it became clear that Ceresco's days were numbered, the pioneer spirit of competition gave way to the pioneer spirit of cooperation, and Ceresco was eventually absorbed by Ripon. When Mapes began laying plans to attract responsible settlers to the area by founding a college on the highest hill, Chase became a founding father.

Legend claims that Mapes staked out the College's first building (now East Hall) in a gentle snowstorm on November 23, 1850. Two of Ripon's earliest settlers helped him: John Scott Horner, former governor of the Territory of Michigan and owner of the land Mapes turned into a city; and Alvan Bovay, prominent abolitionist lawyer and later the guiding spirit behind the founding of the Republican Party. The state legislature granted a charter for the institution (then called the Ripon Lyceum) on January 29, 1851, and construction of East Hall started that spring.

The school could not become a full-fledged college, however, until it had prepared the young people of the area for college-level work. Thus it opened as a preparatory school in June, 1853, with 16 young women in attendance and a faculty of one. The following September, 66 young men brought the enrollment up to 80 for the first year. In September, 1863, while most young men were fighting in the Civil War, the first real college classes opened with a new president (the Reverend Dr. William E. Merriman, a graduate of Williams College and Union Theological Seminary), six new students, and a new name: Ripon College. The first class to go through Ripon College -- four women -- graduated on schedule in June, 1867. In 1868, formal ties with the Congregational and Presbyterian churches, established 11 years earlier, were severed.

During the 19th century, both the curriculum and formal codes of conduct reflected the mixture of rather stern frontier morality and classical concepts of citizenship which motivated the College's founders and early leaders. Students rose together at the sound of a morning bell at 5:30. Each was required to furnish his or her own fire and to attend worship services twice on Sunday. The first formal debate was held in 1857, when students considered a resolution that "a bad education is worse than no education at all." Resolutions for later debates were to free all slaves and to grant suffrage to women, but no one could be found to take the negative of those questions. In 1873, tuition was $8 per term.

Ripon's first six presidents had clerical backgrounds. Dr. Edward H. Merrell, a graduate of Oberlin College and Oberlin Theological Seminary, became the College's second president upon Merriman's retirement in 1876 and served until 1891 during a period of rapid expansion in the physical plant and the student body. Merrell's affiliation with the College actually dated from 1862, when he became principal of the preparatory department and professor of languages.

Dr. Rufus Cushman Flagg, a widely respected biblical scholar and Congregational minister with a flair for financial management, served from 1892-1901. Dr. Richard Cecil Hughes, a Presbyterian clergyman and teacher of psychology, served from 1901-09 and was instrumental in designing and implementing a college curriculum at Ripon for the 20th century. During Hughes' tenure, preparatory classes were greatly reduced and most of the subjects making up a modern liberal curriculum were established.

Ripon's fifth president, Dr. Silas Evans (Class of 1898), however, is generally considered the father of the modern Ripon College. During his long period of service (1910-17 and 1921-43), Ripon entered a new era marked by the growth of the student body, the sharpening of academic standards, the bolstering of the College's financial position, and the addition of numerous extracurricular programs.

In the early 20th century, performing groups and organizations, athletic teams and conferences, and extracurricular programs of various sorts became prominent features of most American colleges. Ripon was one of the first of its kind in the Midwest to develop attractive programs of these sorts -- in fact, the first student newspaper in Wisconsin (the College Days) had already been established at Ripon in 1868. In 1924, the College recognized both social and academic Greek-letter societies. Ambitious programs were developed in debate and forensics (Pi Kappa Delta, national recognition society in forensics, originated from a local society founded at Ripon College in 1912, and one early member was Spencer Tracy '24; the National Forensics League was founded at the College in 1925 and is still located in Ripon); music (the Glee Club conducted a tour of 25 cities in 17 days in 1924); dramatics (John Carradine appeared as Mephistopheles in the 1951 centennial production of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus); and athletics (Carl Doehling's football team defeated Amos Alonzo Stagg's University of Chicago team in 1928, and three Ripon track men participated in the 1924 Olympic trials).

Dr. Evans' two tenures were separated by the presidency of Dr. Henry E. Culbertson, formerly president of Emporia College in Kansas. Culbertson, a brilliant public speaker and student of law and divinity, was hampered by illness during his four-year term. Dr. Clark Kuebler, who succeeded Evans after his second term, served from 1944-55 and strengthened the College's national reputation by conducting lecture tours across the country and by establishing a Ripon chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the most prestigious of all academic honor societies.

Dr. Frederick O. Pinkham, a graduate of Kalamazoo College and Stanford University, presided over the expansion of Ripon's physical plant during his tenure from 1955-66. He also was instrumental in establishing the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (a consortium of 13 outstanding liberal arts colleges in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, and Colorado) of which Ripon is a member.

From 1966-85, Ripon's president was Dr. Bernard S. Adams, a graduate of Princeton, Yale, and the University of Pittsburgh. Under his leadership, Ripon expanded and revised its curriculum, adding numerous individual courses, several overseas programs, and a department of anthropology and sociology. Also during these years, the educational program became more flexible and the student body more diverse in terms of socioeconomic background. The physical plant was also enhanced through several large construction projects.

From 1985 to 1995, Ripon's 10th president, William R. Stott, Jr., a graduate of Georgetown and Columbia universities, provided leadership of the College. Through means of a successful $13 million capital campaign, and raising more than $33 million in a second campaign, President Stott nearly tripled the endowment, rehabilitated many of the residence halls, integrated student services into its own newly renovated facility, and re-established the classics and religion as features of the traditional Ripon liberal arts education. Under his leadership, a fine arts wing was added and a rehabilitation of Farr Hall of Science was started.

Paul Byers Ranslow, executive vice president at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., became Ripon's 11th president July 1, 1995. President Ranslow has more than 22 years of higher education administrative experience with an Ed.D. degree from Harvard University. He previously served Pitzer as vice president for admission, as an academic advisor, and on the teaching faculty.

Such is the history of the College and the city of Ripon. Today the city is home for more than 7,000 citizens, several industries, and a modest business community. The College enrolls about 750 students each year, and its 30 buildings enhance a rolling, tree-covered campus of 250 acres. The surrounding central Wisconsin area is farmland and resort country dominated by nearby Green Lake. Many of the signs of Ripon's early history, however, are still prominent, and some are still in use. A few of the signal oaks which guided pioneers through the area a century ago can still be identified along the roads leading into town. The Long House of the Ceresco Phalanx still stands, so does the Little White Schoolhouse -- now a national landmark -- in which the Republican Party was founded in 1854. The College's three original brownstone buildings are still in use as well, flanked by the architecture of recent years.