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{{short description|Private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon}}
'''Reed College''' is a ] with 1341 students as of the fall of ] (45% men and 55% women), located in ], ] in the ] neighborhood. In August of 2005, The ] ranked Reed number 1 in its category "Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates."
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2012}}
{{Infobox university
| name = Reed College
| image = Formal Seal of Reed College, Portland, OR, USA.svg
| image_upright = .7
| caption =
| established = {{start date and age|1908}}
| type = ] ]
| endowment = $764 million (2023)<ref name="auto">As of June 30, 2023. {{cite report |title = Reed College Endowment 2023 Report |url=https://www.reed.edu/investments/assets/downloads/endowment-public-report-fy-2023.pdf}}</ref>
| president = ]
| faculty = 164<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Galbraith|first1=Quinn|last2=Smart|first2=Elizabeth|last3=Smith|first3=Sara D.|last4=Reed|first4=Megan|date=2014-09-01|title=Who Publishes in Top-Tier Library Science Journals? An Analysis by Faculty Status and Tenure|journal=College & Research Libraries|volume=75|issue=5|pages=724–735|doi=10.5860/crl.75.5.724|issn=2150-6701|doi-access=free}}</ref>
| students = 1,458 (Fall 2023)
| undergrad = 1,439 (Fall 2023)<ref name="Enrollment">{{cite web |title = Facts about Reed - Detailed Enrollment |publisher=Institutional Research, Reed College |url=https://www.reed.edu/ir/enrollment.html}}</ref>
| postgrad = 19 (Fall 2023)<ref name="Enrollment"/>
| city = ]
| state = ]
| country = United States
| coor = {{coord|45.48|-122.63|region:US-OR_type:edu|display=inline,title}}
| campus = ]an, 116 acres (470,000&nbsp;m²)
| colors = Reed Red<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.reed.edu/public-affairs/assets/downloads/reed-graphic-standards.pdf |title=Standards Guide |publisher=Reed College |access-date=2023-04-05}}</ref><br />{{Color box|#A70E16|border=darkgray}}
| mascot = ]
| website = {{URL|https://www.reed.edu}}
| logo = Reed College Wordmark.png
| logo_upright = 1.0
| affiliations = {{unbulleted list
|]
|]
|]
|]
}}
}}


'''Reed College''' is a ] ] in ], United States. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the ] neighborhood, ]-] style architecture,<ref name="coat-of-arms">{{cite web |url=http://web.reed.edu/facilities_and_grounds/buildings/eliot.html |title=Eliot Hall |access-date=December 18, 2007 |work=Facilities & Grounds |publisher=Reed College |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121015174408/http://reed.edu/facilities_services/buildings/eliot.html |archive-date=October 15, 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and a forested canyon nature preserve at its center. Reed ] include 123 ], 73 ], and three ]. Its 32 ] are the second-most for a liberal arts college.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Awards and Fellowships - Institutional Research - Reed College |url=https://www.reed.edu/ir/awards.html |access-date=2024-08-21 |website=www.reed.edu}}</ref> Reed is ranked fourth in the United States for the percentage of its graduates who earn a PhD.<ref name="scholars">{{cite web|url=http://web.reed.edu/ir/awards.html|title=Facts about Reed: Awards and Fellowships|publisher=Reed College|work=Institutional Research|access-date=January 11, 2017}}</ref><ref name="phds">{{cite web | publisher=Reed College Institutional Research | title=Reed College PhD Productivity | url=http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html}}</ref>
<div style="float: right; margin: 0 0 1em 2em; width: 25em; text-align: right; font-size: 0.86em; font-family: lucida grande, sans-serif; line-height: normal;">
<div style="border: 1px solid #ccd2d9; background: #f0f6fa; text-align: left; padding: 0.5em 1em; text-align: center;">
<font style="font: inherit; font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; border: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; color: #6a6c76;">Reed College</font>
<p style="margin: 1em 0;">
]<br>
<table style="background: transparent; text-align: left; table-layout: auto; border-collapse: collapse; padding: 0; font-size: 100%;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr><th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">Established</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top">1908</td></tr>
<tr><th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">School type</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top">] ]</td></tr>
<tr><th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">President</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top">]</td></tr>
<tr><th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">Location</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top">], ], ]</td></tr>
<tr><th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">Enrollment</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top">1,312 undergraduate,<br>29 graduate</td></tr><tr>
<th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">Faculty</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top">133</td></tr><tr>
<th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">Endowment</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top">US$337 million</td></tr><tr>
<th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">Campus</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top">], 98.52 acres (400,000&nbsp;m²)</td></tr><tr>
<th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">Sports teams</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top">Berserk (men's ultimate), Booty (women's ultimate), men's and women's </td></tr><tr>
<th style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top; text-align: left;">Website</th>
<td style="border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9; padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0; vertical-align: top"></td></tr>
</table>
</div><!--end of slate grey box-->
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== History == ==History==
] on a snowy day]]
The Reed Institute (the legal name of the College) was founded in ], and Reed College held its first classes in ]. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers ] and ]. Simeon was an entrepreneur in trade on the Columbia River; in his will he suggested that his wife could "devote some portion of my estate to benevolent objects, or to the cultivation, illustration, or development of the fine arts in the city of Portland, or to some other suitable purpose, which shall be of permanent value and contribute to the beauty of the city and to the intelligence, prosperity, and happiness of the inhabitants." The first president of Reed (1910-1919) was William Trufant Foster, a former professor from ] in Maine.
The Reed Institute (the legal name of the college) was founded in 1908 and held its first classes in 1911. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers ] (1830–1895) and ] (died 1904).<ref name="history">{{cite web |url=http://web.reed.edu/about_reed/history |title=Mission and History |access-date=December 18, 2007 |work=About Reed |publisher=Reed College}}</ref> Simeon was an entrepreneur involved in several enterprises, including trade on the ] and ]s with his close friend and associate, former Portland Mayor ]. Unitarian minister ], who knew the Reeds from the church choir, is credited with convincing Reed of the need for the school.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/march2011/articles/features/dream/amandas_dream3.html|title=Fighting for Amanda's Dream|date=March 2011|website=Reed Magazine|access-date=2016-03-08}}</ref> Reed's will provided for the gift,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Ingham |first1=Jennifer |last2=Brunette |first2=Sally |last3=Lassleben |first3=Lauren |title=Timeline of Reed College Events (to 1959) |url=https://alumni.reed.edu/oral_hist_timeline.html |website=alumni.reed.edu |publisher=REED College |access-date=3 October 2018 |date=2004}}</ref> and Ladd's son, William Mead Ladd, donated 40 acres from the Ladd Estate Company to build the new college.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Colver |first1=MaryLou |title=Ladd Estate Company |url=https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/ladd_estate_company/#.W7UAFBNKii4 |website=The Oregon Encyclopedia |publisher=Portland State University and the Oregon Historical Society | date=17 March 2018|access-date=3 October 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url= http://web.reed.edu/alumni/oral_hist_timeline.html |title= Retrieved on 19 December 2007 |publisher=Web.reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/sallyportal/posts/2011/parker-house-featured-on-holiday-tour.html |last1=Barton |first1=Randall S. |title=Parker House Featured on Holiday Tour |journal=Reed Magazine |date=June 2017 |volume=96 |issue=2 |access-date=3 October 2018}}</ref> Reed's first president (1910–1919) was ], a former professor at ] and ].<ref name=":6" />


Founded explicitly as a reaction against the "prevailing model of East Coast, ] education", the college's lack of ], ], and exclusive ] – as well as its ], ], and ] status — gave way to an intensely academic and intellectual college.<ref name="reaction">{{cite book |title=The Hidden Ivies |last=Greene |first=Howard |author2= Matthew Greene |year=2000 |publisher= ] |location=New York |isbn= 0-06-095362-4 |pages= 206–207}}</ref>
Although holding a well-earned reputation for the anti-authoritarian leanings of its students (and sometimes its faculty), the only connection between Reed College and the journalist ] is the similarity of their names.


During the 1930s, President ] was concerned about the fraternization among male and female students and the consumption of alcohol by students. A large portion of the Student Council took the position that Oregon's liquor laws did not apply to Reed's campus. Policies restricting the ability of students from visiting the dormitories of the opposite sex were fiercely resisted.<ref name="reedbook">{{cite book |last1=Sheehy |first1=John |title=Comrades of the Quest |date=2012 |publisher=Oregon State University Press |location=Corvallis, Oregon |isbn=978-0-87071-667-6}}</ref>
== Distinguishing features ==
Reed features a traditional liberal arts curriculum, requiring freshmen to take Humanities 110 - an intensive introduction to the ]. Hum 110 (pronounced, "Hume"), as most students refer to it, covers ancient ] and ] as well as the ] and ]. Its program in the sciences is likewise unusual -- Reed's ] research reactor makes it the only school in the ] to have a ] operated almost entirely by undergraduates. Reed is also one of the few remaining schools that require all students to complete a thesis (a two-semester-long research project conducted under the guidance of professors) during the senior year as a prerequisite of graduation.


After ] the college saw its enrollment numbers dramatically increase as veterans began enrolling in the college.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Reed College|url=https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/reed_college/#.YFU0otqSmUk|access-date=2021-03-19|website=www.oregonencyclopedia.org}}</ref>
Reed is considered a haven for intense ]s and ]. Reed maintains a 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio, and its small classes emphasize a "conference" style, in which the teacher often acts as a mediator for discussion rather than a lecturer. While large lecture-style classes exist, Reed emphasizes its smaller lab and conference sections.


The college has developed a reputation for the ] of its student body.<ref name="lefty">{{cite encyclopedia | author=Princeton Review | title=Top 10 Most Politically Liberal Colleges | work=MSN Encarta | url=http://encarta.msn.com/college_article_LiberalColleges/Top_10_Politically_Liberal_Colleges.html | publisher=Microsoft | access-date=December 18, 2007 | author-link=Princeton Review | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071221084153/https://encarta.msn.com/college_article_LiberalColleges/Top_10_Politically_Liberal_Colleges.html | archive-date=December 21, 2007 | df=mdy-all }}</ref>
Reed has no ], ], or ] sports teams, although physical education classes are required for graduation.


==Distinguishing features==
Reed operates under an ] Principle. First introduced as an agreement to promote ethical academic behavior, with the explicit end of relieving the faculty of the burden of policing student behavior, the Honor Principle was extended to cover all aspects of student life. There are few codified rules governing behavior; the onus is on students individually and as a community to define which behaviors are acceptable and which are not. "Honor Cases" (or discrete cases of ]) are adjudicated by the "J-Board" (or Judicial Board), which consists of nine full-time students. There is also an "Honor Council" which consists of students, faculty, and staff, designed to educate the community and mediate conflict between individuals. Currently it only serves in the latter function.
]]]
According to ] Burton Clark, Reed is one of the most unusual institutions of higher learning in the United States,<ref name=":6">{{cite book | first = Burton | last = Clark | title= The Distinctive College: Antioch, Reed, Swarthmore | year =1964 | isbn=1-56000-592-0 | publisher = Transaction Publishers | location = New Brunswick, N.J. }}</ref> featuring a traditional liberal arts and natural sciences curriculum. It requires freshmen to take Humanities 110, an intensive introduction to multidisciplinary inquiry, covering ancient ] and Rome, the Hebrew Bible and ], and as of 2019, Ancient Mesoamerica and the Harlem Renaissance.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.reed.edu/humanities/hum110/index.html|title=Reed College {{!}} Humanities 110 {{!}} Home|website=www.reed.edu|access-date=2019-09-27}}</ref> Reed also has a ] on campus, making it the only school in the United States to have a ] operated primarily by undergraduates.<ref name="reactor">{{cite web | title = Reed Research Reactor | publisher = Reed College | url = http://reactor.reed.edu/ | access-date = March 27, 2007}}</ref> Reed also requires all students to complete a thesis (a two-semester-long research project conducted under the guidance of professors) during the senior year as a prerequisite of graduation. Upon completion of the senior thesis, students must also pass an oral defense of ninety minutes related to the thesis topic and how the thesis relates to the larger context of the student's studies.


Reed maintains a 9:1 student-to-faculty ratio.<ref name="ratio">{{cite web|url=https://www.reed.edu/ir/stufacratio.html|title=Reed College Student/Faculty Ratio|publisher=Reed College|access-date=July 9, 2017}}</ref>
== Admissions and student demographics ==


] at Reed's research reactor]]
Until the late 1990s, Reed accepted a larger percentage of total applicants than peer institutions——76% in 1996. This led to high levels of attrition (drop-outs) during that period. Since 2002, Reed's attrition rate has moved toward that of peer institutions, and the five-year graduation rate (72% for the 2000/2001 entering class) now exceeds the national average. The class of 2009's average ] score was 1368 and high school ] was 3.9, with 44% of applicants accepted.
Although letter grades are given to students, grades are de-emphasized at Reed and focus is placed on a ]. According to the school, "a conventional letter grade for each course is recorded for every student, but the registrar's office does not distribute grades to students, provided that work continues at satisfactory (C or higher) levels. Unsatisfactory grades are reported directly to the student and the student's adviser. Papers and exams are generally returned to students with lengthy comments but without grades affixed."<ref name=":0" /> Students can request copies of their official transcript from the registrar. There is no ] or honor roll ''per se'', but students who maintain a GPA of 3.5 or above for an academic year receive academic commendations at the end of the spring semester which are noted on their transcripts.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/academic/gbook/acad_pol/eval_student.html |title=Reed College &#124; Guidebook &#124; Evaluation of students |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=June 7, 2014}}</ref> Many Reed students graduate without knowing their cumulative ] or their grades in individual classes.{{citation needed|date=November 2015}} Reed is singled out as having little to no ] over the years;<ref>{{Cite web |title=National Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities |url=https://www.gradeinflation.com/ |access-date=2022-08-18 |website=www.gradeinflation.com}}</ref> only ten students graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA in the period from 1983 to 2012.<ref name="grades">{{cite web | title = Grades at Reed | publisher = Reed College | url = http://www.reed.edu/registrar/pdfs/grades.pdf | access-date = July 29, 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140330195527/http://www.reed.edu/registrar/pdfs/grades.pdf | archive-date = March 30, 2014 | url-status = dead | df = mdy-all }}</ref> (Transcripts are accompanied by a card contextualizing Reed's grading approach so as not to penalize students' graduate school applications.)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://ruk.ca/article/4794 |title=Retrieved on 13 September 2008 |publisher=Ruk.ca |date=May 28, 2008 |access-date=November 13, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090708195245/http://ruk.ca/article/4794 |archive-date=July 8, 2009 }}</ref> Although Reed does not award ] to graduates, it confers several awards for academic achievement at commencement, including naming students to ].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/academic/gbook/acad_pol/awards.html |title=Reed College &#124; Guidebook to Reed &#124; Awards, fellowships and graduate awards |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref>


Reed has no ] and few ] sports teams<ref>One NCAA sports team at Reed has been the Reed College Ski Team, which as early as 1937, and as late as 1988, competed with the ] and other regional schools. See </ref> although physical education classes (which range from ] to ] to ]) are required for graduation. Reed also has several intercollegiate athletic clubs, notably the basketball,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2019/march-madness-zornado-classic.html|title=Young Alumni Drub Olds in Zornado Classic|first=Ethan|last=Gordon ’19|website=Reed Magazine}}</ref> rugby,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/sports_center/sports_clubs/men_rugby.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121216062603/http://www.reed.edu/sports_center/sports_clubs/men_rugby.html|url-status=dead|title=Reed rugby teams|archive-date=December 16, 2012}}</ref> Ultimate Frisbee,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/sports_center/sports_clubs/mens_ultimate_frisbee.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130109000406/http://www.reed.edu/sports_center/sports_clubs/mens_ultimate_frisbee.html|url-status=dead|title=Men's ultimate frisbee|archive-date=January 9, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/sports_center/sports_clubs/womens_ultimate_frisbee.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130109000726/http://www.reed.edu/sports_center/sports_clubs/womens_ultimate_frisbee.html|url-status=dead|title=Women's ultimate frisbee|archive-date=January 9, 2013}}</ref> and soccer<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/sports_center/sports_clubs/mens_soccer.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121108172006/http://www.reed.edu/sports_center/sports_clubs/mens_soccer.html|url-status=dead|title=Soccer|archive-date=November 8, 2012}}</ref> teams.
Reed's Class of 2009 is 43% male and 57% female, and include 23% minority students, including 4% of freshmen who self-report as Black (including African-American, African, and Afro-Caribbean), 6% as Hispanic and 9% as Asian. Minority numbers include this class's 4% international citizens (13% of freshmen did not self-report their ethnicity). In this class, 43% of students are from the U.S. West Coast (CA, OR, WA), with the most coming from California.


==Academics==
=== Tuition and finances ===
Reed categorizes its academic program into five Divisions and the Humanities program. Overall, Reed offers five ] courses, twenty-six department majors, twelve interdisciplinary majors, six dual-degree programs with other colleges and universities, and programs for pre-medical and pre-veterinary students. Its three most popular majors, based on 2023 graduates, were Psychology, Biology/Biological Sciences, and Computer and Information Sciences.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=reed&s=all&id=209922#programs |website=nces.ed.gov |publisher=U.S. Dept of Education |title=Reed College |access-date=August 21, 2024}}</ref>


For students entering in the Fall of 2005, the total tuition, fees and room-and-board cost for a year at Reed was $41,106, a cost comparable to Amherst, Swarthmore, Wellesley, and Pomona (which are considered to be peer or competitive institutions). In recent years between 50% and 60% of students have received financial aid from the college.


===Divisions===
Reed's endowment as of June 30, 2004 was $335 million, below the median of about $500m for comparable schools, and well below Amherst and Swarthmore's approximately $1 billion endowments. However, on a per-student basis, Reed's $265,000 per student is only slightly below the median. Reed's endowment contributes 22% of its operating expenses (tuition contributes 72% and the balance is from grants and annual gifts).
]
*Division of Arts: includes the Art (Art History and Studio Art), Dance, Music, and Theatre Departments;
*Division of History and Social Sciences: includes the History, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, and Sociology Departments, as well as the International and Comparative Policy Studies Program;
*Division of Literature and Languages: includes the Classics, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish Departments, as well as the Creative Writing and General Literature Programs;
*Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences: includes the Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics Departments, and
*Division of Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, and Linguistics: includes the Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, and Linguistics Departments.


===Humanities program===
== Reed's reputation ==
Reed President Richard Scholz in 1922 called the educational program as a whole "an honest effort to disregard old historic rivalries and hostilities between the sciences and the arts, between professional and cultural subjects, and,{{nbsp}}... the formal chronological cleavage between the graduate and the undergraduate attitude of mind".<ref>Scholz, Richard F., "Remarks to the Association of American Colleges", 1922.</ref> The Humanities program, which came into being in 1943 (as the union of two year-long courses, one in "world" literature, the other in "world" history) is one manifestation of this effort. One change to the program was the addition of a course in Chinese Civilization in 1995. The faculty has also recently approved several significant changes to the introductory syllabus. These changes include expanding the parameters of the course to include more material regarding urban and cultural environments.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/Hum110/syllabus/syllabus-preview-2010-13.html |title=Humanities 110, Syllabus for 2010–2013 |publisher=Academic.reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110926205916/http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/Hum110/syllabus/syllabus-preview-2010-13.html |archive-date=September 26, 2011 }}</ref>
Reed is a highly-regarded liberal arts college with an idiosyncratic reputation for academic conservatism and excellence together with a freewheeling campus environment. Reed students and alumni over the years have cultivated an image that includes an extreme academic workload, a sink-or-swim social ethic, and a reputation for heavy ].


Reed's Humanities program includes the mandatory freshman course ''Introduction to Western Humanities'' covering ancient ] and ] literature, history, art, religion, and philosophy. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors may take ''Early Modern Europe'' covering ] thought and literature; ''Modern Humanities'' covering the ], the ], the ], and ], and/or ''Foundations of Chinese Civilization''. There is also a Humanities Senior Symposium.<ref>{{cite web |title=Humanities 411 |url=https://www.reed.edu/humanities/hum411/index.html |website=reed.edu |access-date=19 January 2021}}</ref>
=== Academic ===
As stated above, The ] in its publication "The Best 361 Colleges," published in August 2005, ranked Reed number 1 in its category "Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates." It also ranked number 1 in the "Students Never Stop Studying" category and in the category of "Students Ignore God On A Regular Basis."


===Interdisciplinary and dual-degree programs===
Reed has also gained notice for refusing to participate in the annual ]. According to a statement on the College has done this because they "actively questioned the methodology and usefulness of college rankings." Reed further claims that US News has depended on limited data provided on the College's Web site to rank Reed, a practice which Reed claims is incomplete and has caused it to be ranked lower than it would be otherwise. Reed President ] wrote a piece in the In ] ] magazine defending his descision to refuse to participate in the rankings ().
Reed also offers interdisciplinary programs in American studies,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/amstudies.html |title=American Studies |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> Environmental Studies,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://academic.reed.edu/es/ |title=Environmental Studies Interdisciplinary Major |publisher=Academic.reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/biochem.html |title=Biochem & Molec Bio interdisc major |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> Chemistry-Physics,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/chemphys.html |title=Chem-Physics interdisc major |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> Classics-Religion,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/clasrel.html |title=Classics-Religion Interdisciplinary Major |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> Dance/Theatre,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/dancethea.html |title=Dance-Theatre Interdisciplinary Major |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> History-Literature,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/histlit.html |title=History-Lit interdisc major |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> International and Comparative Policy Studies (ICPS),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/icps.html |title=Internat-Compar Policy Studies |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> Literature-Theatre,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/litthea.html |title=Lit-Theater interdisc major |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> Mathematics-Economics,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/mathecon.html |title=Math-Econ interdisc major |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> and Mathematics-Physics.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/catalog/programs/interdis_majors/mathphys.html |title=Math-Physics interdisc major |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref>


Reed offers ] in Computer Science (with ]), Engineering (with ], ], and ]), Forestry or Environmental Management (with ]), and Fine Art (with the ]).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.reed.edu/apply/academics/is_dd_div.html#dual |title=Dual degree program info |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111031055405/http://www.reed.edu/apply/academics/is_dd_div.html#dual |archive-date=October 31, 2011 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref>
Reed has produced the second-highest number of ] (31), for any liberal arts college, as well as over 50 ], over 60 ]s, and 2 ] winners. A very high proportion of Reed graduates go on to earn ]s, particularly in the ]s, ], ], and ]. Reed is third in percentage of its graduates who go on to earn PhDs in all disciplines, after only ] and ]. Reed is first in this percentage in ].


===Rankings===
Reed's debating team, which had existed for only two years at the time, was awarded the first place sweepstakes trophy for Division Two schools at the final tournament of the Northwest Forensics Conference in ], ].
{{See also|Criticism of college and university rankings (North America)}}
{{Infobox US university ranking
<!-- Liberal arts rankings -->| Forbes = 105
| THE_WSJ = 75
| USNWR_LA = 72
| Wamo_LA = 78
}}


In 1995, Reed College refused to participate in the '']'' "best colleges" rankings, making it the first educational institution in the United States to refuse to participate in college rankings. According to Reed's Office of Admissions the school's refusal to participate is based in 1994 disclosures by '']'' about institutions flagrantly manipulating data in order to move up in the rankings in ''U.S. News'' and other popular college guides.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.reed.edu/apply/college-rankings.htm |title=Reed and the Rankings Game |last=Lydgate |first=Chris |publisher=Reed College |date=September 12, 2018}}</ref> ''U.S. News'' maintains that their rankings are "a very legitimate tool for getting at a certain level of knowledge about colleges."<ref>{{citation|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1601839,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071123153415/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1601839,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 23, 2007|newspaper=Time|date=March 21, 2001|last=Rawe|first=Julie|title=The College Rankings Revolt}}</ref> In 2019, a team of statistics students recreated the formula used by ''U.S. News'' and were able to identify and quantify the penalty imposed on Reed. The students found the college to be ranked an estimated 52 places below an unbiased application of the U.S. News scoring rubric.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2019/usnews-discrepancy.html|title=Students Find Glaring Discrepancy in US News Rankings|website=Reed Magazine|language=en-us|access-date=2019-09-27}}</ref>
], former education editor for ''],'' called Reed "the most intellectual college in the country."


'']'' magazine ranked Reed 512th in the U.S. out of 623 schools evaluated for its 2022 "Best Colleges for Your Money" edition.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Best Colleges in America of 2022 by Money |url=https://money.com/best-colleges/ |access-date=2023-04-06 |website=Money}}</ref>


Reed is ranked as tied for the 72nd best liberal arts college by '']'' in its 2022 rankings, and tied for 16th in "Best Undergraduate Teaching", tied for 13th in "Most Innovative Schools", and tied for 185th in "Top Performers on Social Mobility".<ref>{{cite web |title=Reed College Rankings |url=https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/reed-college-3217/overall-rankings |access-date=2023-04-05 |website=U.S. News & World Report}}</ref>
== Campus ==


In 2006, '']'' magazine named Reed as one of twenty-five "New Ivies",<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Kantrowitz, Barbara |author2=Springen, Karen | title = America's 25 New Elite 'Ivies' | journal = ] | url = http://www.newsweek.com/2006/08/20/25-new-ivies.html |date=August 21, 2006 }}</ref> listing it among "the nation's elite colleges". In 2012, ''Newsweek'' ranked Reed the 15th "most rigorous" college in the nation.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/galleries/2012/08/05/college-rankings-2012-most-rigorous-schools-photos.html#slide12|title=College Rankings 2012: Most Rigorous Schools|work=]|access-date=July 29, 2013}}</ref>
The Reed College campus was established on a southeast ] tract of land known in 1910 as Crystal Springs Farm, a part of the Ladd Estate, formed in the 1870s from original land claims. The college's grounds include 100 acres, including a wooded wetland known as Reed canyon (see below).


Reed College ranked in the bottom 6% of four year colleges nationwide in the Brookings Institution's rating of U.S. colleges by incremental impact on alumni earnings 10 years post-enrollment.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/10/29-earnings-data-college-scorecard-rothwell |title=Using earnings data to rank colleges: A value-added approach updated with College Scorecard data &#124; Brookings Institution |date=October 29, 2015 }}</ref>
Portland architect Albert E. Doyle developed a plan modelled on ]'s St. John's College that was never implemented in full. The original campus buildings (including the Library, the Old Dorm Block, and what is now the primary administration building, Eliot Hall) are brick ] gothic buildings in a style that lends an ] feel to the campus.


An episode of ] podcast ] examines the flaws in the U.S. News system of university rankings.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2021-07-01|title=Lord of the Rankings - Pushkin|url=https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/lord-of-the-rankings/|access-date=2021-11-29|website=www.pushkin.fm|language=en-US}}</ref> The episode features a project done by a Reed professor of statistics and her students to investigate the mechanics of the ranking algorithm, attempting to see if Reed's ranking had been purposefully devalued because the school refused to submit its information to U.S. News.<ref>{{Citation|last=huayingq1996|title=A True Lie about Reed College: U.S News Ranking|date=2021-09-23|url=https://github.com/huayingq1996/Reed-College-Ranking|access-date=2021-11-29}}</ref> Previous investigations by Reed students to re-create U.S. News's statistical ranking algorithm found that Reed's correct 2019 rank was #38 instead of its assigned rank of #90.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Students Find Glaring Discrepancy in US News Rankings |url=https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2019/usnews-discrepancy.html |access-date=2022-08-18 |website=Reed Magazine |language=en-us}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Krug |first=Kris |title=The Ominous Cracks in the US News College Ranking System |url=https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2021/rankings-gladwell-usnews.html |access-date=2022-08-18 |website=Reed Magazine |language=en-us}}</ref>
The campus and buildings have undergone several phases of growth, and there are now 21 academic and administrative buildings and 18 residence halls (dorms).


=== Dorms === ==Admissions==
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Reed houses about 800 students in 12 dorms on campus and several college-owned houses and aparment buildings on or adjacent to campus. Dorms on campus range from the traditional (the Gothic Old Dorm Block) to the eclectic (Anna Mann, formerly a faculty residence), and include themed dorms focused on various languages as well as substance-free living and ]. The college's least-loved dorm complex, MacNaugton and Foster-Scholz, is known on campus as "Asylum Block" because of its dated and unfriendly post-WWII modernist architecture.


{{Infobox U.S. college admissions
The Reed College Co-op is a theme dorm located on the first floor of the MacNaughton building. This floor usually houses 12 to 14 students who purchase and prepare food together for all meals, and remain independent of the school's board plan, and is the only on-campus group to do this.
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=== Reed Canyon ===
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The ]&mdash;a natural wilderness area&mdash;bisects the campus, separating the academic buildings from many of the dormitories (the so called ''cross-canyon dorms''). A hallmark of the campus, the ], spans the canyon. It appears on almost every viewbook that the college circulates.
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=== Reed Community Garden ===
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For over thirty years Reed has allowed the use of a 1.9-acre portion of its campus for use as an organic ]. The Reed community garden is administered by the City of Portland's Parks and Recreation department and serves over 130 local residents and their families, including Reed students, faculty and staff. The Community Garden became controversial in 2005 when a campus planning exercise contemplated the future removal or relocation of the community garden.
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=== Food services === === Undergraduate ===
] in 2007]]


The Class of 2026 had 394 students.<ref name=":7">{{Cite web |title=Admission Statistics - Institutional Research - Reed College |url=https://www.reed.edu/ir/admission.html |access-date=2023-04-06 |website=www.reed.edu}}</ref> Median ] scores were 690 math and 720 reading. The class was drawn from the largest pool ever— 9,023 applicants—and was the most selective in Reed's history, with an admittance rate of 30.8%.<ref name=":7" /> {{As of|2018}}, to increase student enrollment from historically underrepresented minorities, Reed encourages application to the college's "Discover Reed Fly-In Program", an all-inclusive, all-expenses-paid, multi-day campus tour and open to all high school seniors who are US citizens or permanent residents, regardless of race or ethnicity.<ref name=flyin>{{cite web|url=https://apply.reed.edu/register/discover-reed-fly-in-application|title=Discover Reed Fly-In Application|website=Reed College|access-date=2021-02-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190509202946/https://apply.reed.edu/register/discover-reed-fly-in-application|date=2018|archive-date=2019-05-09}}</ref>
The Reed College cafeteria, known simply as 'Commons,' has a reputation for fast, friendly, ecologically sustainable food services. Due to the nature of the student body, ] and vegetarian dishes feature heavily on the menu. It is currently the only cafeteria on the small campus.


===Tuition and finances===
The 'Paradox', a coffee shop also on the campus, is famed for its individually sold cigarettes and hip music. It is open late nights seven days a week. In 2003 a second cafe, dubbed the 'Paradox Lost', was opened at the southern end of the biology building. It retains a tamer image than the original: It is exceptionally clean and closes early.
The total direct cost for the 2022–23 academic year, including tuition, fees and room-and-board, was $80,710.<ref name=":8">{{Cite web |title=Costs & Financial Aid - Admission - Reed College |url=https://www.reed.edu/apply/costs.html |access-date=2023-04-06 |website=www.reed.edu}}</ref> Indirect costs (books, supplies, transportation, personal expenses) could be another $3,950.<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite web |last1=College |first1=Reed |title=Reed College {{!}} Admission {{!}} Costs & Financial Aid |url=http://www.reed.edu/apply/costs.html |access-date=14 April 2018 |website=www.reed.edu |language=en-us}}</ref> For the 2022&ndash;23 academic year, the average financial aid package was $52,284.<ref name=":8" /> In 2022–23 over half of students received financial aid from the college.<ref name=":8" /> In 2004, 1.4% of Reed graduates defaulted on their student loans<ref>{{cite web|title=Official Cohort Default Rate |work=U.S. Department of Education |url=http://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/CFAPPS/COHORT/cohortdata_detail.cfm?Record_ID=4293&record=1&TOTAL_REC=1 |access-date=April 11, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716145707/http://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/CFAPPS/COHORT/cohortdata_detail.cfm?Record_ID=4293&record=1&TOTAL_REC=1 |archive-date=July 16, 2011 }}</ref> – below the national ] average of 5.1%.<ref>{{cite web | title = Cohort Default Rates for Schools | publisher = U.S. Department of Education | url = http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/defaultmanagement/cdr.html | access-date = April 11, 2007}}</ref>


Reed's endowment as of June 30, 2023, was $764 million.<ref name="auto"/> In the economic downturn that began in late 2007, Reed's total endowment had declined from $455 million in June 2007 to $311 million in June 2009.<ref>Matthew Kish, "Reed College endowment begins to recover", ''Portland Business Journal'', .</ref> By the end of 2013, however, the endowment surpassed the $500 million mark.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2013/11/20/reed-college-endowment-above-500-million.html |url-status=live |archive-date=Dec 1, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131201120804/http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2013/11/20/reed-college-endowment-above-500-million.html |first=Matthew |last=Kish |title=Reed College endowment bounces back, climbs above $500 million |date=Nov 20, 2013 |website=www.bizjournals.com |language=en |access-date=21 August 2023}}</ref>
== Trivia ==


===Academic honors===
The official mascot of Reed is the ] (pictured above). In mythology, the griffin often pulled the chariot of the sun, making the griffin the symbolic "protector of knowledge and bane of ignorance". The griffin was featured on the coat-of-arms of founder Simeon Reed and is now on the official seal of Reed College.
Reed has produced the second-highest number of ] for any liberal arts college—32—as well as over one hundred ], over seventy ]s, and three ] winners.<ref name="scholars" /><ref name="times">{{cite magazine |title=A Thinking Reed |magazine=] | date =December 28, 1962 |volume=80 |issue=26 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,827962,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080120072220/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,827962,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=January 20, 2008 |access-date= December 18, 2007}}</ref> A very high proportion of Reed graduates go on to earn PhDs, particularly in the natural sciences, history, ], and philosophy. Reed is ranked third in the percentage of graduates who go on to earn PhDs in all disciplines, after only ] and ].<ref name="phds" /> In 1961, '']'' declared that second only to Caltech, "This small college in Oregon has been far and away more productive of future scientists than any other institution in the U.S."<ref name="sascience">{{cite web |url=http://www.reed.edu/news_center/press_releases/2002-2003/489.html |title=NSF Fellowships Go to Reed Senior and Recent Graduates |access-date=December 18, 2007 |year=2002–2003 |work=Press Release |publisher=Reed College}}</ref><ref name="sascience2">{{cite journal |last=Smith |first=Chris |date=October 2001 |title=News you can abuse |journal=The University of Chicago Magazine |volume=94 |issue=1 |url= http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0110/features/abuse.html}}</ref> Reed is ranked first in producing PhDs in ], second in ] and ], third in history, ]s, and ], fourth in ] and ], fifth in ] and ], sixth in ], seventh in ] and ], and eighth in ] and ].<ref name="phds" />


Reed's debating team was awarded the first place sweepstakes trophy for ] schools at the final tournament of the Northwest Forensics Conference in February 2004.<ref>{{cite web |last1=College |first1=Reed |title=Reed College - Institutional Research {{!}} Distinctions |url=https://www.reed.edu/ir/distinctions.html |website=www.reed.edu |access-date=1 October 2018 |language=en-us}}</ref>
The official school color of Reed is called ''richmond rose'', possibly in part because ] is the ''City of Roses''. Over the years, institutional memory of this fact has faded and the color appearing on the school's publications and merchandise has darkened to a shade of maroon, which many people now consider the ''de facto'' school color.


], former education editor for ''],'' writes about Reed in ''],'' saying, "If you're a genuine intellectual, love the life of the mind, and want to learn for the sake of learning, the place most likely to empower you is not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, or Stanford. It is the most intellectual college in the country — Reed in Portland, Oregon."<ref name="lpope">{{cite book | last = Pope | first = Loren | title = Colleges That Change Lives | publisher = ] |date=July 2006 | page = | isbn = 0-14-303736-6| title-link = Colleges That Change Lives }}</ref>
=== Unofficial mottos and folklore ===


==Drug use==
An unofficial ] of Reed is "Communism, Atheism, and Free Love," and can be found in the on sweaters, t-shirts, etc. The motto arose on t-shirts made in the mid-70's in ironic testament to the passing values of the 1960's, and has persisted to this date. An alternative motto appeared on shirts in the late 1980s as "Capitalism, Avarism, and Free Beer", but never overtook the original in popularity.
Since the 1960s, Reed has had a reputation for tolerating open drug use among its students.<ref>{{cite news | title = Rogue of the Week |work = Willamette Week | date = April 24, 2002 | url= http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-955-the_federal_bureau_of_investigation.html}}</ref> '']'', written by the staff of '']'', notes an impression among students of institutional permissiveness: "According to students, the school does not bust students for drug or alcohol use unless they cause harm or embarrassment to another student."<ref name="yaledaily">{{cite book |title=The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, 2006 |author='']'' staff |edition=32nd |date=July 16, 2005 |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn= 0-312-34157-1 |page=771}}</ref>


In April 2008, student Alex Lluch died of a ] in his on-campus dorm room.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1207621554181530.xml&coll=7|title=Death on campus stuns Reed|last=Bernstein|first=Maxine|date=April 8, 2008|access-date=September 22, 2008|work=The Oregonian}}</ref> His death prompted revelations of several previous incidents, including the near-death heroin overdose of another student only months earlier.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/susan_nielsen/index.ssf?/base/editorial/120796171467460.xml&coll=7|title=Drugs on Campus|last=Nielsen|first=Susan|date=April 13, 2008|work=The Oregonian|access-date=September 22, 2008}}</ref> College President Colin Diver said "I don't honestly know" whether the drug death was an isolated incident or part of a larger problem. "When you say Reed," Diver said, "two words often come to mind. One is brains. One is drugs."<ref>{{cite news|last=Pitkin|first=James|url=http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-9009-higher_ed.html|title=Higher Ed|date=May 14, 2008|newspaper=]|access-date=January 2, 2013}}</ref> Local reporter James Pitkin of the newspaper '']'' editorialized that "Reed College, a private school with one of the most prestigious academic programs in the U.S., is one of the last schools in the country where students enjoy almost unlimited freedom to experiment openly with drugs, with little or no hassles from authorities", though ''Willamette Week'' stated the following week concerning Pitkin's editorial: "As of press time, almost 500 responses, many expressing harsh criticism of ''Willamette Week'', had been posted on our website."<ref>{{cite news|title=Inbox|date=May 21, 2008|newspaper=Willamette Week|url=http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-9031-inbox.html|access-date=January 2, 2013}}</ref>
Every year's ''Reed College Student Handbook'' (a manual on student life written by students, not to be confused with the ''College Handbook'', which is written by college officials) contains a test called the "Reed College Immorality Quotient" that tests an individual's ] on topics such as ], ], and ].


In March 2010, another student died of drug-related causes in his off-campus residence.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/reed_college_rattled_by_second.html | work=The Oregonian | title=Reed College rattled by second student death this month | date=March 23, 2010}}</ref> This led '']'' to conclude that "Reed{{nbsp}}... has long been known almost as much for its unusually permissive atmosphere as for its impressively rigorous academics." Law enforcement authorities promised to take action, including sending undercover agents to Reed's annual ] celebration.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/education/27reed.html |title=Reed College's President Is Told to Crack Down on Campus Drug Use|work= The New York Times|date= April 27, 2010|access-date=July 29, 2013}}</ref><ref>, '']'', May 4, 2010</ref>
One of the unofficial symbols of Reed is the ], a roughly 280 pound (127 kg) concrete statue that has been continuously stolen and re-stolen since 1913. The on-campus folklore of events surrounding the Doyle Owl is sufficiently large that, in ], a senior thesis was written on the topic of the Owl's ]. The original Doyle Owl was almost certainly destroyed many years ago, but a number of replicas (of varying degrees of quality) remain in circulation, contributing to the frequency of its appearance.


In February 2012, the Reed administration chose to call the police following the discovery of "two to three pounds of marijuana and a small amount of ] and ] in the on-campus apartment of two juniors."<ref name=":1">{{Cite news|url=http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/02/arrest_of_reed_students_on_mar.html|title=Arrest of Reed students on marijuana charges stirs campus debate|work=OregonLive.com|access-date=2018-04-14|language=en-US}}</ref> Following campus debate, Reed's president at the time, Colin Diver, issued a letter to students and staff, saying the college would not tolerate illegal drug use on campus: "Such behavior endangers the health and welfare of the entire community, attracts potentially dangerous criminal activity on campus, undermines the academic mission of the college, and violates the college's obligations under state and federal law."<ref name=":1" />
Famous on-campus myths claim there exist an intact ] under the concrete foundation of the college library, an underground primate lab working exclusively with ]s under the Psychology building (the legend states that the presence of this lab was discovered when a snow monkey escaped into the Canyon and necessitated the closing of the facility), and a four-story lab/habitation ] under the Physics building. There are many other such stories, often referred to as ].


==Political and social activism==
===Unique student organizations===
Reed has a reputation for being politically left-of-center.<ref name="lefty" />
*'''C.H.V.N.K. DCLXVI''' - college branch of Portland-based ] club
*'''MLLL (Comic Book Reading Room)''' - archive of ]s and ]s spanning four decades, owned by the student body and available to any student for on-site reading
*'''Motorized Couch Collective''' - installs motors and wheels into furniture
*'''Reed Kommunal Shit Kollektiv''' - organizes parties and provides free goods/services to the student body in the spirit of ], including blankets, bicycles, pillows, haircuts, food, and (during exam week) chemical ]s


During the ] of the 1950s, then-President Duncan Ballantine fired ] philosopher ], a tenured professor, for his failure to cooperate with the ] (HUAC) investigation.<ref>{{cite web | author= Schrecker, Ellen | title= Political Tests for Professors: Academic Freedom during the McCarthy Years | work=The University Loyalty Oath | date= October 7, 1999 | url=http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loyaltyoath/symposium/schrecker.html | access-date=April 9, 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title = History of Washington State and the Pacific Northwest | publisher = Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington | url = http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Pacific%20Northwest%20History/Lessons/Lesson%2023/23.html }}</ref> According to an article in the college's alumni magazine, "because of the decisive support expressed by Reed's faculty, students, and alumni for the three besieged teachers and for the principle of academic freedom, Reed College's experience with McCarthyism stands apart from that of most other American colleges and universities. Elsewhere in the academic world both tenured and nontenured professors with alleged or admitted communist party ties were fired with relatively little fuss or protest. At Reed, however, opposition to the political interrogations of the teachers was so strong that some believed the campus was in danger of closure."<ref>{{cite news | last=Harmon | first=Rick | title=In the eye of the storm | work=Reed Magazine | date=August 1997 | url= http://web.reed.edu/reed_magazine/aug1997/index.html | access-date=February 7, 2007 }}</ref> A statement of "regret" by the Reed administration and Board of Trustees was published in 1981, formally revising the judgment of the 1954 trustees. In 1993, then-President Steve Koblik invited Moore to visit the college, and in 1995 the last surviving member of the Board that fired Moore expressed his regret and apologized to him.<ref>{{cite news | author=Munk, Michael | title=Oregon Tests Academic Freedom in (Cold) Wartime: The Reed College Trustees versus Stanley Moore | work=The Oregon Historical Quarterly | year=1996 }}</ref>
== Notable alumni ==
Reed considers any student who attended a semester or more at the college to be an alumnus. Reed's notable alumni include:


===Reedies Against Racism===
*] (chef)
On September 26, 2016, students organized a boycott of all college operations in participation with the National Day of Boycott, a national day of protest which was proposed by actor ] on ] in response to the issue of ].<ref>{{cite news|title=Students hold demonstration on Reed College campus for 'National Day of Boycott'|url=http://katu.com/news/local/students-hold-demonstration-on-reed-college-campus-for-national-day-of-boycott|access-date=24 April 2018|agency=KATU2|date=26 September 2016}}</ref> Following the boycott, students created an activist group called Reedies Against Racism (RAR) and presented a list of demands for the college purportedly on behalf of students from marginalized backgrounds. The primary demand concerned Reed's mandatory freshman Humanities course, proposing that the course either be changed to be more inclusive of world literature and classics or to be made not mandatory. One element of the class deemed racist by the protestors was the use of the 1978 ] song "King Tut" in a discussion about ].<ref name="atlantic">{{cite magazine|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/11/the-surprising-revolt-at-reed/544682/|title=The surprising revolt at the most liberal college in the country|first=Chris|last=Bodenner|magazine=The Atlantic|date=2017-11-02|access-date=2017-12-01}}</ref> Students began a protest campaign against the curriculum by sitting in during lectures with signs with quotations from various African-American and non-white academics.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Shepherd|first1=Katie|title=What Do Protesting Students At Reed College Want?|url=http://www.wweek.com/news/schools/2017/11/08/what-do-protesting-students-at-reed-college-want/|access-date=24 April 2018|agency=Willamette Week|newspaper=Willamette Week|date=8 November 2017}}</ref> Other protests separate from the Humanities course also included efforts to shout down speakers, including ] after she was accused of profiting from ] while making the film '']''.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21728688-reed-college-oregon-shows-left-v-left-clashes-can-be-equally-vitriolic-arguments|title=Arguments over free speech on campus are not left v right|newspaper=The Economist|date=2017-09-07|access-date=2017-12-01}}</ref> The group eventually focused on Reed's banking relationship with ], based on allegations that the bank had invested in the ] project and the ] industry, and staged an occupation of Reed's Eliot Hall.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Acker|first1=Lizzy|title=Reed students have been camped out in the president's office for 9 days|url=http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/10/reed_students_have_been_camped.html|access-date=24 April 2018|agency=Oregon Live|publisher=Oregon Live LLC|date=31 October 2017}}</ref>
*] (71st Secretary of the Navy)
*] (radio personality)
*] (author)
*] (writer)
*] (writer and social critic)
*] (author of ])
*] (creator of the Norton Utilities)
*] (])
*] (fashion designer)
*] (writer)
*] (inventor of the ])
*] (co-founder of ])
*] (poet)
*] (founder of ], inventor of the ])
*] (co-founder of ]) attended Reed for one semester.
*] (musician) attended Reed for one semester.
*] (poet)
*] (poet)


There was some opposition to the lecture protests, notably by Reed professor of English Lucía Martínez Valdivia, who stated that a protest during her lecture on ] would amplify her pre-existing case of ].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/professors-like-me-cant-stay-silent-about-this-extremist-moment-on-campuses/2017/10/27/fd7aded2-b9b0-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html|title=Professors like me can't stay silent about this extremist moment on campus|author=Lucía Martínez Valdivia|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=2017-10-27|access-date=2017-12-01}}</ref> In November 2017, Chris Bodenner of '']'' wrote about growing student resentment toward the tactics of RAR.<ref name="atlantic" /> In response to protests the faculty decided to undergo the decennial review process a year early, as well as to complete the process in three months instead of the usual year. In January 2018, Humanities 110 Chair professor Libby Drumm announced in a campus-wide email that the course curriculum would be restructured after years of faculty discussion and in response to student feedback as well as input from an external review committee composed of humanities faculty from other institutes, adopting a "four-module structure" that would include texts from the Americas and allow greater flexibility in the curriculum which would be integrated beginning fall 2018. The external review had not in fact been completed nor reviewed at the time of the announcement.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Richardson|first1=Bradford|title=After protests, Oregon college revises curriculum to include units on Mexico City and Harlem, in addition to Athens and Rome |url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/6/reed-college-to-overhaul-eurocentric-western-civil/|access-date=24 April 2018|agency=Washington Times|newspaper=Washington Times|date=6 February 2018}}</ref>
== Paideia ==


Following "a contentious year of protests, including an anti-racism sit-in in Kroger's office", college president John Kroger resigned, effective June 2018.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Herron |first1=Elise |title=Reed College President John Kroger Stepping Down After Six-Year Tenure |url=https://www.wweek.com/news/2018/02/10/reed-college-president-john-kroger-stepping-down-after-six-year-tenure/ |access-date=3 October 2018 |newspaper=Willamette Week |date=Feb 10, 2018}}</ref>
During the week before the beginning of second-semester classes, the campus undergoes ''']''' (drawn from the Greek). This "festival of learning" takes the form of a week (although originally a whole month) of classes and seminars put on by anyone who wishes to teach, including students, professors, staff members, and outside educators invited on-campus by members of the Reed Community. Many such classes are explicitly silly (one long-running tradition is to hold an "Underwater Basket Weaving" class), while others are trivially educational (such as "Giant Concrete Gnome Construction," a class that, incidental to building monolithic ]s, includes some content relating to the construction of pre-Christian ]s). Genuine classes (such as ] seminars and mini-classes on obscure academic topics), tournaments, and film festivals round out the "class" list, which is different every year. The objective of Paideia is not only to learn new (possibly non-useful) things, but to turn the tables on students and encourage them to teach.


== Renn Fayre == ==Campus==
{{See also|List of Reed College buildings}}
''Renn Fayre'' is an annual three-day celebration at Reed with a different theme each year. Born in the 1960s as an actual ], it has long since lost all connection to anachronism and the ], although its name has proven invincible.
]
]
The Reed College campus was established on a tract of land in southeast ] known in 1910 as Crystal Springs Farm, a part of the Ladd Estate, formed in the 1870s from original land claims. The college's grounds include {{convert|116|acre|km2}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=History and Description - Facilities Services - Reed College |url=https://www.reed.edu/facilities_services/history.html |access-date=2024-07-30 |website=www.reed.edu}}</ref> of contiguous land, including a wooded wetland known as Reed Canyon.


Portland architect ] developed a plan, never implemented in full, modeled on the University of Oxford's ]. The original campus buildings (including the Library, the ], and what is now the primary administration building, ]) are brick ] buildings in a style similar to ] campuses. In contrast, the science section of campus, including the physics, biology, and psychology (originally chemistry) buildings, were designed in the ] style. The Psychology Building, completed in 1949, was designed by Modernist architect ] at the same time as his celebrated ] in downtown Portland.
Renn Fayre commences with Thesis Parade, where graduating seniors make a symbolic march to deliver their theses to the registrar. The students gather at the entrance to the library where chaos, champagne, and fireworks get the party started. At the proper moment, the entire group moves through the library and out through what was the library's original front entrance, now an emergency exit.


The campus and buildings have undergone several phases of growth, and there are now 21 academic and administrative buildings and 18 residence halls. Since 2004, Reed's campus has expanded to include adjacent properties beyond its historic boundaries, such as the Birchwood Apartments complex and former medical administrative offices on either side of SE 28th Avenue, and the Parker House, across SE Woodstock from Prexy. At the same time the Willard House (donated to Reed in 1964), across from the college's main entrance at SE Woodstock and SE Reed College Place, was converted from faculty housing to administrative use. Reed announced on July 13, 2007, that it had purchased the Rivelli farm, a {{convert|1.5|acre|ha|adj=on|lk=out}} tract of land south of the Garden House and west of Botsford Drive. Reed's "immediate plans for the acquired property include housing a small number of students in the former Rivelli home during the 2007–08 academic year. Longer term, the college anticipates that it may seek to develop the northern portion of the property for additional student housing".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://web.reed.edu/news_center/press_releases/2007-2008/press_release.html |title=Reed College press release |publisher=Web.reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref>
The Fayre runs from Friday to Sunday, beginning on the last day of classes for the spring semester. The week after Renn Fayre is Reading Week, in which no classes are held; final examinations are held in the following week.


===Residence halls===
Renn Fayre is often called the metaphorical explosion of the student body after a year of intense pressure. Traditions include bizarre art installations, insect-eating contests, occasional motorized couches, naked people painting themselves blue (a vague tribute to the ancient ]), a ], the Glo Opera (performed at night by actors in ]-covered suits) and a general sense of mayhem, often fueled by drugs and alcohol. Serious injuries are rare, thanks in part to the presence of vigilant student volunteers (known as "Karma Patrol" and "Border Patrol", who ensure guest wellness and the exclusion of unauthorized visitors respectively) and the non-profit White Bird Clinic .
]]]
Reed houses 945 students in 18 residence halls on campus and several college-owned houses and apartment buildings on or adjacent to campus.<ref name = "Master Plan" /><ref name=":2">{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2018/new-dorm-at-reed.html|title=Home Away from Home|website=Reed Magazine|language=en-us|access-date=2018-04-14}}</ref> Residence halls on campus range from the traditional (i.e., Gothic Old Dorm Block, referred to as "ODB") to the eclectic (e.g., Anna Mann, a Tudor-style cottage built in the 1920s by Reed's founding architect A. E. Doyle, originally used as a women's hall<ref name="romel">Romel Hernandez, "This New House", (Spring 2007), p. 15.</ref>), language houses (Spanish, Russian, French, German, and Chinese), "temporary" housing, built in the 1960s (Cross Canyon – Chittick, Woodbridge, McKinley, Griffin), to more recently built dorms (Bragdon, Naito, Sullivan). There are also theme residence halls including everything from substance-free living to Japanese culture to music to a dorm for students interested in outdoors activities (hiking, climbing, bicycling, kayaking, skiing, etc.).<ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite web |url=http://www.reed.edu/res_life/on_campus/theme_dorms.html |title=Reed Theme Residences |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110828044018/http://www.reed.edu/res_life/on_campus/theme_dorms.html |archive-date=August 28, 2011 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> The college's least-loved complex (as measured by applications to the college's housing lottery), MacNaughton and Foster-Scholz, is known on campus as "Asylum Block" because of its post-World War II modernist architecture and interior spaces dominated by long, straight corridors lined with identical doors, said by students to resemble that of an ].<ref name="asylum">{{cite web |url=http://web.reed.edu/apply/tour/index.html?welcome_to_campus/foster_scholz_mac.html~mainFrame |title=Foster-Scholz and Macnaughton Residence Halls |access-date=December 18, 2007 |work= Reed Virtual Tour |publisher=Reed College}}</ref> Until 2006, it was thought that these residence halls had been designed by architect ].

Under the 10-year Campus Master Plan adopted in 2006, Foster-Scholz is scheduled to be demolished and replaced, and MacNaughton to be remodeled.<ref name = "Master Plan" >{{cite web | title = Campus Facilities Master Plan | publisher = Reed College | url = http://web.reed.edu/campusmasterplan/pdfs/reed_master_plan_approved.pdf }}</ref> According to the master plan, "The College's goal is to provide housing on or adjacent to the campus that accommodates 75% of the student population. At present, the College provides on-campus housing for 838 students".<ref name = "Master Plan" />

In Spring 2007, the college broke ground on the construction of a new quadrangle called the Grove, with four new Leed certified residence halls (Aspen, Sequoia, Sitka, Bidwell). They opened on the northwest side of campus in Fall 2008. A new Spanish House residence was completed. Together, the five new residences added 142 new beds.<ref name="romel" />

Reed also has off-campus housing. Many houses in the ] and ] Portland neighborhoods are traditionally rented to Reed students.

On February 21, 2018, Reed announced the construction of the "largest residence hall in its history".<ref name=":2" /> Completed in Fall 2019, Trillium houses an additional 180 students, boosting Reed's housing capacity to nearly 80% of the student body, up from 68%.<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hoffmancorp.com/hoffman_opps/reed-college-residence-hall/|title=Hoffman Construction – Reed College Residence Hall|website=www.hoffmancorp.com|language=en-US|access-date=2018-04-14}}</ref> The addition of Trillium guarantees housing for both freshman and sophomores, as students were formerly subjected to a housing lottery after freshman year.<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/res_life/seek-housing/returning-student-housing-lottery.html|title=Reed College {{!}} Residence Life {{!}} Returning Student Housing & Lottery|last=College|first=Reed|website=www.reed.edu|language=en-us|access-date=2018-04-14}}</ref> The new building is also designed to meet "LEED Platinum standards", and Reed is currently evaluating proposals to put solar panels on the roof.<ref name=":2" />

===Reed Canyon===
]]]
The Reed College Canyon, a natural area and national wildlife preserve, bisects the campus, separating the academic buildings from many of the residence halls (the so-called ''cross-canyon halls''). The canyon is filled by Crystal Creek Springs, a ] that drains into ].<ref>{{cite news | first = Ben | last = Jacklet | title = One vine at a time | newspaper = Willamette Week | date = June 28, 2005 | url = http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=30595 | access-date = March 26, 2007 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070106010059/http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=30595 | archive-date = January 6, 2007 | url-status = dead }}</ref>

Canyon Day, a tradition dating back to 1915, is held twice a year. On Canyon Day students and Reed neighbors join canyon crew workers to spend a day helping with restoration efforts.<ref name="canyon">{{cite web |url= http://web.reed.edu/canyon/cday/history.html |title= Canyon Day History |access-date=February 7, 2011 |work= Reed College Canyon |publisher= Reed College}}</ref>

A landmark of the campus, the ], spans the canyon. This bridge replaced the unique cantilevered bridge that served in that spot between 1959 and 1991, which "featured stressed plywood girders – the first time this construction had been used on a span of this size: a straight bridge {{convert|132|ft|m}} long and {{convert|15|ft|m}} high. It attracted great architectural interest during its lifetime".<ref>{{cite web | title = Exploring Reed's Vanished Buildings | publisher = Reed Magazine |date=August 2005 | url = http://web.reed.edu/reed_magazine/aug2005/features/vanished_buildings/2.html }}</ref>

A new pedestrian and bicycle bridge spanning the canyon was opened in Fall 2008. This bridge, dubbed the "Bouncy Bridge", "Orange Bridge", and in some cases the "Amber Bridge" by students, is {{convert|370|ft|m}} long, about a third longer than the Blue Bridge, and "connect the new north campus quad to Gray Campus Center, the student union, the library, and academic buildings on the south side of campus".<ref name="romel"/>

===Douglas F. Cooley Gallery===
Reed's Cooley Gallery is an internationally recognized contemporary art space located at the entrance to the ]. It was established in 1988 as the result of a gift from Susan and Edward Cooley in honor of their late son.<ref name="cooley">{{cite journal |date=February 2001 |title=Trustee Ed Cooley Dies |journal=Reed Magazine |url=http://web.reed.edu/reed_magazine/Feb2001/columns/NoC/NoC_Cooley.html |access-date= December 18, 2007}}</ref> The Cooley Gallery has exhibited international artists such as ], ], ] and ] as well as the contemporary art collection of ].<ref name="collection">{{cite web |url=http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2006/02/new_trajectorie_1.html |title=New Trajectories I: Relocations, at Reed College |access-date=December 18, 2007 |last=Jahn |first=Jeff |date=February 17, 2006 |work=Portland art and reviews |format=blog}}</ref> In pursuit of its mission to support the curriculum of the art, art history, and humanities programs at Reed, the gallery produces three or four exhibitions each year, along with lectures, colloquia, and artist visits. The gallery is currently under the directorship of Stephanie Snyder,<ref name="snyder">{{cite web |url=http://www.reed.edu/news_center/press_releases/2006-2007/041607Getty.html |title=Reed College Gallery Curator Stephanie Snyder Receives Getty Research Fellowship |access-date=December 18, 2007 |date=April 26, 2007 |work=News Center |publisher=Reed College}}</ref> who succeeded founding director Susan Fillin-Yeh in 2004.

===Food services===
The cafeteria, known simply as "Commons", has a reputation for ecologically ] services. The commons dining hall is operated by ], and food is purchased on an item-by-item basis. Suiting the student body, ] and vegetarian dishes feature heavily on the menu. It is currently the only cafeteria on the small campus, with the exception of Canyon Cafe (formerly Caffe Circo and Caffe Paradiso), a small cafe on the other side of campus which also operated by board points. Scrounging is a long tradition at Reed College allowing students to offer unfinished Commons' food to students without board points from their trays as they are returned to be washed.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/december2011/articles/apocrypha/traditions_myths_and_legends.html | title=Origin of the Scrounge}}</ref>

The Reed College Co-ops are a theme community that reside in the Farm and Garden Houses, after many years on the first floor of MacNaughton Hall. These are the only campus dorms that are independent of the school's board plan. They traditionally throw an alternative "Thanksgiving" celebration that has sometimes included a square-dance. The Co-ops house students who purchase and prepare food together, sharing chores and conducting weekly, consensus-based meetings. It is a close community valuing sustainability, organic food, consensus-based decisions, self-government, music, and plants.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.reed.edu/res_life/theme-housing/index.html |title=Reed College &#124; House Advisor Search |access-date=February 15, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150215230835/http://www.reed.edu/res_life/theme-housing/index.html |archive-date=February 15, 2015 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
] the day following its collapse.]]
The Paradox ("Est. in the 80s") is a student-run coffee shop located on campus. In 2003 the Paradox opened a second coffee shop, dubbing it the "Paradox Lost" (an allusion to ]'s ''],'') at the southern end of the biology building, in the space commonly called the "Bio Fishbowl". The new north-campus dorms, which opened in Fall 2008, feature yet another small cafe, originally dubbed "Cafe Paradiso", thereby providing three coffee shops within a {{convert|116|acre|km2|adj=on}} campus. The recent addition of a circus-themed mural to the cafe prompted a name change, and it now operates as Caffe Circo. This third shop is not student-run, but is operated by ]. ] has a monopoly on the food services at Reed as they are the only ones who accept board points; written into their contract is the prohibition of food carts on campus.

=== 2021 collapse of the Aubrey R. Watzek Sports Center ===
On February 15, 2021, the ], collapsed during ].<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|title=Sports Center Gyms Collapse Following Winter Storm|url=https://reedquest.org/articles/sportscentercollapse|access-date=2021-03-17|website=The Reed College Quest|date=February 26, 2021 |language=en-US}}</ref> Both gyms that were part of the sports center collapsed.<ref name=":5">{{Cite web|last=Baldwin-Sayre|first=Carrie|title=Snowstorm Devastates Sports Center|url=https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2021/snowstorm-sports-center-roof.html|access-date=2021-03-17|website=Reed Magazine|language=en-us}}</ref> The collapse was attributed to excess snow piling up on the roof of the building causing a support truss to fracture, and strained several others, causing the roof to collapse.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":5" /> The sports center was serving as a ] testing center,<ref>{{Cite web|title=Training, Testing, Health Monitoring & Contact Tracing - COVID-19 Prevention & Response - Reed College|url=https://www.reed.edu/coronavirus/plan/health-testing-tracing.html|access-date=2021-03-17|website=www.reed.edu}}</ref> and the destruction of the testing center resulted in the loss of testing kits and other medical supplies needed for ].<ref>{{Cite web|title=COVID Corner: Testing Moved to Student Union|url=https://reedquest.org/articles/covid22521|access-date=2021-03-17|website=The Reed College Quest|date=February 26, 2021 |language=en-US}}</ref>

==Icons and student life==

{| style="text-align:center; float:right; font-size:85%; margin-left:2em; margin:10px;" class="wikitable"
|+ ''] of student body (Fall 2021)''<ref name="Enrollment"/>
|-
! ]
| 5.0%
|-
! ]
| 15.0%
|-
! Hawaiian/Pacific Islander
| 0.3%
|-
! ]
| 9.0%
|-
! ]
| 2.0%
|-
! International
| 9.0%
|-
! ]
| 59.0%
|-
! Unknown
| 2.0%
|-
! ]
| 58.0%
|-
! ]
| 42.0%
|}

]

===Griffin===
The official mascot of Reed is the ]. In mythology, the griffin often pulled the chariot of the sun; in canto 32 of ]'s '']'' the griffin is associated with the ]. The griffin was featured on the coat-of-arms of founder Simeon Reed<ref name="coat-of-arms" /> and is now on the official seal of Reed College. Though the school does not have varsity sports, the mascot features prominently throughout campus iconography outside of an athletic context.

===School color===
The official school color of Reed is Richmond Rose.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://web.reed.edu/apply/tour/index.html?welcome_to_campus/richmond_rose.html~mainFrame |title=Reed Virtual Tour |publisher=Web.reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110926205607/http://web.reed.edu/apply/tour/index.html?welcome_to_campus%2Frichmond_rose.html~mainFrame |archive-date=September 26, 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Over the years, institutional memory of this fact has faded and the color appearing on the school's publications and merchandise has darkened to a shade of maroon. The most common examples of "Richmond Rose" are the satin tapes securing the degree certificate inside a Reed College diploma.

===School song===
The school song, "Fair Reed", is sung to the tune of the 1912 popular song "]". It may be imitative of the Harvard anthem "Fair Harvard", which is also sung to the tune of "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms". It was composed by former president ] shortly after Reed's founding, and is rarely heard today.<ref>{{cite web | first = Robert | last = Reynolds | title = Reed College Alma Mater | publisher = Reed College | url= http://people.reed.edu/~reyn/almamater.html }}</ref>

An unofficial Reed Alma Mater, "] Forever", sung to the tune of "]", has been sung by Reed students since the 1950s.<ref>Spencer Wyant, "Epistemology Forever", ''Reed Magazine,'' ; Jim Kahan, "The Evolution of ''Epistemology Forever,'' ''Reed Magazine,'' .</ref>

===Students' nicknames===
Reed students and alumni referred to themselves as "Reedites" in the early years of the college. This term faded out in favor of the now ubiquitous "Reedie" after World War II.<ref name="reeditesreedies">{{cite journal |last=McCarthy |first=Nancy |date=May 1998 |title=A Campus Life |journal=Reed Magazine |url=http://web.reed.edu/reed_magazine/may1998/campus/index.html |access-date= December 18, 2007}}</ref> Around campus, prospective students are called "prospies".

===Unofficial mottos and folklore===
An unofficial motto of Reed is "Communism, Atheism, Free Love", and can be found in the Reed College Bookstore on sweaters, T-shirts, etc. It was a label that the Reed community claimed from critics during the 1920s as a "tongue-in-cheek slogan" in reference to Reed's ]. Reed's founding president William T. Foster's outspoken opposition against the entrance of the United States into World War I, as well as the college's support for feminism, its adherence to academic freedom (i.e., inviting a leader of the ] to speak on campus about the ]’s potential effect on ], emancipation of women, and ending the persecution of Jews), and its ] status made the college a natural target for what was originally meant to be a pejorative slur.<ref name="cafl">{{cite journal |last=Sheehy |first=John P. |date=Summer 2007 |title=What's so funny about communism, atheism, and free love? |journal=Reed Magazine |url=http://web.reed.edu/reed_magazine/summer2007/features/C_A_FL/7.html |access-date= December 18, 2007}}</ref><ref name="caflquote">{{cite journal |date=Summer 2007 |title=Ripped from the Archives: All you need is communism, atheism, and free love |journal=Reed Magazine |url=http://web.reed.edu/reed_magazine/summer2007/features/C_A_FL/8.html |access-date= December 18, 2007}}</ref>
]
The faux Reed Seal has changed over the years. In its original form the griffin was holding a hammer and sickle in its paws. Later versions had the griffin wearing boxing gloves.

One of the unofficial symbols of Reed is the ], a roughly {{convert|280|lb|kg|adj=on}} concrete statue that has been continuously stolen and re-stolen since about 1919. The original Doyle Owl (originally "House F Owl" after the dormitory named House F that later became Doyle dormitory) was a garden sculpture from the neighborhood stolen by House F residents as a prank (there is a photo of House F residents around the original owl that has been made into a T-shirt). The on-campus folklore of events surrounding the Doyle Owl is sufficiently large that, in 1983, a senior thesis was written on the topic of the Owl's ]. The original Doyle Owl was destroyed many years ago; the current avatar is Doyle Owl number 13, plus or minus 11.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/december2011/articles/features/almanac/almanac1.html|title=The New (Olde) Reed Almanac|website=Reed Magazine}}</ref> At the present time only one Owl is being shown.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140509001544/http://www.reed.edu/apply/about_reed/doyleowl.html |date=May 9, 2014 }} </ref><ref></ref>

===Paideia===
Each January, before the beginning of second-semester classes, the campus holds an interim period called ] (drawn from the Greek, meaning 'education').<ref name="reed.edu">{{cite web|url=http://www.reed.edu/apply/student_life/favorite_traditions.html |title=Reed College &#124; Admission &#124; Reed College Admission Office |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref> Originally conceived and approved by the faculty in 1968 for unstructured independent study, or "UIS", Paideia ran for the full month of January from 1969 to 1981, supervised by a committee of faculty, staff and students.<ref name="Quest27jan12">{{Citation | last = Massey | first = Sammie | title = Ghosts of Paideia's Past | pages = 1, 5 | newspaper = The Quest | location = Reed College, Portland OR | date = January 27, 2012 | url = http://www.reedquest.org/2012/01/ghosts-of-paideias-past/ | access-date = January 29, 2012 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130101182529/http://www.reedquest.org/2012/01/ghosts-of-paideias-past/ | archive-date = January 1, 2013 | url-status = dead | df = mdy-all }}</ref> This festival of learning takes the form of classes and seminars put on by anyone who wishes to teach, including students, professors, staff members, and outside educators invited on-campus by members of the Reed Community. The classes are intended to be informal, yet intellectual activities free of the usual academic pressure endemic to Reed.<ref name="reed.edu"/> Many such classes are explicitly trivial (one long-running tradition is to hold an ] class), while others are trivially academic (such as "Giant Concrete Gnome Construction", a class that, incidental to building monolithic ]s, includes some content relating to the construction of pre-Christian ]s). More structured classes (such as martial arts seminars and mini-classes on obscure academic topics), tournaments, and film festivals round out the schedule, which is different every year. The objective of Paideia is not only to learn new (possibly non-useful) things, but to turn the tables on students and encourage them to teach.

In his 2005 Stanford commencement lecture, ] founder and Reed ] ] credited a Reed ] class taught by ] for his focus on choosing quality typefaces for the ].<ref>{{cite web |author= Jobs, Steve | title= Commencement Address | work=Stanford Report | date=June 14, 2005 | url=http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html | access-date=April 9, 2006}}</ref> While the full calligraphy course<ref>{{cite web | url = http://web.reed.edu/reed_magazine/aug2003/features/dance_of_pen/ | title = The Dance of the Pen | access-date = October 6, 2011 | last = Schwartz | first = Todd | date = August 2003 | work = Reed Magazine | publisher = Reed College}}</ref> is no longer taught at Reed, Paideia usually features a short course on the subject in addition to the informal, weekly gatherings (currently held every Thursday night) of aspiring calligraphy enthusiasts.

===Renn Fayre===
{{Main|Renn Fayre}}

Renn Fayre is an annual three-day celebration with a different theme each year. Born in the 1960s as an actual ], it has long since lost all connection to anachronism and the ], although its name has persisted. The event is initiated by a procession of seniors throwing their thesis notes in a large bonfire after the completed theses are submitted.

===Reed Arts Week===
{{Main|Reed Arts Week}}
Reed Arts Week is a week-long celebration of the arts at Reed. It features music, dance, film, creative writing, and the visual arts.

===Student organizations===
According to Reed's website, each semester, a $130 student body fee "is collected from each full-time student by the business office, acting as agent for the student senate. The fee underwrites publication of the student newspaper and extracurricular activities, and partially supports the student union and ski cabin."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://web.reed.edu/catalog/admission/costs.html |title=College Catalog – Reed College |publisher=Web.reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011}}</ref>
Student body funds (totaling roughly $370,000 annually) are distributed each semester to groups that place among the top 40 organizations in the semester's funding poll. The funding poll uses a voting system in which each organization provides a description that is ranked by each member of the student body with either 'top six,' 'approve,' 'no opinion,' 'disapprove.' A former 'deep six' was eliminated from the system in 2019. These ranks are then tabulated by assigning numbers to each rank and summing across all voters.<ref>For more information, see {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120214063243/http://web.reed.edu/community/SB/senate/signators/sectiontwo.html |date=February 14, 2012 }}</ref> Afterwards, the top forty organizations present their budgets to the student body senate during Funding Circus. The following day the senate makes decisions about each budget in a process called Funding Hell.

The school's student-run newspaper, ''The Reed College Quest ''or simply the ''Quest,'' has been published since 1913, and its radio station KRRC had been broadcasting, with a few interruptions, from 1955<ref name=reedmag>{{cite news
|title=KRRC: The (barely audible) voice of Reed College
|first=Patti
|last=MacRae
|work=Reed Magazine
|date=August 2002
|url=http://web.reed.edu/reed_magazine/aug2002/features/KRRC/index.html
}}</ref><ref name=studmedia>{{cite web |url=http://www.reed.edu/student_activities/student_media.html |title=Reed College: Student media |publisher=Reed.edu |access-date=November 13, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111129122738/http://reed.edu/student_activities/student_media.html |archive-date=November 29, 2011 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> The station now broadcasts online only at krrc.fm.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://krrc.fm/|title=KRRC|website=KRRC}}</ref>

Although some student organizations partnered with outside groups such as ] or ] are more structured, most student organizations are highly informal. There is no formal process for forming a student organization at Reed; a group of students (or a single student) announcing themselves as or just considering themselves a student organization is enough, but groups that desire funding from the school's Student Activities office or Student Body Fees must register with Student Activities or through the Student Senate. The Reed archive of comic books and ]s, the MLLL (Comic Book Reading Room), is well into its fourth decade, and Beer Nation, the student group that organizes and manages various ]s throughout the year and during ], has existed for many years. Some organizations, such as the Motorized Couch Collective — dedicated to installing motors and wheels into furniture — have become more Reed myth than reality in recent years.<ref>{{citation|author=Reed Student Senate|publisher=Reed College Quest|title=Spring 2006 Funding Poll|date=April 20, 2006}}</ref>

Reed has ample recreational facilities on campus, a ski cabin on ], recreational clubs such as the Reed Outing Club (ROC), and Club Sports (with college-paid coaches), including ultimate frisbee, co-ed soccer, rugby, basketball, and squash.<ref name="sports">{{cite web |url=http://web.reed.edu/sports_center/ |title=Sports Center |access-date=December 18, 2007 |publisher= Reed College}}</ref>

===Crime===
According to a '']'' analysis of federal campus safety data from 2014, Reed College had 12.9 reports of rape per 1,000 students, the "highest total of reports of rape" per 1,000 students of any college in the nation on its main campus.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/06/07/these-colleges-have-the-most-reports-of-rape/|title=These colleges have the most reports of rape|newspaper=Washington Post}}</ref>

In 2012, Reed College had the third highest reported sexual assault rate among U.S. colleges and universities. It is unclear whether this high reporting rate arises from the college and student body fostering an environment that is more supportive of reporting sexual assault or due to a higher offending pattern by students.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/07/how_sexual_assault_rates_compa.html |title=How sexual assault rates compare among Oregon's colleges &#124; OregonLive.com |date=July 2, 2014 }}</ref> in 2013 there were 19 reported forcible sexual offenses among the approximately 1,400 students at the college.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=reed+college&s=all&id=209922|title=College Navigator - Reed College|website=nces.ed.gov}}</ref> In 2011, a student member of Reed's Judicial Board resigned over the college's handling of sexual assault cases. An investigation by the ] found that those found responsible in cases of sexual assault frequently faced few consequences, while the lives of the victims were left in turmoil.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/04/reed_college_gripped_by_debate.html |title=Reed College embroiled in debate about sexual assaults &#124; OregonLive.com |date=April 4, 2011 }}</ref>

==Notable people== <!-- include just a few examples from the main list-->
{{Main|List of Reed College people}}<gallery class="center">
File:Steve Jobs Headshot 2010-CROP.jpg|], founder of ]
File:Larry Sanger cropped.jpg|], co-founder of ]
File:Gary Snyder, 2007 (cropped).jpg|], poet
File:Richard Danzig, official Navy photo.jpg|], 71st ]
File:Suzan DelBene, official portrait, 115th Congress.jpg|], ] from ]
File:Richard L. Hanna 113th Congress.jpg|], ] from ]
File:Hope Lange 1957.jpg|], ]-nominated actress
File:James Beard.jpg|], chef and television personality
File:Arlene Blum 1977 003.jpg|], mountaineer
File:Emilio Pucci.jpg|], fashion designer
</gallery>Notable Reed alumni include ] co-founder ] (1936), businessman ] (1948), linguistic anthropologist ] (1950), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet ] (1951), fantasy author ] (1954), ] pioneer ] (1959), socialist and feminist activist and author ] (1963), radio personality ] (1963), ], ], author, and philanthropist ] (1965), former U.S. Secretary of the Navy ] (1965), alpinist and biophysical chemist ] (1966), chemist ] (1974), computer engineer ] (1976), and Misplaced Pages co-founder ] (1991).

Among those who attended but did not graduate from Reed are Academy Award-nominated actress ], chef ], horse rancher and conspiracy theorist ], and Apple co-founder and former CEO ].

Notable Reed faculty of the past and present include former U.S. Senator from Illinois ], and physicists ] and ].

== In popular culture ==
Reed has been featured in several books and movies. It is often presented as an enigmatic, eccentric institution at which people who do not fit into mainstream society come together to learn.

=== Literature ===

* '']'' (2003) by ] is a semi-autobiographical account of the author's life, and details the author's encounters with other Reed students while auditing classes there in the early 2000s.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Challies|first=Tim|date=April 27, 2014|title=The Bestsellers: Blue Like Jazz {{!}} Tim Challies|url=https://www.challies.com/articles/the-bestsellers-blue-like-jazz/|access-date=2021-03-14|website=www.challies.com/}}</ref>
* ''The Other'' (2008) by ] depicts a Reed College student who drops out after his freshman year to live a solitary life in the ].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Reed in Fiction|url=http://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/june2012/articles/web_special/reed_fiction.html|access-date=2021-03-14|website=Reed Magazine}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|last=Barcott|first=Bruce|date=2008-06-15|title=Into the Woods (Published 2008)|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/books/review/Barcott-t.html|access-date=2021-03-14|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
* '']'' (2011) by ] is a biography commissioned by ], a Reed College dropout, and contains a chapter on Jobs's experience attending Reed College.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson — Summary – Karlbooklover|url=https://www.karlbooklover.com/steve-jobs-by-walter-isaacson-summary/|access-date=2021-03-14|website=www.karlbooklover.com}}</ref>

=== Film ===
The Reed College campus has been the set of several motion pictures since 1977.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|last=Oregonian/OregonLive|first=Jeff Baker {{!}} The|date=2014-07-01|title=5 movies filmed at Reed College; four are failures, one is great|url=https://www.oregonlive.com/movies/2014/07/5_movies_filmed_at_reed_colleg.html|access-date=2021-03-14|website=oregonlive|language=en}}</ref>

* '']'' (1977) is a ] ] that follows an undead priest who fights demonic forces at a ] in ].<ref>{{Cite web|title=DVD Talk|url=https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/52637/possessed-1977-the/|access-date=2021-03-14|website=www.dvdtalk.com}}</ref>
* '']'' (1977) depicts a love story between a male ] player and an attractive female student who is loved by another man.<ref name=":3" />
* '']'' (2007) depicts the story of a group of friends who live in ], the film is composed of ], some of which were filmed on the Reed College campus.<ref name=":3" /><ref>{{Cite news|date=1977-11-15|title=Clipped From Statesman Journal|pages=10|work=Statesman Journal|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/44224594/statesman-journal/|access-date=2021-03-14}}</ref>
* '']'' (2007) is an adaptation of the ] book of the ] published in 1996, Reed College was used as a stand in during some scenes for ].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Singh|first=Prerna|date=2020-12-31|title=Where Was Into the Wild Filmed? All Into the Wild Movie Filming Locations|url=https://thecinemaholic.com/where-was-into-the-wild-filmed-2/|access-date=2021-03-14|website=The Cinemaholic|language=en-US}}</ref>
* ] (2012) is the film adaptation of the ] by ]; the film is set and partially filmed at Reed College. The film follows the story of a religiously disillusioned Texan native who moves to the progressive Pacific Northwest to attend Reed College.<ref>{{Citation|title=Blue Like Jazz (2012) - IMDb|url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1758575/plotsummary|access-date=2021-03-14}}</ref>

==See also==
{{Portal bar|Oregon}}
*]
*]


Student participation is essentially unanimous, and even faculty and staff attend some of the festivities. Alumni and authorized guests may also participate.
==References== ==References==
{{Reflist}}
<references/>

*
==Further reading==
* {{cite book |last=Sheehy |first=John |title=Comrades of the Quest: An Oral History of Reed College |publisher=Oregon State University Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-0870716676}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |first1=John |last1=Sheehy |first2=Gay |last2=Walker |url=http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/reed_college/#.U3uFnSiorqw |title=Reed College |encyclopedia=The Oregon Encyclopedia |publisher=Portland State University and the Oregon Historical Society |access-date=2015-04-14}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Reed College}}
* {{official website|http://www.reed.edu/}}


{{Reed College |state=expanded}}
== External links ==
{{Colleges and universities in Oregon}}
* - official website
{{Annapolis Group}}
*
{{Colleges That Change Lives}}
*
{{Oberlin Group}}
*
{{CLAC}}
*
*
* - ]s by Reed students
*
* - a story about Reed students


{{Authority control}}
]


]
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Latest revision as of 13:19, 2 December 2024

Private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon

Reed College
TypePrivate liberal arts college
Established1908; 116 years ago (1908)
Endowment$764 million (2023)
PresidentAudrey Bilger
Academic staff164
Students1,458 (Fall 2023)
Undergraduates1,439 (Fall 2023)
Postgraduates19 (Fall 2023)
LocationPortland, Oregon, United States
45°29′N 122°38′W / 45.48°N 122.63°W / 45.48; -122.63
CampusSuburban, 116 acres (470,000 m²)
ColorsReed Red
 
Affiliations
MascotGriffin
Websitewww.reed.edu

Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at its center. Reed alumni include 123 Fulbright Scholars, 73 Watson Fellows, and three Churchill Scholars. Its 32 Rhodes Scholars are the second-most for a liberal arts college. Reed is ranked fourth in the United States for the percentage of its graduates who earn a PhD.

History

Reed College's Eliot Hall on a snowy day

The Reed Institute (the legal name of the college) was founded in 1908 and held its first classes in 1911. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers Simeon Gannett Reed (1830–1895) and Amanda Reed (died 1904). Simeon was an entrepreneur involved in several enterprises, including trade on the Willamette and Columbia Rivers with his close friend and associate, former Portland Mayor William S. Ladd. Unitarian minister Thomas Lamb Eliot, who knew the Reeds from the church choir, is credited with convincing Reed of the need for the school. Reed's will provided for the gift, and Ladd's son, William Mead Ladd, donated 40 acres from the Ladd Estate Company to build the new college. Reed's first president (1910–1919) was William Trufant Foster, a former professor at Bates College and Bowdoin College.

Founded explicitly as a reaction against the "prevailing model of East Coast, Ivy League education", the college's lack of varsity athletics, fraternities, and exclusive social clubs – as well as its coeducational, nonsectarian, and egalitarian status — gave way to an intensely academic and intellectual college.

During the 1930s, President Dexter Keezer was concerned about the fraternization among male and female students and the consumption of alcohol by students. A large portion of the Student Council took the position that Oregon's liquor laws did not apply to Reed's campus. Policies restricting the ability of students from visiting the dormitories of the opposite sex were fiercely resisted.

After World War II the college saw its enrollment numbers dramatically increase as veterans began enrolling in the college.

The college has developed a reputation for the political progressivism of its student body.

Distinguishing features

Part of the interior of the Eric V. Hauser Memorial Library

According to sociologist Burton Clark, Reed is one of the most unusual institutions of higher learning in the United States, featuring a traditional liberal arts and natural sciences curriculum. It requires freshmen to take Humanities 110, an intensive introduction to multidisciplinary inquiry, covering ancient Greece and Rome, the Hebrew Bible and ancient Jewish history, and as of 2019, Ancient Mesoamerica and the Harlem Renaissance. Reed also has a TRIGA research reactor on campus, making it the only school in the United States to have a nuclear reactor operated primarily by undergraduates. Reed also requires all students to complete a thesis (a two-semester-long research project conducted under the guidance of professors) during the senior year as a prerequisite of graduation. Upon completion of the senior thesis, students must also pass an oral defense of ninety minutes related to the thesis topic and how the thesis relates to the larger context of the student's studies.

Reed maintains a 9:1 student-to-faculty ratio.

Cherenkov radiation at Reed's research reactor

Although letter grades are given to students, grades are de-emphasized at Reed and focus is placed on a narrative evaluation. According to the school, "a conventional letter grade for each course is recorded for every student, but the registrar's office does not distribute grades to students, provided that work continues at satisfactory (C or higher) levels. Unsatisfactory grades are reported directly to the student and the student's adviser. Papers and exams are generally returned to students with lengthy comments but without grades affixed." Students can request copies of their official transcript from the registrar. There is no dean's list or honor roll per se, but students who maintain a GPA of 3.5 or above for an academic year receive academic commendations at the end of the spring semester which are noted on their transcripts. Many Reed students graduate without knowing their cumulative GPA or their grades in individual classes. Reed is singled out as having little to no grade inflation over the years; only ten students graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA in the period from 1983 to 2012. (Transcripts are accompanied by a card contextualizing Reed's grading approach so as not to penalize students' graduate school applications.) Although Reed does not award Latin honors to graduates, it confers several awards for academic achievement at commencement, including naming students to Phi Beta Kappa.

Reed has no fraternities or sororities and few NCAA sports teams although physical education classes (which range from kayaking to juggling to capoeira) are required for graduation. Reed also has several intercollegiate athletic clubs, notably the basketball, rugby, Ultimate Frisbee, and soccer teams.

Academics

Reed categorizes its academic program into five Divisions and the Humanities program. Overall, Reed offers five Humanities courses, twenty-six department majors, twelve interdisciplinary majors, six dual-degree programs with other colleges and universities, and programs for pre-medical and pre-veterinary students. Its three most popular majors, based on 2023 graduates, were Psychology, Biology/Biological Sciences, and Computer and Information Sciences.


Divisions

The Reed College campus
  • Division of Arts: includes the Art (Art History and Studio Art), Dance, Music, and Theatre Departments;
  • Division of History and Social Sciences: includes the History, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, and Sociology Departments, as well as the International and Comparative Policy Studies Program;
  • Division of Literature and Languages: includes the Classics, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish Departments, as well as the Creative Writing and General Literature Programs;
  • Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences: includes the Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics Departments, and
  • Division of Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, and Linguistics: includes the Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, and Linguistics Departments.

Humanities program

Reed President Richard Scholz in 1922 called the educational program as a whole "an honest effort to disregard old historic rivalries and hostilities between the sciences and the arts, between professional and cultural subjects, and, ... the formal chronological cleavage between the graduate and the undergraduate attitude of mind". The Humanities program, which came into being in 1943 (as the union of two year-long courses, one in "world" literature, the other in "world" history) is one manifestation of this effort. One change to the program was the addition of a course in Chinese Civilization in 1995. The faculty has also recently approved several significant changes to the introductory syllabus. These changes include expanding the parameters of the course to include more material regarding urban and cultural environments.

Reed's Humanities program includes the mandatory freshman course Introduction to Western Humanities covering ancient Greek and Roman literature, history, art, religion, and philosophy. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors may take Early Modern Europe covering Renaissance thought and literature; Modern Humanities covering the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and Modernism, and/or Foundations of Chinese Civilization. There is also a Humanities Senior Symposium.

Interdisciplinary and dual-degree programs

Reed also offers interdisciplinary programs in American studies, Environmental Studies, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Chemistry-Physics, Classics-Religion, Dance/Theatre, History-Literature, International and Comparative Policy Studies (ICPS), Literature-Theatre, Mathematics-Economics, and Mathematics-Physics.

Reed offers dual-degree programs in Computer Science (with University of Washington), Engineering (with Caltech, Columbia University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Forestry or Environmental Management (with Duke University), and Fine Art (with the Pacific Northwest College of Art).

Rankings

See also: Criticism of college and university rankings (North America)
Academic rankings
Liberal arts
U.S. News & World Report72
Washington Monthly78
National
Forbes105
WSJ/College Pulse75

In 1995, Reed College refused to participate in the U.S. News & World Report "best colleges" rankings, making it the first educational institution in the United States to refuse to participate in college rankings. According to Reed's Office of Admissions the school's refusal to participate is based in 1994 disclosures by The Wall Street Journal about institutions flagrantly manipulating data in order to move up in the rankings in U.S. News and other popular college guides. U.S. News maintains that their rankings are "a very legitimate tool for getting at a certain level of knowledge about colleges." In 2019, a team of statistics students recreated the formula used by U.S. News and were able to identify and quantify the penalty imposed on Reed. The students found the college to be ranked an estimated 52 places below an unbiased application of the U.S. News scoring rubric.

Money magazine ranked Reed 512th in the U.S. out of 623 schools evaluated for its 2022 "Best Colleges for Your Money" edition.

Reed is ranked as tied for the 72nd best liberal arts college by U.S. News & World Report in its 2022 rankings, and tied for 16th in "Best Undergraduate Teaching", tied for 13th in "Most Innovative Schools", and tied for 185th in "Top Performers on Social Mobility".

In 2006, Newsweek magazine named Reed as one of twenty-five "New Ivies", listing it among "the nation's elite colleges". In 2012, Newsweek ranked Reed the 15th "most rigorous" college in the nation.

Reed College ranked in the bottom 6% of four year colleges nationwide in the Brookings Institution's rating of U.S. colleges by incremental impact on alumni earnings 10 years post-enrollment.

An episode of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast Revisionist History examines the flaws in the U.S. News system of university rankings. The episode features a project done by a Reed professor of statistics and her students to investigate the mechanics of the ranking algorithm, attempting to see if Reed's ranking had been purposefully devalued because the school refused to submit its information to U.S. News. Previous investigations by Reed students to re-create U.S. News's statistical ranking algorithm found that Reed's correct 2019 rank was #38 instead of its assigned rank of #90.

Admissions

Undergraduate

Eliot Hall in 2007

The Class of 2026 had 394 students. Median SAT scores were 690 math and 720 reading. The class was drawn from the largest pool ever— 9,023 applicants—and was the most selective in Reed's history, with an admittance rate of 30.8%. As of 2018, to increase student enrollment from historically underrepresented minorities, Reed encourages application to the college's "Discover Reed Fly-In Program", an all-inclusive, all-expenses-paid, multi-day campus tour and open to all high school seniors who are US citizens or permanent residents, regardless of race or ethnicity.

Tuition and finances

The total direct cost for the 2022–23 academic year, including tuition, fees and room-and-board, was $80,710. Indirect costs (books, supplies, transportation, personal expenses) could be another $3,950. For the 2022–23 academic year, the average financial aid package was $52,284. In 2022–23 over half of students received financial aid from the college. In 2004, 1.4% of Reed graduates defaulted on their student loans – below the national Cohort Default Rate average of 5.1%.

Reed's endowment as of June 30, 2023, was $764 million. In the economic downturn that began in late 2007, Reed's total endowment had declined from $455 million in June 2007 to $311 million in June 2009. By the end of 2013, however, the endowment surpassed the $500 million mark.

Academic honors

Reed has produced the second-highest number of Rhodes scholars for any liberal arts college—32—as well as over one hundred Fulbright Scholars, over seventy Watson Fellows, and three MacArthur ("Genius") Award winners. A very high proportion of Reed graduates go on to earn PhDs, particularly in the natural sciences, history, political science, and philosophy. Reed is ranked third in the percentage of graduates who go on to earn PhDs in all disciplines, after only Caltech and Harvey Mudd. In 1961, Scientific American declared that second only to Caltech, "This small college in Oregon has been far and away more productive of future scientists than any other institution in the U.S." Reed is ranked first in producing PhDs in biology, second in chemistry and humanities, third in history, foreign languages, and political science, fourth in science and mathematics, fifth in physics and social sciences, sixth in anthropology, seventh in area and ethnic studies and linguistics, and eighth in English literature and medicine.

Reed's debating team was awarded the first place sweepstakes trophy for Division II schools at the final tournament of the Northwest Forensics Conference in February 2004.

Loren Pope, former education editor for The New York Times, writes about Reed in Colleges That Change Lives, saying, "If you're a genuine intellectual, love the life of the mind, and want to learn for the sake of learning, the place most likely to empower you is not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, or Stanford. It is the most intellectual college in the country — Reed in Portland, Oregon."

Drug use

Since the 1960s, Reed has had a reputation for tolerating open drug use among its students. The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, written by the staff of Yale Daily News, notes an impression among students of institutional permissiveness: "According to students, the school does not bust students for drug or alcohol use unless they cause harm or embarrassment to another student."

In April 2008, student Alex Lluch died of a heroin overdose in his on-campus dorm room. His death prompted revelations of several previous incidents, including the near-death heroin overdose of another student only months earlier. College President Colin Diver said "I don't honestly know" whether the drug death was an isolated incident or part of a larger problem. "When you say Reed," Diver said, "two words often come to mind. One is brains. One is drugs." Local reporter James Pitkin of the newspaper Willamette Week editorialized that "Reed College, a private school with one of the most prestigious academic programs in the U.S., is one of the last schools in the country where students enjoy almost unlimited freedom to experiment openly with drugs, with little or no hassles from authorities", though Willamette Week stated the following week concerning Pitkin's editorial: "As of press time, almost 500 responses, many expressing harsh criticism of Willamette Week, had been posted on our website."

In March 2010, another student died of drug-related causes in his off-campus residence. This led The New York Times to conclude that "Reed ... has long been known almost as much for its unusually permissive atmosphere as for its impressively rigorous academics." Law enforcement authorities promised to take action, including sending undercover agents to Reed's annual Renn Fayre celebration.

In February 2012, the Reed administration chose to call the police following the discovery of "two to three pounds of marijuana and a small amount of ecstasy and LSD in the on-campus apartment of two juniors." Following campus debate, Reed's president at the time, Colin Diver, issued a letter to students and staff, saying the college would not tolerate illegal drug use on campus: "Such behavior endangers the health and welfare of the entire community, attracts potentially dangerous criminal activity on campus, undermines the academic mission of the college, and violates the college's obligations under state and federal law."

Political and social activism

Reed has a reputation for being politically left-of-center.

During the McCarthy era of the 1950s, then-President Duncan Ballantine fired Marxist philosopher Stanley Moore, a tenured professor, for his failure to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigation. According to an article in the college's alumni magazine, "because of the decisive support expressed by Reed's faculty, students, and alumni for the three besieged teachers and for the principle of academic freedom, Reed College's experience with McCarthyism stands apart from that of most other American colleges and universities. Elsewhere in the academic world both tenured and nontenured professors with alleged or admitted communist party ties were fired with relatively little fuss or protest. At Reed, however, opposition to the political interrogations of the teachers was so strong that some believed the campus was in danger of closure." A statement of "regret" by the Reed administration and Board of Trustees was published in 1981, formally revising the judgment of the 1954 trustees. In 1993, then-President Steve Koblik invited Moore to visit the college, and in 1995 the last surviving member of the Board that fired Moore expressed his regret and apologized to him.

Reedies Against Racism

On September 26, 2016, students organized a boycott of all college operations in participation with the National Day of Boycott, a national day of protest which was proposed by actor Isaiah Washington on Twitter in response to the issue of police brutality against African-Americans. Following the boycott, students created an activist group called Reedies Against Racism (RAR) and presented a list of demands for the college purportedly on behalf of students from marginalized backgrounds. The primary demand concerned Reed's mandatory freshman Humanities course, proposing that the course either be changed to be more inclusive of world literature and classics or to be made not mandatory. One element of the class deemed racist by the protestors was the use of the 1978 Steve Martin song "King Tut" in a discussion about cultural appropriation. Students began a protest campaign against the curriculum by sitting in during lectures with signs with quotations from various African-American and non-white academics. Other protests separate from the Humanities course also included efforts to shout down speakers, including Kimberly Peirce after she was accused of profiting from transphobia while making the film Boys Don't Cry. The group eventually focused on Reed's banking relationship with Wells Fargo, based on allegations that the bank had invested in the Dakota Access Pipeline project and the private prison industry, and staged an occupation of Reed's Eliot Hall.

There was some opposition to the lecture protests, notably by Reed professor of English Lucía Martínez Valdivia, who stated that a protest during her lecture on Sappho would amplify her pre-existing case of PTSD. In November 2017, Chris Bodenner of The Atlantic wrote about growing student resentment toward the tactics of RAR. In response to protests the faculty decided to undergo the decennial review process a year early, as well as to complete the process in three months instead of the usual year. In January 2018, Humanities 110 Chair professor Libby Drumm announced in a campus-wide email that the course curriculum would be restructured after years of faculty discussion and in response to student feedback as well as input from an external review committee composed of humanities faculty from other institutes, adopting a "four-module structure" that would include texts from the Americas and allow greater flexibility in the curriculum which would be integrated beginning fall 2018. The external review had not in fact been completed nor reviewed at the time of the announcement.

Following "a contentious year of protests, including an anti-racism sit-in in Kroger's office", college president John Kroger resigned, effective June 2018.

Campus

See also: List of Reed College buildings
Map of the Reed College campus
A. E. Doyle's 1920 Master Plan

The Reed College campus was established on a tract of land in southeast Portland known in 1910 as Crystal Springs Farm, a part of the Ladd Estate, formed in the 1870s from original land claims. The college's grounds include 116 acres (0.47 km) of contiguous land, including a wooded wetland known as Reed Canyon.

Portland architect A. E. Doyle developed a plan, never implemented in full, modeled on the University of Oxford's St. John's College. The original campus buildings (including the Library, the Old Dorm Block, and what is now the primary administration building, Eliot Hall) are brick Tudor Gothic buildings in a style similar to Ivy League campuses. In contrast, the science section of campus, including the physics, biology, and psychology (originally chemistry) buildings, were designed in the Modernist style. The Psychology Building, completed in 1949, was designed by Modernist architect Pietro Belluschi at the same time as his celebrated Equitable Building in downtown Portland.

The campus and buildings have undergone several phases of growth, and there are now 21 academic and administrative buildings and 18 residence halls. Since 2004, Reed's campus has expanded to include adjacent properties beyond its historic boundaries, such as the Birchwood Apartments complex and former medical administrative offices on either side of SE 28th Avenue, and the Parker House, across SE Woodstock from Prexy. At the same time the Willard House (donated to Reed in 1964), across from the college's main entrance at SE Woodstock and SE Reed College Place, was converted from faculty housing to administrative use. Reed announced on July 13, 2007, that it had purchased the Rivelli farm, a 1.5-acre (0.61 ha) tract of land south of the Garden House and west of Botsford Drive. Reed's "immediate plans for the acquired property include housing a small number of students in the former Rivelli home during the 2007–08 academic year. Longer term, the college anticipates that it may seek to develop the northern portion of the property for additional student housing".

Residence halls

The Old Dorm Block

Reed houses 945 students in 18 residence halls on campus and several college-owned houses and apartment buildings on or adjacent to campus. Residence halls on campus range from the traditional (i.e., Gothic Old Dorm Block, referred to as "ODB") to the eclectic (e.g., Anna Mann, a Tudor-style cottage built in the 1920s by Reed's founding architect A. E. Doyle, originally used as a women's hall), language houses (Spanish, Russian, French, German, and Chinese), "temporary" housing, built in the 1960s (Cross Canyon – Chittick, Woodbridge, McKinley, Griffin), to more recently built dorms (Bragdon, Naito, Sullivan). There are also theme residence halls including everything from substance-free living to Japanese culture to music to a dorm for students interested in outdoors activities (hiking, climbing, bicycling, kayaking, skiing, etc.). The college's least-loved complex (as measured by applications to the college's housing lottery), MacNaughton and Foster-Scholz, is known on campus as "Asylum Block" because of its post-World War II modernist architecture and interior spaces dominated by long, straight corridors lined with identical doors, said by students to resemble that of an insane asylum. Until 2006, it was thought that these residence halls had been designed by architect Pietro Belluschi.

Under the 10-year Campus Master Plan adopted in 2006, Foster-Scholz is scheduled to be demolished and replaced, and MacNaughton to be remodeled. According to the master plan, "The College's goal is to provide housing on or adjacent to the campus that accommodates 75% of the student population. At present, the College provides on-campus housing for 838 students".

In Spring 2007, the college broke ground on the construction of a new quadrangle called the Grove, with four new Leed certified residence halls (Aspen, Sequoia, Sitka, Bidwell). They opened on the northwest side of campus in Fall 2008. A new Spanish House residence was completed. Together, the five new residences added 142 new beds.

Reed also has off-campus housing. Many houses in the Woodstock and Eastmoreland Portland neighborhoods are traditionally rented to Reed students.

On February 21, 2018, Reed announced the construction of the "largest residence hall in its history". Completed in Fall 2019, Trillium houses an additional 180 students, boosting Reed's housing capacity to nearly 80% of the student body, up from 68%. The addition of Trillium guarantees housing for both freshman and sophomores, as students were formerly subjected to a housing lottery after freshman year. The new building is also designed to meet "LEED Platinum standards", and Reed is currently evaluating proposals to put solar panels on the roof.

Reed Canyon

The eastern half of the Canyon, visible from Blue Bridge

The Reed College Canyon, a natural area and national wildlife preserve, bisects the campus, separating the academic buildings from many of the residence halls (the so-called cross-canyon halls). The canyon is filled by Crystal Creek Springs, a natural spring that drains into Johnson Creek.

Canyon Day, a tradition dating back to 1915, is held twice a year. On Canyon Day students and Reed neighbors join canyon crew workers to spend a day helping with restoration efforts.

A landmark of the campus, the Blue Bridge, spans the canyon. This bridge replaced the unique cantilevered bridge that served in that spot between 1959 and 1991, which "featured stressed plywood girders – the first time this construction had been used on a span of this size: a straight bridge 132 feet (40 m) long and 15 feet (4.6 m) high. It attracted great architectural interest during its lifetime".

A new pedestrian and bicycle bridge spanning the canyon was opened in Fall 2008. This bridge, dubbed the "Bouncy Bridge", "Orange Bridge", and in some cases the "Amber Bridge" by students, is 370 feet (110 m) long, about a third longer than the Blue Bridge, and "connect the new north campus quad to Gray Campus Center, the student union, the library, and academic buildings on the south side of campus".

Douglas F. Cooley Gallery

Reed's Cooley Gallery is an internationally recognized contemporary art space located at the entrance to the Eric V. Hauser Memorial Library. It was established in 1988 as the result of a gift from Susan and Edward Cooley in honor of their late son. The Cooley Gallery has exhibited international artists such as Mona Hatoum, Al Held, David Reed and Gregory Crewdson as well as the contemporary art collection of Michael Ovitz. In pursuit of its mission to support the curriculum of the art, art history, and humanities programs at Reed, the gallery produces three or four exhibitions each year, along with lectures, colloquia, and artist visits. The gallery is currently under the directorship of Stephanie Snyder, who succeeded founding director Susan Fillin-Yeh in 2004.

Food services

The cafeteria, known simply as "Commons", has a reputation for ecologically sustainable food services. The commons dining hall is operated by Bon Appétit, and food is purchased on an item-by-item basis. Suiting the student body, vegan and vegetarian dishes feature heavily on the menu. It is currently the only cafeteria on the small campus, with the exception of Canyon Cafe (formerly Caffe Circo and Caffe Paradiso), a small cafe on the other side of campus which also operated by board points. Scrounging is a long tradition at Reed College allowing students to offer unfinished Commons' food to students without board points from their trays as they are returned to be washed.

The Reed College Co-ops are a theme community that reside in the Farm and Garden Houses, after many years on the first floor of MacNaughton Hall. These are the only campus dorms that are independent of the school's board plan. They traditionally throw an alternative "Thanksgiving" celebration that has sometimes included a square-dance. The Co-ops house students who purchase and prepare food together, sharing chores and conducting weekly, consensus-based meetings. It is a close community valuing sustainability, organic food, consensus-based decisions, self-government, music, and plants.

The Aubrey R. Watzek Sports Center the day following its collapse.

The Paradox ("Est. in the 80s") is a student-run coffee shop located on campus. In 2003 the Paradox opened a second coffee shop, dubbing it the "Paradox Lost" (an allusion to John Milton's Paradise Lost,) at the southern end of the biology building, in the space commonly called the "Bio Fishbowl". The new north-campus dorms, which opened in Fall 2008, feature yet another small cafe, originally dubbed "Cafe Paradiso", thereby providing three coffee shops within a 116-acre (0.47 km) campus. The recent addition of a circus-themed mural to the cafe prompted a name change, and it now operates as Caffe Circo. This third shop is not student-run, but is operated by Bon Appétit. Bon Appétit has a monopoly on the food services at Reed as they are the only ones who accept board points; written into their contract is the prohibition of food carts on campus.

2021 collapse of the Aubrey R. Watzek Sports Center

On February 15, 2021, the Aubrey R. Watzek Sports Center, collapsed during Winter Storm Uri. Both gyms that were part of the sports center collapsed. The collapse was attributed to excess snow piling up on the roof of the building causing a support truss to fracture, and strained several others, causing the roof to collapse. The sports center was serving as a COVID-19 testing center, and the destruction of the testing center resulted in the loss of testing kits and other medical supplies needed for COVID-19 testing.

Icons and student life

Demographics of student body (Fall 2021)
African American 5.0%
Asian American 15.0%
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 0.3%
Hispanic American 9.0%
Native American 2.0%
International 9.0%
White American 59.0%
Unknown 2.0%
Female 58.0%
Male 42.0%
Reed College students, faculty, and staff marching in Portland Pride 2014

Griffin

The official mascot of Reed is the griffin. In mythology, the griffin often pulled the chariot of the sun; in canto 32 of Dante's Commedia the griffin is associated with the Tree of Knowledge. The griffin was featured on the coat-of-arms of founder Simeon Reed and is now on the official seal of Reed College. Though the school does not have varsity sports, the mascot features prominently throughout campus iconography outside of an athletic context.

School color

The official school color of Reed is Richmond Rose. Over the years, institutional memory of this fact has faded and the color appearing on the school's publications and merchandise has darkened to a shade of maroon. The most common examples of "Richmond Rose" are the satin tapes securing the degree certificate inside a Reed College diploma.

School song

The school song, "Fair Reed", is sung to the tune of the 1912 popular song "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms". It may be imitative of the Harvard anthem "Fair Harvard", which is also sung to the tune of "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms". It was composed by former president William Trufant Foster shortly after Reed's founding, and is rarely heard today.

An unofficial Reed Alma Mater, "Epistemology Forever", sung to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", has been sung by Reed students since the 1950s.

Students' nicknames

Reed students and alumni referred to themselves as "Reedites" in the early years of the college. This term faded out in favor of the now ubiquitous "Reedie" after World War II. Around campus, prospective students are called "prospies".

Unofficial mottos and folklore

An unofficial motto of Reed is "Communism, Atheism, Free Love", and can be found in the Reed College Bookstore on sweaters, T-shirts, etc. It was a label that the Reed community claimed from critics during the 1920s as a "tongue-in-cheek slogan" in reference to Reed's nonconformism. Reed's founding president William T. Foster's outspoken opposition against the entrance of the United States into World War I, as well as the college's support for feminism, its adherence to academic freedom (i.e., inviting a leader of the Socialist Party of America to speak on campus about the Russian Revolution’s potential effect on militarism, emancipation of women, and ending the persecution of Jews), and its nonsectarian status made the college a natural target for what was originally meant to be a pejorative slur.

Faux Reed Seal

The faux Reed Seal has changed over the years. In its original form the griffin was holding a hammer and sickle in its paws. Later versions had the griffin wearing boxing gloves.

One of the unofficial symbols of Reed is the Doyle Owl, a roughly 280-pound (130 kg) concrete statue that has been continuously stolen and re-stolen since about 1919. The original Doyle Owl (originally "House F Owl" after the dormitory named House F that later became Doyle dormitory) was a garden sculpture from the neighborhood stolen by House F residents as a prank (there is a photo of House F residents around the original owl that has been made into a T-shirt). The on-campus folklore of events surrounding the Doyle Owl is sufficiently large that, in 1983, a senior thesis was written on the topic of the Owl's oral history. The original Doyle Owl was destroyed many years ago; the current avatar is Doyle Owl number 13, plus or minus 11. At the present time only one Owl is being shown.

Paideia

Each January, before the beginning of second-semester classes, the campus holds an interim period called Paideia (drawn from the Greek, meaning 'education'). Originally conceived and approved by the faculty in 1968 for unstructured independent study, or "UIS", Paideia ran for the full month of January from 1969 to 1981, supervised by a committee of faculty, staff and students. This festival of learning takes the form of classes and seminars put on by anyone who wishes to teach, including students, professors, staff members, and outside educators invited on-campus by members of the Reed Community. The classes are intended to be informal, yet intellectual activities free of the usual academic pressure endemic to Reed. Many such classes are explicitly trivial (one long-running tradition is to hold an underwater basket weaving class), while others are trivially academic (such as "Giant Concrete Gnome Construction", a class that, incidental to building monolithic gnomes, includes some content relating to the construction of pre-Christian monoliths). More structured classes (such as martial arts seminars and mini-classes on obscure academic topics), tournaments, and film festivals round out the schedule, which is different every year. The objective of Paideia is not only to learn new (possibly non-useful) things, but to turn the tables on students and encourage them to teach.

In his 2005 Stanford commencement lecture, Apple Inc. founder and Reed dropout Steve Jobs credited a Reed calligraphy class taught by Robert Palladino for his focus on choosing quality typefaces for the Macintosh. While the full calligraphy course is no longer taught at Reed, Paideia usually features a short course on the subject in addition to the informal, weekly gatherings (currently held every Thursday night) of aspiring calligraphy enthusiasts.

Renn Fayre

Main article: Renn Fayre

Renn Fayre is an annual three-day celebration with a different theme each year. Born in the 1960s as an actual renaissance fair, it has long since lost all connection to anachronism and the Renaissance, although its name has persisted. The event is initiated by a procession of seniors throwing their thesis notes in a large bonfire after the completed theses are submitted.

Reed Arts Week

Main article: Reed Arts Week

Reed Arts Week is a week-long celebration of the arts at Reed. It features music, dance, film, creative writing, and the visual arts.

Student organizations

According to Reed's website, each semester, a $130 student body fee "is collected from each full-time student by the business office, acting as agent for the student senate. The fee underwrites publication of the student newspaper and extracurricular activities, and partially supports the student union and ski cabin." Student body funds (totaling roughly $370,000 annually) are distributed each semester to groups that place among the top 40 organizations in the semester's funding poll. The funding poll uses a voting system in which each organization provides a description that is ranked by each member of the student body with either 'top six,' 'approve,' 'no opinion,' 'disapprove.' A former 'deep six' was eliminated from the system in 2019. These ranks are then tabulated by assigning numbers to each rank and summing across all voters. Afterwards, the top forty organizations present their budgets to the student body senate during Funding Circus. The following day the senate makes decisions about each budget in a process called Funding Hell.

The school's student-run newspaper, The Reed College Quest or simply the Quest, has been published since 1913, and its radio station KRRC had been broadcasting, with a few interruptions, from 1955 The station now broadcasts online only at krrc.fm.

Although some student organizations partnered with outside groups such as Oxfam or Planned Parenthood are more structured, most student organizations are highly informal. There is no formal process for forming a student organization at Reed; a group of students (or a single student) announcing themselves as or just considering themselves a student organization is enough, but groups that desire funding from the school's Student Activities office or Student Body Fees must register with Student Activities or through the Student Senate. The Reed archive of comic books and graphic novels, the MLLL (Comic Book Reading Room), is well into its fourth decade, and Beer Nation, the student group that organizes and manages various beer gardens throughout the year and during Renn Fayre, has existed for many years. Some organizations, such as the Motorized Couch Collective — dedicated to installing motors and wheels into furniture — have become more Reed myth than reality in recent years.

Reed has ample recreational facilities on campus, a ski cabin on Mount Hood, recreational clubs such as the Reed Outing Club (ROC), and Club Sports (with college-paid coaches), including ultimate frisbee, co-ed soccer, rugby, basketball, and squash.

Crime

According to a Washington Post analysis of federal campus safety data from 2014, Reed College had 12.9 reports of rape per 1,000 students, the "highest total of reports of rape" per 1,000 students of any college in the nation on its main campus.

In 2012, Reed College had the third highest reported sexual assault rate among U.S. colleges and universities. It is unclear whether this high reporting rate arises from the college and student body fostering an environment that is more supportive of reporting sexual assault or due to a higher offending pattern by students. in 2013 there were 19 reported forcible sexual offenses among the approximately 1,400 students at the college. In 2011, a student member of Reed's Judicial Board resigned over the college's handling of sexual assault cases. An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that those found responsible in cases of sexual assault frequently faced few consequences, while the lives of the victims were left in turmoil.

Notable people

Main article: List of Reed College people

Notable Reed alumni include Tektronix co-founder Howard Vollum (1936), businessman John Sperling (1948), linguistic anthropologist Dell Hymes (1950), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder (1951), fantasy author David Eddings (1954), distance learning pioneer John Bear (1959), socialist and feminist activist and author Barbara Ehrenreich (1963), radio personality Dr. Demento (1963), programmer, software publisher, author, and philanthropist Peter Norton (1965), former U.S. Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig (1965), alpinist and biophysical chemist Arlene Blum (1966), chemist Mary Jo Ondrechen (1974), computer engineer Daniel Kottke (1976), and Misplaced Pages co-founder Larry Sanger (1991).

Among those who attended but did not graduate from Reed are Academy Award-nominated actress Hope Lange, chef James Beard, horse rancher and conspiracy theorist Christopher Langan, and Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs.

Notable Reed faculty of the past and present include former U.S. Senator from Illinois Paul Douglas, and physicists Richard Crandall and David Griffiths.

In popular culture

Reed has been featured in several books and movies. It is often presented as an enigmatic, eccentric institution at which people who do not fit into mainstream society come together to learn.

Literature

  • Blue Like Jazz (2003) by Donald Miller is a semi-autobiographical account of the author's life, and details the author's encounters with other Reed students while auditing classes there in the early 2000s.
  • The Other (2008) by David Guterson depicts a Reed College student who drops out after his freshman year to live a solitary life in the Olympic Mountains.
  • Steve Jobs (2011) by Walter Isaacson is a biography commissioned by Steve Jobs, a Reed College dropout, and contains a chapter on Jobs's experience attending Reed College.

Film

The Reed College campus has been the set of several motion pictures since 1977.

See also

Portal:

References

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Further reading

  • Sheehy, John (2012). Comrades of the Quest: An Oral History of Reed College. Oregon State University Press. ISBN 978-0870716676.
  • Sheehy, John; Walker, Gay. "Reed College". The Oregon Encyclopedia. Portland State University and the Oregon Historical Society. Retrieved April 14, 2015.

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