Reed College
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,[5] and a forested canyon nature preserve at its center.
Reed has a mandatory first-year humanities program and requires a senior thesis. It features progressive politics, de-emphasis of grades, academic rigor, lack of grade inflation, and a high proportion of graduates who go on to earn doctorates and postgraduate degrees.[6]
Reed alumni include 118 Fulbright Scholars, 67 Watson Fellows, and three Churchill Scholars. Its 32 Rhodes Scholars are the second-most for a liberal arts college.[7] Reed is ranked fourth in the United States for the percentage of its graduates who earn a Ph.D., after Caltech, Harvey Mudd, and Swarthmore College.[8][9][10][11]
Academic rankings
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78
105
75
Drug use[edit]
Since the 1960s, Reed has had a reputation for tolerating open drug use among its students.[82] 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."[83]
In April 2008, student Alex Lluch died of a heroin overdose in his on-campus dorm room.[84] His death prompted revelations of several previous incidents, including the near-death heroin overdose of another student only months earlier.[85] 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."[86] 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."[87]
In March 2010, another student died of drug-related causes in his off-campus residence.[88] 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.[89][90]
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."[91] 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."[91]
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 Wikipedia 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.