Talk:Goucher College/Archive 1

Humans vs Zombies

Isn't this the place the game "Humans vs Zombies" originated? Doesn't that deserve a sentence under "Extracurriculars"? 147.226.215.218 21:44, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Removal

Removed reference to G. as "highly selective," as http://www.goucher.edu/x149.xml indicates roughly 2/3 of applicants admitted.

Needs Citation

Under notable alumni, "Josh Grant" is listed as a "badass." Wikipedia and google provide no verification that this person is an actual notable figure, I suspect that a college kid may have found it amusing. Anyone capable of disputing? -- Futility 13:05, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

It's a bunch of rubbish. A vandal from the Virginia Commonwealth University keeps trying to insert it. The whois entry for that IP has a network admin that can be contacted if the problem persists. OhNoitsJamie^Talk 21:43, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I know Josh Grant. He is a badass. He's just someone who went there. I suspect one of his friends threw it up there. I smirked when I saw it.--Loodog 03:53, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

bill nye didnt graduate from goucher or go there he might be an honorable alumnus though

Well he's specifically notes as "honorary doctorate", so it's already clear what's going on here, no? The degree is presumably from when he spoke at 1999 commencement. DMacks 03:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Is it "Gow-cher"? If someone knows, it would be nice to include that in the intro. Miss Dark 02:36, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

-It is. - unregistered Goucher student

Thanks for pointing that out. A phonetic spelling and IPA pronunciation template has been added.Wikieditor19920 (talk) 02:25, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Just realized that I may be a little late on this one! :) Wikieditor19920 (talk) 02:43, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Deer

The news article used as a source for this is incorrect - the deer population has been reduced to 50, not by 50. Edited to match.

I've reverted your edit. It has to stay with what the source says until you have a source saying differently.--Loodog (talk) 15:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

The Sun news article is also consistent with the college president's own statement on the matter as posted on the college's own website.[1] I wouldn't be surprised if news outlets got their info from the website or some other release of this same statement (and could therefore propagate a wrong word), but Wikipedia would still need a reliable source with some other wording if the article were to be changed to contradict all existing (that I've seen) reports. DMacks (talk) 18:42, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Removed the section about deer entirely. The college's pest-control procedures are far too detailed to belong on this page.Wikieditor19920 (talk) 02:44, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Notable alumni

Source=International focus drives Goucher.Tstrobaugh (talk) 17:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with removing cited and factual sections to articles. If the assertions made can be backed up by multiple outside sources, why is it considered "POV"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.49.92.94 (talk) 05:07, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Extracirriculars

I wanted to add a few sentences about Ultimate Frisbee at Goucher. I initially put it in the athletics section but after further consideration I'm going to move it to the extracirriculars. I am also going to add a small picture to spice up the section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Juirw001 (talk • contribs) 01:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

So the fact that a large minority of students are Jewish is significant, the fact that is was founded as a women's college is significant but the fact that it was founded as a Christian college is not? You can't be serious.

Actually, Goucher College was founded by Rev. Goucher, not just as a Christian women's college but as a Christian women's seminary chartered by the state of Maryland. Why is it even considered significant that a large minority of students at this former purely Christian, purely female institution are Jewish? Was Goucher College converted into a Jewish institution? No. Does the presence of an active Hillel organization make it a Jewish institution? Hardly. In fact I think it would be fair to conclude that the heritage of the majority of Goucher college's students is Christian. Is it not bad enough that the goyem are not made to feel welcome in the Hillel House dining area?

The entryway to the original structure, still in active use today, includes passages from the bible written in Latin, not surprising because this was not just a Christian institution but a Methodist-Episcopalian one which, like the Catholic church, commonly used Latin as part of its liturgy. So the historical treatment of heritage of Goucher College, which bears the name of the man who actually founded Goucher with its use as a Christian college squarely in mind, is still supposed to be eradicated.

The plurality of University of California students are Asian. Does that make UC an Asian school? No. Goucher College is now non-sectarian, yet it is to be identified now as a Jewish institution? The only religion which Goucher has ever been officially affiliated with is the religion of the college as it was originally founded - Christian. That is the school's heritage and it cannot and should not be scoured away.QuintBy (talk) 10:29, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

It's simply what we have sources for. Provide a source that supports that Goucher was founded as a Christian seminary school and we'll include that fact in the article.

Anyway, nowhere in the article does it say that Goucher is a Jewish school. It just makes the demographic statement that a large percentage of the students are Jewish, which we have a source for. Contrast this with your claim that Goucher is a christian seminary school, which there are no sources for. A little scouting on my part revealed that a source shows Goucher was founded by Methodists and that as founders, the Methodist Church had an impact on the campus, but nowhere can I find a source that claims that either the Woman's College of Baltimore or Goucher College was as a christian school. And the source also shows that the school was always open to students of all religious backgrounds.--Louiedog (talk) 12:44, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Also, I believe you might be taking "Methodist school" to mean "founded by Methodists". I find no indication that Goucher was ever a theological school or explicitly associated with the ME Church, like say Cliff College or Oklahoma City University.--Louiedog (talk) 12:52, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

How about the senior thesis of Maura Roth-Gormley, a member of Goucher's class of 2010? Seniors do graduate thesis-level work, right? I'm happy to let you correct the record accordingly, with citation to goucher.edu as the ultimate reference. http://www.goucher.edu/Documents/Better%20Dead%20Than%20Coed%20-%20Maura%20Roth-Gormley.pdfQuintBy (talk) 18:23, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the undergraduate work of a senior does not qualify as a reliable source: Completed dissertations or theses written as part of the requirements for a PhD, and which are publicly available, are considered publications by scholars and are routinely cited in footnotes...Masters dissertations and theses are only considered reliable if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence. Certainly, undergraduate work wouldn't pass muster.

However, a usable source likely to show the information you're looking for is cited in Ms. Roth-Gormley's paper: Anna Heubeck Knipp and Thaddeus P. Thomas. The History of Goucher College (Musser, Frederick O. The History of Goucher College, 1930-1985 (Baltimore, 1990).--Louiedog (talk) 18:37, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Excuse me? Louiedog, is there a belief here that either you, Goucher College itself or anyone else actually owns the Wikipedia pages for Goucher College? And is there a belief, perhaps by a Goucher official, that standards for references as required by Wikipedia are selectively jettisoned in favor of applying far more rigorous standards more in keeping with those expected to be applied to the proper footnoting of doctorate dissertations, at least when touchy facts are brought to light? I do think so.

The selective editing of Goucher's pages tacitly demonstrates both that normally Wikipedia's approach to references are accepted and even hugely fudged upon, while far more strict standards for source materials are imposed when the topic at hand pertains to Christianity. Why else would there be repeated striking of references to Goucher's Christian roots, supported by what is claimed to be insufficiently scholarly, while allowing extremely questionable references to stand unchallenged. A good example of the latter rests in the reference which allegedly supports an assertion that in 2004 Newsweek said that Goucher College had the "happiest students".

Even setting aside for now whether Newsweek could ever be considered a credible source or reference for any assertion of fact if the at-least-graduate-student-level research standard is applied, the reference provided in support of this assertion is fatally flawed whether using Wikipedia's standards or the John F. Kennedy Middle School's seventh-grade History Class report standards. Clicking on footnote number 3 to examine the source of the "happiest students" Newsweek remark we are taken not to the Newsweek article containing that factoid or even to a paricular issue published in 2004.

Where we arrive instead is at an online edition of a student newspaper called "The Quindecim", apparently not even the official student newspaper of Goucher College since it refers to itself as "The Independent Student Newspaper of Goucher College. On that webpage several other things are of note. First, while there is an article on that page which is headlined "Newsweek Ranks "Hot Schools of 2004", the article cited to support the assertion that In 2004, Newsweek called Goucher the college with the happiest students is mysteriously datelined September 16, 2003, a full 3 1/2 months before it is claimed that Newsweek made the observation -in 2004!

Second, when we peruse the article for more particulars about Newsweek's 2004 happiest-students comment or perhaps an indication that there had ben a scrivener's error, and that Newsweek actually made the comment in 2003 what we find is, well, absolutely nothing. And not just nothing about any school's "happiest students". I mean absolutely nothing in the text which even makes mention of Groucher College. What we do find is merely a subtitle to the story's headline which says "Goucher College rated "Most Happy", not even mentioning students in so saying.

So Louiedog challenged and deleted my reference to a 2010 Goucher College graduates senior thesis, which Goucher College makes available for readers to download in .pdf version, saying "the undergraduate work of a senior does not qualify as a reliable source: Completed dissertations or theses written as part of the requirements for a PhD, and which are publicly available, are considered publications by scholars and are routinely cited in footnotes...Masters dissertations and theses are only considered reliable if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence. Certainly, undergraduate work wouldn't pass muster.

Yet Louiedog allows to stand a reference supplied in support of a front,center and leading claim on Wikipedia about Goucher's students for which there is neither primary nor secondary nor tertiary nor in fact any even arguably-feasible reference to support it, the reference consisting of a subheadline of an unofficial online student newspaper referring to an event which had yet to happen, without any mention of Goucher or its students, happy or otherwise, appearing in the text of the online student newspaper, much less the text of Newsweek magazine.

Now that's what I call scholarly!.................QuintBy (talk) 23:34, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

"Strong or controversial claims require strong support from well-regarded sources" is a pretty basic idea in research, and WP:RS is wikipedia's standard for reliability of sources when it comes to verifiability of claims. If there are other statements that are not verifiable to a level in keeping with their novelty or controversial nature, feel free to debate that as well. But that's a separate issue, not tied to the one of the school's founding. Like it or not, proper footnoting is the wikipedia standard to support article content, and like it or not, some claims really do require much stronger support than others. The flip side is that some claims really don't require such substantial sourcing (noncontroversial or common-knowledge statements or sourced to less high quality sources) but also may not be worth including at all, being minutia that isn't encyclopediac in nature even if it did have outstanding sourcing provided.

Things like "founded by religious people" vs "founded as a religious institution" are very different things. While the former isn't unusual (especially in the history of higher ed, even for completely secular institutions) the latter is a much stronger claim and is directly about the article topic itself, not a side-note that may not be directly related at all. Especially given its apparent nature now as not being what the religion was then (and even having a student body with a citedly unusually high percent of a different religion), the claim about an institutional religion at founding really needs a good source.

On the other hand, even a poor source (per WP:RS standards) could be useful, because presumably a senior research paper on an historical topic is heavily based on other sources. And if the student wanted to pass, those sources would be listed in the paper--the non-reliable source might cite a reliable one. So all you have to do is find those sources and see what they actually say. That is, we have to verify from the reliable sources, not simply go with a non-reliable writing based on them. That helps eliminate the possibility that the student misunderstood something or didn't explain something as clearly as the parent sources; we definitely don't want to perpetuate that misunderstanding, but rather want to use the good source directly. DMacks (talk) 02:18, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

QuintBy, please assume good faith. No one owns this article, but the editors on any article must make sure that the article follows wikipedia sourcing policy. Without following proper guidelines for sources, wikipedia becomes a publisher of rumors and urban legends.

I suggest familiarizing yourself with WP:RS and WP:SOURCES. Newsweek, like all established periodicals, is a published magazine, subject to editorial review. A paper written by an undergrad is not. Were that undergrad to get the paper published in a scholarly journal, it would be, but the paper as provided is just listed as a file on Goucher webspace with no evidence it's been read or reviewed by anyone, let alone anyone qualified to review and scrutinize it to the standards required for publication.

I would be interested in including the fact that Goucher was founded as a women's Christian seminary school. I would want to include that. It's interesting! It's a part of the school's history. But as DMacks explains "founded by religious people" and "founded as a religious institution" are two different things and short of a checkable published source directly confirming that Goucher is the latter, it could simply be you (or Ms. Roth-Gormley's) passing along a rumor or something you thought you read or misinterpreting something heard or read and printing that in wikipedia is simply against its policies for good reason.

But you can still probably include this fact! Provided above is the exact likely place you would want to find it. Here it is online.--Louiedog (talk) 04:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Good find, Loodog! I just read a chapter of it, and the school was founded by Methodists, within the context of and with fundraising among the Methodist movement, with thoughts of it being a women's seminary. And then it was decided to form it as a "college", explicitly not a "seminary" (those two exact words were the explicit choices considered). DMacks (talk) 10:06, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, went through the PDF of the book and did a CTRL + F search for the word "seminary", found this:

While the Conference founded the College,

it is well to remember the merits of the two most prominent agents of the Conference, Dr. Van Meter and Dr. Goucher how bravely they undertook their difficult task, how they worked together for two long years without a single blunder to mar their record, how wisely they secured the cooperation of enthusiastic and energetic women, how they either made generous donations or successfully persuaded others to give, how judiciously and tactfully they disarmed opposition in the prolonged and animated debate on the floor of the Conference, and how great was their victory in securing unanimous agreement to found a college instead of a seminary.

--Louiedog (talk) 16:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

LouieDog, regardless of what transpired in getting there, it seems that historical accuracy has largely prevailed in the end, or at least until the next edit. Some of us merely dabble in Wikipedia; there's no crime in that. Everyone brings their strengths and weaknesses to the table in participating in Wiki writing and editing. I may not be as steeped in Wikipedia ins-and-outs as are so many others (and as I probably should be) but that does not mean that I need disqualify myself from playing a role in developing and sharpening up the accuracy of Wikipedia's substantive content. While it is difficult in some Wikipedia topics to discern what should and should not be included, that was not the case regarding Goucher's historic beginnings. Certainly if it warranted mention that Goucher had originally been a women's institution it was every bit as appropriate to note that it had also originally been a Christian institution.

What I found most compelling about the undergraduate's thesis was not so much about the specifics of her research but more about her first-person description of what actually still exists on the campus which supports the notion that this school had begun its life steeped in Christianity. First-person observations made by a seasoned upperclassman of a college about physical aspects of that same college are more reporting than scholarship. Presumably at least one knowledgeable member of the faculty reviwed the work. To me it seemed highly doubtful that such concrete observations were likely to have been fabricated or even fudged, since the reviewer was in a position to stroll over within minutes to the locale described and subject the site to a confirming eyeball review. Very few Ph.D dissertations are capable of being subjected to such review.

It may or may not surprise you to know that I have no ax to grind for Christians, particularly Protestants, as I myself have been an agnostic and later an atheist for over 40 years. I have no connection with Goucher College. I had not even heard of it until one of my oldest and dearest friends announced on Facebook that his daughter would be attending Goucher this coming Fall. I turned both to Goucher.edu and to Wikipedia to learn more and frankly was put off on Goucher's site at what appeared to be an informal bias in favor of Judaism. Looking further, I found comments from students made on several college rating sites which specifically noted the existence of an ongoing rift between Jewish and non-Jewish students. For example, there were several statements from apparently different persons that gentiles were not considered welcome in one of the dining commons adjacent to the college's Hillel residence hall.

it seemed to me that where an ethnic/religious plurality of students seemed to be placing the other 60% of students (most of whom likely had Christian backgrounds) on the defensive, bullying if you will, it is especially important to maintain historical accuracy when that history has something to say to the present. My own first impression logging onto to www.goucher.edu was that the college was, like Brandeis, a nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored institution of higher learning. So I was taken aback when I turned to Wikipedia and discovered that if anything, Goucher was historically Christian-sponsored. To borrow (begrudgingly from Jean Dixon's 'asterisk' regarding astrology, history does not compel but it does impel. As it should in this instance. Nice work, louiedog. QuintBy (talk) 20:27, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Unclear what the above poster was trying to imply by calling Goucher a "Jewish" college or suggesting somewhat that Jewish students "bully" the "other 60%." However, the college's historical association with the Methodist Episcopal Church is now incorporated into the page's history section, as well as the lead sentence describing the college's founding. In addition, the statistic about the college's demographics and Jewish population has also been cited correctly now.Wikieditor19920 (talk) 02:47, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

References

Most Happy

Unfortunately, it seems to be rather hard to track down the original Newsweek article but a news article mentions that the label of Most Happy wasn't a function specifically the students, but the unusually personal relationship the students have with the faculty. I also included in my revert a quote from the Goucher press release:

That magazine featured Goucher in its short list of 12 "Hot Schools of 2004," naming us "Most Happy," citing our small student-to-faculty ratio and the personal attention our students enjoy, and affirming our identity as "a small college with a big view of the world."

So I submit that such a listing is not a function of such a temporary thing as which students happening to be attending, meaning that it's still true, and since it once was notable, it still is.--Louiedog (talk) 20:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm open to hearing other opinions.--Louiedog (talk) 20:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Found and cited the 2004 article to describe the campus. Removed the 2004 "most happy" ranking, since a nearly fourteen-year-old survey is no longer relevant.Wikieditor19920 (talk) 02:48, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

External links modified

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Adding Latin hyperlink to infobox motto field

This has been removed before, but every other university page seems to include the Latin hyperlink in this field if the motto is indeed Latin and if it is not indicated elsewhere in the infobox. If anyone is so inclined to remove it again, please discuss here before doing so.Wikieditor19920 (talk) 03:24, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Acting president

I started an article on Bryan Coker. He was acting president of Goucher during the summer of 2019 and is the current president-elect of Maryville College. I've added his name to the list found here: List_of_Goucher_College_people#Presidents. I wish we knew the specific months/duration he served as acting president of Goucher. TJMSmith (talk) 16:29, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

@TJMSmith: I think any sort of primary source, i.e. something from the website, would suffice. BTW -- a successful DYK nom and GA status -- this article's come pretty far, eh? Wikieditor19920 (talk) 02:32, 5 March 2020 (UTC)