Lafayette College
Lafayette College is a private liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1826 by James Madison Porter and other citizens in Easton, the college first held classes in 1832. The founders voted to name the college after the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution.
Located on College Hill in Easton, the campus overlooks the Delaware River and is situated in the Lehigh Valley, about west of New York City and north of Philadelphia. Lafayette enrolls approximately 2,700 undergraduate students and offers programs in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. The college emphasizes small class sizes and undergraduate research, and it competes in NCAA Division I athletics as a member of the Patriot League. As of 2024, its endowment was valued at over $1 billion.
History
Founding
A group of Easton residents, led by James Madison Porter, son of General Andrew Porter of Norristown, Pennsylvania, met on December 27, 1824, at White's Tavern to discuss founding a college in town. The recent visit of General Lafayette to New York during his grand tour of the US in 1824 and 1825 prompted the founders to name the college after the renowned French military officer, a hero of the American Revolutionary War, as "a testimony of respect for talents, virtues, and signal services... in the great cause of freedom".The group established a 35-member board of trustees, a system of governance that continues at the college to the present. They selected Porter, lawyer Jacob Wagener, and Yale-educated lawyer Joel Jones to come up with an education plan. The charter gained state approval from the legislature and, on March 9, 1826, Pennsylvania Governor John Andrew Shulze. Along with establishing Lafayette as a liberal arts college, the charter provided for religious equality among professors, students, and staff.
The board of trustees met on May 15, 1826, for the election of officers: Thomas McKeen as Treasurer, Joel Jones as Secretary, and James Madison Porter as the first president of the college. Over the next few years, the board met several times to discuss property and funding for the college's start-up. Six years after the first meeting, Lafayette began to enroll students.
The college opened on May 1, 1829, with four students under the guidance of John Monteith. At the start of the next year, George Junkin, a Presbyterian minister, was elected first official president of the college. He moved the all-male Manual Labor Academy of Pennsylvania from Germantown to Easton to assist with the physical construction of the college's first building. Its first two professors were Charles F. McCay and James I. Coon. Classes began on May 9, 1832, with instruction of 43 students in a rented farmhouse on the south bank of the Lehigh River. Junkin supported colonization of Liberia by ex-slaves from the United States. He proposed Lafayette for educating free African Americans for missionary work in the new American colony established by the American Colonization Society. Between 1832 and 1844, ten black students were enrolled at Lafayette, four of whom later served as missionaries in Liberia.
During the college's first years, students were required to work in the fields and workshops to allow the college to earn money to support its programs. This manual labor was retained as part of the curriculum until 1839, as the college was focused on preparing students for Military and Civil Engineering. Later that year, Lafayette purchased property on what is now known as "College Hill" – nine acres of elevated land across Bushkill Creek. The college's first building was constructed two years later on the current site of South College.
A dispute, largely related to the financial well-being of the school, between Porter and Junkin led to the latter man's resignation from the presidency in 1841. The next decade was fraught with financial difficulties and a rotation of four new presidents of the college, including the return of Junkin for a brief period. In an effort to restore financial order to the institution, the trustees explored the potential of adding a religious affiliation.
In 1849, Lafayette College became affiliated with the Presbyterian Church via the Synod of Philadelphia. By relinquishing their control, the college was able to collect $1000 a year from the Presbyterian Church Board of Education as regularly as the latter could pay it. In the time from 1855 to 1856, Lafayette had a peak enrollment of 112 students in total. The class of 1857, a close-knit group of 27 men, worked in secrecy to establish charters in national fraternities, thus founding the first Greek-letter fraternities at Lafayette College. These fraternities remained secret until 1869, as they were initially discouraged by the college authorities.
World War I
In preparation for United States entry into the World War I, which had involved European nations since 1914, Lafayette announced that current students would be awarded their degrees in absentia if they enlisted or went to work on farms to support the war effort. Professor Beverly Kunkel organized The Lafayette Ambulance United, Section 61, United States Army Ambulance Corps. During the summer of 1917, MacCracken arranged to adapt the campus as a war camp for the War Department. Lafayette remained a war camp until January 2, 1919, when the regular course of study was re-established there.On December 16, 1925, the nation's largest fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, was founded at Lafayette.
Great Depression
Between 1930 and 1934, during the Great Depression, the number of students declined dramatically. The college created new scholarships and scholarship loans to enable more students to attend. It also founded an Engineering Guidance Conference for boys. The conference was two weeks long and introduced twenty-one high school students to the concepts of engineering. This program continued until the outbreak of World War II in 1941. Though the college faced its own deficits during the Depression, it aided the larger community by offering a series of free classes to unemployed men, beginning in 1932. They also made athletic facilities available for free to unemployed members of the community. Enrollment began to rise again for the 1935–1936 academic year.Decade of Progress campaign
As the college moved out of the Great Depression, the college's new president, William Mather Lewis, began what was called the Decade of Progress capital campaign, in order to fund delayed improvements. It started as a celebration of the 70th anniversary of Lafayette's engineering program. President Lewis regarded this 70-year span as a period which "covers the great development in American engineering which has now seemed to reach its peak." The goal of this campaign was to raise $500,000 for payments on Gates Hall, renovation of Van Wickle Memorial Library, and equipment upgrades in other departments. By the time the campaign closed in 1944, the college had received a total amount of $280,853.34.World War II
Initially, most of the faculty and students at Lafayette wanted the U.S. to stay out of the conflict in Europe. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the Pan-American Congress, saying that the US had a duty to protect Americans' science, culture, freedom and civilization, thirty-seven Lafayette faculty members wired the president objecting to his speech. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and declaration of war by the US, the Northampton County Council of Defense organized a College Council of Defense at Lafayette. The college took official action as well. It bolstered its ROTC program and improved facilities to prepare for air raid tests. The college continued its academic programs until the US lowered the draft age from 20 to 18 in November 1942.While more students enlisted, Lafayette College was one of 36 academic institutions selected by the United States Department of War to train engineering and aviation cadets. After the war, the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944 resulted in a new wave of enrollment at Lafayette by veterans and by 1949 the college had approximately 2000 students.
Coeducational institution
In 1967, in consideration of cultural changes that included women seeking more participation in society, faculty requested that a special committee be formed to discuss making Lafayette a co-educational institution. That committee issued a formal recommendation the following year. In September 1970, Lafayette College welcomed its first official coeducational class with 146 women.21st century
In 2004, a report on religious life at Lafayette College was compiled, recommending a review of the college's formal relationship with the Presbyterian church. The college has retained its affiliation, although it is not a member of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities.In 2007, the college commemorated the 250th birthday of General Lafayette through a series of lectures and campus dedications. Major festivities were held on September 6, 2007, Lafayette's birthday. They were started the night before with a lecture by the historian David McCullough. On March 9, 2011, the Office of Alumni Affairs began a program called "Wine 3/9" to invite alumni from around the country and world to celebrate the original approval of the college charter by the Pennsylvania Legislature which occurred in 1826.
On January 16, 2013, Alison Byerly was announced as Lafayette's 17th and first female president. She took office on July 1, 2013, replacing outgoing president Daniel Weiss. She was formerly a professor at Middlebury College. Under Byerly's administration, the college began to undertake plans for expansion of the student body to 2,900 students and the construction of new dorms and academic buildings, with the stated goal of raising funds for financial aid. The campaign was the most successful fundraising campaign in college history and resulted in the renovation of multiple campus landmarks and one new building for the study of global education.
Nicole Hurd, the founder of the College Advising Corps, was announced as Byerly's successor as president on May 15, 2021. In January 2025, she became the first president in the college's history to lose a faculty-led no-confidence vote.
Lafayette was selected as the site of the 2024 vice presidential debate, though the Commission on Presidential Debates canceled the event after President Joe Biden's campaign refused to participate in CPD-sponsored debates.