Origins While attending and leading the Freewill Baptist
Parsonsfield Seminary, Bates founder
Oren Burbank Cheney worked on various racial and gender equality, religious freedom, and temperance issues. In 1836, Cheney enrolled in
Dartmouth College, due to the school's significant support of the abolitionist cause against slavery. Soon after establishment several donors stepped forward to finance portions of the school, such as
Seth Hathorn, who donated the first library and academic building, which was renamed
Hathorn Hall. The school was renamed Bates College in his honor in 1863 and was chartered to offer a liberal arts curriculum beyond its original theological focus. Two years later the college would graduate the first woman to receive a college degree in New England,
Mary Mitchell. The college began instruction with a six-person faculty tasked with the teaching of moral philosophy and the classics. From its inception, Bates served as an alternative to a more traditional and historically conservative
Bowdoin College. There is a complex relationship between the two colleges, revolving around socioeconomic class, academic quality, and collegiate athletics. The college, under the direction of Cheney, rejected fraternities and sororities on grounds of unwarranted exclusivity. He asked his close friend and U.S. Senator
Charles Sumner to create a collegiate motto for Bates and he suggested the Latin phrase
amore ac studio which he translated as "with love for learning" which has been taken as "with ardor and devotion," or "through zeal and study." Prior to the start of the
American Civil War, Bates graduated Brevet Major
Holman Melcher, who served in the
Union Army. He was the first person to charge down
Little Round Top at the
Battle of Gettysburg. The college's first African-American student,
Henry Chandler, graduated in 1874. In 1884, the college graduated the first woman to argue in front of the U.S. Supreme Court,
Ella Haskell. In 1894,
Stella James Sims became the first African-American woman graduate.
20th century (second from left), in front of Smith Hall, during
Winter Carnival, 1944 In 1894,
George Colby Chase led Bates to increased national recognition, and the college graduated one of the founding members of the
Boston Red Sox,
Harry Lord. In 1920, the Outing Club was founded and is one of the oldest collegiate outing clubs in the country. The debate society of Bates, the
Brooks Quimby Debate Council, became the first college debate team in the U.S. to compete internationally, and is the oldest collegiate coeducational debate team in the nation. In 1921, the college's debate team participated in the first intercontinental collegiate debate in history against the
Oxford Union's debate team at the
University of Oxford. Oxford's first debate in the United States was against Bates in Lewiston, in September 1923. In 1943, the
V-12 Navy College Training Program was introduced at Bates. It was during this time future U.S. Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy enrolled along with hundreds of other sailor-students. The college began to garner a reputation for predominately educating white students who come from upper-middle-class to affluent backgrounds.
The New York Times detailed the atmosphere of the college in the 1960s with the following: "the prestigious Bates College—named for
Benjamin E. Bates, whose riverfront mill on Canal Street in Lewiston was once Maine's largest employer—provided an antithesis: a leafy oasis of privilege." in 2015During this time the college began to compete athletically with
Colby College, and in 1964, with Bowdoin created the
Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Consortium. In 1967, President
Thomas Hedley Reynolds promoted the idea of teacher-scholars at Bates and secured the construction of numerous academic and recreational buildings. In 1984, Bates became one of the first liberal arts colleges to make the
SAT and
ACT optional in the admission process. In 1989,
Donald West Harward took over the presidency and built 22 new academic, residential and athletic facilities. During the 1990s and mid-2000s, Bates consolidated its reputation of being a "playground for the elite", by educating upper-middle-class to affluent Americans, which led to student protests and reforms to make the college more diverse.
21st century , 2015|249x249px Academic
Elaine Tuttle Hansen was elected as the first female president of Bates and managed its second-largest capital campaign, totaling $120 million, and later led the college through the
2008 financial crisis. In 2012, Bates made national headlines for being named the most expensive college in the U.S., which received media coverage as it highlighted stark socioeconomic inequality among students. While some reforms were successful, minorities at the college, typically classified as non-white and low-income students, still reported financial insecurity and social elitism. 18% of Bates students came from the 1% of the
American upper class, with more than half coming from
the top 5%. According to the
Portland Press Herald, businessman
Michael Bonney '80 and his family donated $50 million to Bates, the largest ever donation to a Maine college. As part of their fundraising campaign from 2017 to 2022, Bates raised $345.7 million. Journalist
Ron Lieber of
The New York Times noted that need-aware colleges like Bates prioritized students who could pay full tuition in the admission process, writing that, "you can get help if you're admitted, but you might not be admitted if you need help." This impacted tuition affordability at Bates, according to
The Chronicle of Higher Education. Legal scholar
Garry Jenkins was appointed president in 2023, becoming the first black president of Bates. == Academics ==