Halls of ivy, Ivy League

[Laurence Horn]

Let me also remind us that we had a detailed discussion not that long ago
(July 1998, to be exact) of the obviously related "Ivy League", which I've
also seen falsely etymologized--sometimes by my own undergraduates--as
deriving from "IV League" (again from the numeral, rather than the feeding
tube).  Fred and Barry both traced "Ivy League" back to 1936, and Barry had
an earlier pre-Ivy League reference from the late nineteenth century that
seems consistent with viewing (certain) colleges as 'halls of ivy',
although not under precisely that nomenclature, and in fact emanating from
Smith College.  Here's an excerpt from Barry's findings.

--larry

===============
>"Ivy League"--this one's for some friends from Yale. In SPEAKING FREELY by
>Anne H. Soukhanov and Stuart Berg Flexner, pg. 398:

>_Ivy League_. This term was coined by the _New York Herald Tribune's_
>Casell Adams (It was correctly CASWELL Adams in Flexner's LISTENING TO
>AMERICA, pg. 241--ed.) in the 1930s to refer to the prestigious eastern
>colleges where football developed, known for their ivy-covered buildings.
>Football's official Ivy League was formed in 1956 (eight universities are
>represented: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania,
>Princeton, and Yale), but today we use the term to describe these eight
>institutions in any regard, including academic, or anything that is
>first-rate or the best in its class.

>The OED has:

>(1933 S. WOODWARD in _N. Y. Herald Tribune_ 16 Oct. 18/1 The fates which
>govern (football) play among the ivy colleges and academic
>boiler-factories alike seem to be going around the circuit.) 1939
>_Princeton Alumni Weekly_ 29 Sept., The "Ivy League" is something which
>does not exist and is simply a term which has been increasingly used in
>recent years by sports writers, applied rather loosely to a group of
>eastern colleges.

>If Caswell Adams of the New York Herald-Tribune coined "Ivy League," why
>do we see a citation by S. Woodward?
>JSTOR turned up this, from its computer files of The Journal of Higher
>Education, vol. 8, no. 3, March 1937, pg. 166:

>Eastern college newspapers have begun to agitate again for the
>establishment of an athletic conference among seven colleges and
>universities on the eastern seaboard. The _Yale News_ of December 3
>reports this undertaking in part as follows:
>"Long a fictitious body, the Ivy League now seems destined for a more
>concrete existence when the campus newspapers of seven colleges announced
>simultaneously today a proposal for the formation of such a league for the
>football teams of the institutions.
>"In an effort to create enthusiasm and to do away with anti-climatical
>games the undergraduate papers of Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard,
>Pennsyvlania, Princeton, and Yale have been discussing and studying the
>idea during the past month. Convinced now of the feasibility and need of
>such a plan, they are presenting to the authorities of their respective
>colleges the plan which they have organized.
>"The Ivy League, should the proposal take shape, will be a definite means
>of bringing about co-operation in general agreements, by the forming of
>schedules in a standard pre-season practice minimum, and in regulations
>regarding scouting practices."

>>From The New York Times, 3 December 1936, pg. 33, col. 1:

>Immediate Formation of Ivy League Advocated at Seven Eastern Colleges
>FOOTBALL LEAGUE
>URGED BY EDITORS
>Seven College Dailies in East
>Push Plan to Preserve
>Ideals of Athletics.
>UNANIMOUS ACTION TAKEN
>Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth,
>Harvard, Yale, Princeton
>and Penn the Members. (Brown is not here yet--ed.)
>PRINCETON, N. J., Dec. 2.--The undergraduate newspapers at Columbia,
>Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale tomorrow
>will run an identical editorial advocating concrete formation of an "Ivy
>League" among the football teams of the seven institutions, it was
>announced tonight.
>It will be the first time in the history of college journalism that such
>unanimous action has been undertaken to launch a proposal, it was stated
>here. The editorial was written after a month's investigation and
>collaboration by the chairmen of The Columbia Spectator, The Cornell Daily
>Sun, The Dartmouth, The Harvard Crimson, The Daily Pennsylvanian, The
>Daily Princetonian and The Yale Daily News.
>The seven colleges involved are already cooperating in the Eastern
>Intercollegiate Basketball and Baseball Leagues and the heptagonal track
>meet. Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale also are members of the
>newly formed International Intercollegiate Ice Hockey League. (...)

>In the New York Times, 4 December 1936, pg. 32, col. 3: "Talked about for
>many years, it has been taken out of the unofficial conversational stage
>and made the subject of concerted action by student newspapers of the
>seven so- called 'ivy colleges.'" The headline was "Schedule Commitments
>Prevent Immediate Forming of Ivy League."
>The thorn in the "Ivy League" was Yale. In the New York Times, 5 December
>1936, pg. 10, col. 4: "Malcolm Farmer, chairman of athletics at Yale,
>tonight issued a statement with regard to the proposed 'Ivy Football
>League' in which he emphasized its disadvantages rather than its
>advantages and left little doubt that Yale is opposed to entering such an
>organization."
>The headline in The New York Times, 16 December 1936, pg. 37, cols. 5-6:
>"Closer 'Ivy League' Ties Expected As Athletic Heads Meet in South/
>Proposal of Student Newspapers and Alumni Publications for Organized
>Circuit Among Seven Colleges Seen as Topic for Discussion During Pleasure
>Trip."
...
>I checked the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Library's collection
>of college songbooks, and I couldn't find a pre-1936 song of these
>colleges mentioning "Ivy College" or "Ivy League."
>The SMITH COLLEGE SONG BOOK (1896) was edited by Alice L. Martin and
>Kristine Mann. It contains "'91 Ivy Song," "'92 Ivy Song," "'93 Ivy Song,"
>"'94 Ivy Song," "'95 Ivy Song," and "'96 Ivy Song" on pages 27-32.
>Page 29, "'93 Ivy Song," is typical:

>We plant the ivy, it will show
>>>From year to year new leaves, new strength
>Our memories and our love shall grow
>With future year's increasing strength.

===============

>On Sat, 11 Mar 2000 AAllan at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>> Does anyone have a good etymological answer to this question? - Allan
>>Metcalf
>>
>> >>  I am asking for your help.  The phrase _halls of ivy_ has few references
>> in encyclopedias or dictionaries.  Somewhere I remember hearing that it
>> referred to the Roman numeral _IV_ for the four original universities in
>> this country.  Surely it is not simply from the tradition of planting
>> university buildings with ivy?  <<
>
>The earliest citation I can readily find for this phrase is the following:
>
>1950 _Dramatics_ Dec. 12  (heading) Radio program of the month: "Halls of
>Ivy."
>
>I don't know when the radio program referred to here began its run.
>
>I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that the phrase derives from the tradition
>of planting university buildings with ivy, and has nothing to do with the
>Roman numeral IV.
>
>
>Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
>Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
>  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
>Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
>e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2
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