Alfred University - Background

Background

Alfred was founded in 1836 as the Select School by Seventh Day Baptists as a non-sectarian institution. Unusual for the time, the school was co-educational. It was also racially integrated, and enrolled its first African-American student and two Native American students in the 1850s, becoming the second college in the nation to do so.

The origin of the name "Alfred" is uncertain. Residents of the town and students at the two schools believe that the town received its name in honor of Alfred the Great, king of the Saxons, although the first documented occurrence of this connection was in 1881, 73 years after the first record of the name being used. State records which might have verified the connection between the Saxon king and the university were lost in a fire in 1911. Regardless of whether the connection is historically accurate, Alfred University has embraced King Alfred as a symbol of the school's values, and a statue of the king stands in the center of the campus quad.

Since its founding, Alfred University has hosted guest lecturers, artists and musicians from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Ghostface Killah.

Alfred University, together with Corning Incorporated and the State of New York created the Ceramic Corridor, a high-tech incubator project designed to take advantage of the emerging ceramics industry and to create new jobs. This unique industrial development program is the only one in the United States concentrating on one single aspect of technology – high-tech ceramics – and it is the only major industrial development project centered in a rural area in the U.S.

Extending to the 20th and 21st centuries, Alfred has continued its progressive history of defending equal rights for members of the community. In 1971, Alfred became only the 4th municipality in the U.S. to ban employment discrimination based on sexuality. In the mid 1990s, the university became one of the first to strip credit for ROTC programs, which exhibit prejudice on basis of sexual orientation. However, students attending Alfred University are still free to receive an Army ROTC contract with full tuition paid and attend military science classes through St. Bonaventure University. Amidst the dissolution of the AU Greek System, the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity chapter at Alfred University led an overwhelmingly successful effort to ban discrimination based on religion, age, disability, and sexual orientation in the constitution of the 210 chapter international fraternity in 2002. That action triggered several other national fraternities and sororities to follow suit.