What Is the “Senior Court”?
Science Building Retreat Area Celebrates Our First Convocation Speakers
If you take walk on the west side of the South Science Building, going towards the new Recreation and Wellness Center, you’ll discover the Senior Court. This secluded contemporary fountain and commemorative retreat was created during the first few years of campus, and came to be a place to celebrate the new college’s notable convocation speakers. Among early addresses were those of the famed English philosopher and author Aldous Huxley, United Nations official and Civil Rights leader Dr. Ralph Bunche, the controversial Bishop James Pike, and “Peanuts” cartoonist Charles Schulz. Judging by the speakers selected, the young campus was politically idealistic, and forward-looking in this turbulent period of the early-to-late 1960s.
A small architectural “retreat” was constructed immediately south of the South Science Building in the early 1960s (note the lack of vegetation in the 1962 snapshot, above right). On the north side of the Senior Court, you can still find plaques commemorating our earliest convocation speakers.