CAMPUS, a Latin word meaning level plain. By the Romans the name was given to a number of open grassy spaces in and about the city. Of these the most famous was the Campus Martius on the north-west which became the property of the State after the expulsion of the Tarquins. It was the site of the comitia curiata, of the horse-races in honour of Mars, of athletic and military events, a place of reception for foreign ambassadors and a recreational centre.
American colleges, fond of classic terminology and richer in land than they were in buildings, early used the word campus to describe their grounds. Although yard is the term in vogue at Harvard and although yard and green long dominated at Yale, in common usage campus has prevailed over all others as a term describing the land owned by a college or university and used for its purposes. A large and often beautiful campus forms frequently the most attractive feature of many American colleges and has become the centre of college traditions and the site of many distinctive customs. The connotations of the term gradually widened until in the second decade of the loth century it tended to become synonymous for the non-scholastic life of an American college and descriptive of the athletic, social, dramatic and other extra-curricular activities. A man is spoken of, for instance, as a "campus leader" ; "campus politics" form a training school for many a budding legislator; "campus activities" are those not con cerned with books or study.
See Albert Matthews, "The Use at American Colleges of the Word Campus" (Mass. Hist. Soc. Pub., vol. 3) and the Nation (vol. 66, 1898).