BATES COLLEGE, Lewiston, Me., was opened in 1863 and chartered in 1864. It grew out of Maine State Seminary, a second ary school opened in 1857. The college was founded by its first president, Rev. Oren Burbank Cheney, D.D. (1863-94), and bears the name of its chief benefactor, Benjamin Edward Bates, a merchant of Boston and one of the founders of the city of Lewiston. Bates was the first Eastern college to afford collegiate education to women and its first woman graduate (1869) became a professor in Vassar College. Bates is undenominational but thoroughly Christian. Its faculty rep resents nine different religious denominations and the leading universities and colleges of the United States. It places primary stress upon character, does not tolerate hazing and makes abstinence from intoxicating drinks a condition of student membership. Its courses of instruction cover the range of undergrad uate studies as pursued in progressive col leges of to-day. The unusual excellence of its courses in English, including argumenta tion, is indicated by its 30 victories in 38 in tercollegiate debates. Alone among New
England colleges, Bates has no secret frater nities. It has chemical, physical and biologi cal laboratories, libraries containing more than 40,000 volumes and a spacious athletic field. Its campus of 45 acres is of rare nat ural beauty and with its 15. buildings (includ ing a chapel, Carnegie science building and library) has a value of $597,000. Its invested funds amount to $930,000. About 43 per cent of its graduates have become teachers. For the last 20 years the number of its graduates at the head of city high schools in New Eng land is believed to have eicceeded those of any other college. Bates has 102 scholarships and it so shapes its policy as to help stud.ents of small means to.meet their own expenses. The college has 34 officers and instructors and 472 students.