Porter College
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Benjamin F. Porter College, a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is located on the lower west side of the university, south of Kresge College and north of College Eight. The college was founded in 1969 as College Five and formally dedicated on November 21, 1981. On that day the college was given the motto Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (Life is short, Art endures), and a series of college symbols, including a faculty mace and a college bell, were inaugurated.
The faculty of the college has had a distinguished leadership. The provosts of the college have included the writer James B. Hall, the painter and psychologist Pavel Machotka, filmmaker Eli Hollander and composer David Cope. In early years, the college community was famous for Friday-afternoon sherry hours and afternoon croquet matches on the quad, suggesting that "l'esprit de Santa Cruz" was not far from that of Oxbridge.
Situated on a meadow overlooking the Monterey Bay, Porter's original focus was on the visual and performing arts with a unique college major in aesthetic studies (including areas like criticism, creative writing, film, photography and crafts which were not covered by the more traditional boards of study). Porter has long been a center for fine and performing arts. The college complex includes three active galleries, and various spaces in the complex have frequently been used for musical, theatrical, and dance performances.
Although designed as a traditional dormitory with a centralized dining hall, Porter soon gained a reputation befitting their artistic background by staging outrageously bohemian parties, including Halloween, "Step on My Face", "The End" (initially understood as "The End of the World", later revised to "The End of the School Year," and now, "The Edge of the World"), and, for a time, a parodistic Prom ("for all those who missed their High School Proms"). "Queer Fashion Show," formerly "Alternative Fashion Show" is a current annual program featuring student made fashion and a variety show.
In the same vein, many students from this college take part in the First Rain yearly tradition, which is celebrated when the first rain of the Fall quarter falls. Students run naked through all colleges, much to the amusement of other students, to return to Porter College for warm showers. This tradition may, in fact, have developed from the practice of naked sliding down a warm-jello-filled slip'n'slide, which first occurred at "The End" in 1982.
Just to the south of Porter is a signature campus art piece, a large red abstract sculpture which has been endlessly portrayed on UCSC's promotional literature. It is known on campus as "The Squiggle," "The Flying IUD" and "The Porter Wave" in official literature, but is officially "Untitled."
Nearby the college are the Porter Caves and Porter Meadow, which are popular local attractions.
[edit] External links
- Porter College home page
- UC Santa Cruz home page
- UCSC statistics by residential college
- The Moxie Production Group: Information on one of the many Student Media Orgs
| University of California, Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, California |
||
 |
Colleges |
Cowell College · Stevenson College · Crown College · Merrill College · Porter College · Kresge College · Oakes College · College Eight · College Nine · College Ten |
|---|---|---|
| Professional School | ||
| Research & Services |
· Lick Observatory · W. M. Keck Observatory · Dickens Project · NASA Ames Research Center UARC · Silicon Valley Initiatives · Center for Adaptive Optics · Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering · Institute of Marine Sciences & Long Marine Lab · UCSC Arboretum · University of California Police Department · UC Santa Cruz Fire Department |
|
| Student Media | ||
