Light on the Hill, Volume II
Miller, Russell
1986
Reiligiously, there were more Roman Catholic and Jewish students than ever before during the Wessell administration, although each still comprised a minority. During the deanships of Edith Bush and Katherine Jeffers in Jackson College, a fairly precise statistical breakdown of the religious preferences of students was included in their annual reports. The increase in the number of Catholic students was probably accounted for, at least in part, by what appeared to be a relaxation of pressure during the late 1950S and 1960S from the church hierarchy to attend Catholic schools. As to the Jewish student population, the increase was due possibly to the fact that their College Board (SAT) scores tended to be somewhat higher than those of the | |
193 | student body at large, and this coincided with the earlier emphasis which Wessell had put on this factor in measuring potential academic success. (These particular generalizations about the changing religious makeup of the student body are partly speculative rather than based on hard statistical evidence. So far as known, no complete religious census of the Tufts student body has ever taken place.) The increasing religious diversity of the student body was a reflection to a large degree of the historic admissions policy of the institution and can be traced back to the liberal proclivities of the Universalist denomination which was responsible for establishing Tufts. There is nothing in the records of the institution to indicate that a quota system of any kind has ever been part of Tufts' admissions policy. Its non-denominational character was stressed constantly by both Wessell and Provost Mead, and was applied even to the Crane Theological School which had been established originally to train Universalist clergy. According to the office of the Chaplaincy in the 1980s, the religious affiliations of the undergraduate study body by then were almost equally divided into thirds - Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant (and others). |
