History
The designation Ohio Five or Ohio Six (including Antioch College) first appeared at the typewriters of journalists in Ohio in the beginning of the twentieth century. The grouping, predating of any formal agreement, was immediately adopted by the press as a foreshadowing of an Ohio league of schools with similar academic and athletic reputations, which, at the time was a common perception. During the 1800s, in their evangelistic campaign to build a Christian community across the U.S. from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Protestant churches of the 19th century used the denominational college as an intellectual stronghold. By the Civil War era, the churches had founded some 40 colleges in Ohio alone, to ensure for the state a Christian core and to train the ministers who plodded after the frontiersmen across the plains. Empty treasuries and denominational rivalry had killed off all but 20 of these Ohio colleges by the 1950s. Of the survivors, educators often grouped six colleges together in the early 1900s because of their high academic standing — Oberlin College, Denison University, Ohio Wesleyan University, Kenyon College, College of Wooster and Antioch College.
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Denison's Swasey Chapel -
Oberlin's Memorial Arch
Though that perception has since shrunk to include five schools, for years, the Five Colleges members had already been allied in sports leagues in basketball, soccer, running, baseball, swimming and lacrosse. Through these other scheduling arrangements, the college athletic directors were used to dealing with each other in matters of administration or the exchange of calculated confidences.
The consortium among the five schools was founded in the early 1990s after informal discussions have been formalized by the incorporation of the organization on June 30, 1995. The five colleges had been affiliated as members of state and national educational and athletic organizations and had enjoyed friendly rivalry in various academic and athletic competitions, similar to Little Three in New England.
A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, awarded in June 1995, provided for the development of a joint library system, establishment of an administrative structure, and investigation of the benefits and methods for sharing digital images and multimedia resources, establishing The Five Colleges of Ohio, Inc. as a legal entity.
Read more about this topic: Five Colleges Of Ohio
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