Thurgood Marshall College - Early History

Early History

In November, 1965, the College III Preliminary Planning Committee released the first substantial report on what form UCSD's third college would take. The committee, comprising faculty members George Backus, Henry Booker, Gabriel Jackson, C.D. Keeling, and committee chair Andrew Wright, suggested that College III should focus itself on history and theory.

The Wright Committee report suggested that the college have a muse—namely Clio, the Greek muse of history. History was chosen by the committee because it mixed humanism with science—College III would be a sort of "common ground" between the science of Revelle and the humanities of Muir.

In a quiet act of rebelliousness (or perhaps it was just individuality), the committee planned that College III students would only have to take three courses per quarter to graduate in four years, as opposed to the four it took at the other UCSD colleges. Citing the three-course "full load" at UC Santa Cruz, the committee suggested that taking four courses in one quarter would "make the students ride off in all directions," and that three-in depth courses would be preferable.

The final note of the Wright Committee report described what the committee felt was needed in a College III Provost: "a paragon of intellectual vitality, scholarly accomplishment, and administrative talent... sympathetic with the aims of College III, but independent enough... to be able to shape the College in important ways." They asked that a provost be appointed as soon as possible.

By 1967, College III had found its first provost: Armin Rappaport, a history professor at U.C. Berkeley. It was appropriate that the provost of a college with Clio as its muse would be a historian, and Rappaport was that. By the time May rolled around, College III was now "Third College."

However, with the swirling political changes of the late 1960s, the college of Clio and Rappaport was never to be. Once the controversy and battles among students, faculty, and administration commenced—featuring lively figures such as Herbert Schiller, Herbert Marcuse, and Angela Davis -- the future of Third College would be in a turmoil that didn't fully clear until it finally received its official name, Thurgood Marshall College, in 1993.