Giving Credit to Wilson

I write to correct the misconception that the name of Wilson College is simply an arbitrary way to worship Woodrow Wilson and sprinkle his name across campus. Most recently and alarmingly, PAW published a letter from Murphy Sewall ’64 (Inbox, Jan. 13) that stated “there’s very little reason why Wilson College should be named after him.”

In fact, naming Princeton’s first residential college after Wilson is perhaps the best example of honoring Wilson in an objective and appropriate way. Wilson was one of the first and most vocal proponents of bringing the residential-college systems of Oxford and Cambridge to American universities. He laid out his “quad plan” to the Princeton Board of Trustees in 1906, which eventually would be realized in the form of houses at Harvard, residential colleges at Yale and Princeton, and many other variations at universities across the country where students live in residential communities.

In the spirit of academia, the Wilson College name credits Wilson for a specific ideological contribution.