The Peithessophian Society of Rutgers College (or Peitho) was a student literary and debating society founded in 1825 at
Rutgers College
Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College and was aff ...
(later Rutgers University) in
New Brunswick, New Jersey
New Brunswick is a city (New Jersey), city in and the county seat of Middlesex County, New Jersey, Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Philoclean Society.Rutgers University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives RG 48/A1/01: Inventory to the Records of the Peithessophian Society of Rutgers College, 1825-1927 Retrieved December 27, 2013. The name "Peithessophian" is derived from the Ancient Greek meaning "persuasiveness of wisdom."
According to Rutgers, the literary societies allowed students to develop "the skills of rhetoric and statesmanship that helped more fully utilize the classical education being taught in college classrooms. Rhetorical skills were honed through the writing of essays, orations before the society, and participation in debates. The societies also sought to increase their members exposure to literature by establishing private libraries that were often more diverse than that of the college."
In 1832 the society's library is recorded as holding 771 books, mostly literature (384 volumes), compared to the college's 1,290 titles which were largely theological texts. An 1876 survey by the U.S. Bureau of Education reported that Rutgers held 6,814 volumes in its college library and 3,800 in libraries of the Peithessophian Society and Philoclean Society.Demarest, William Henry Steele (Rev.). "History of the Library" in ''Journal of the Rutgers University Library, Volume 1'', No. 1 (1937) 1-.Perrone, Fernanda "Voorhees Hall: Rutgers' First Modern Library" in ''Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries'', Volume 61 (2005), 1-27.
The society first met in
Old Queens
Old Queens is the oldest extant building at Rutgers University and is the symbolic heart of the university's campus in New Brunswick in Middlesex County, New Jersey in the United States. Rutgers, the eighth-oldest college in the United States, w ...
, the oldest building on campus, but later moved to
Alexander Johnston Hall
Alexander Johnston Hall is a historic building located on the corner of Somerset Street and College Avenue, New Brunswick, New Jersey, New Brunswick in Middlesex County, New Jersey, Middlesex County, New Jersey and is the second oldest building on ...
, and later in 1848 to Van Nest Hall (built 1845) which it shared with Philoclean. On July 20, 1830, former
U.S. Attorney General
The United States attorney general is the head of the United States Department of Justice and serves as the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government. The attorney general acts as the principal legal advisor to the president of the ...
William Wirt delivered an address before Peithessophian and its rival Philoclean which foreshadowed the coming
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. The address was popular in the nineteenth century and published also in France and Germany.
Membership declined after the Civil War and the latter half of the nineteenth century and the society ceased to meet in 1897. It was revived in the 1920s but then once again died out amidst the social turbulence associated with the Depression and World War II. In the late 1990s, having rediscovered the central role played by Peithessophian and Philoclean in the intellectual life of the college for more than three-quarters of a century, a small group of students began spontaneously to meet informally for regular debate and discussion. In 2008, Peithessophian would be formally reinstituted, with a membership of ten members and a revival of the original 19th-century induction ceremony held each May in Kirkpatrick Chapel. Among its induction speakers have been Yan Lipovetsky, first president of the reinstituted Society, and Professor William C. Dowling, its faculty advisor.Dowling, William C Peithessophian Society . Retrieved December 27, 2013. Among the current objectives of the Peithessophian board of officers is a permanent allotment of college space, equivalent to its Van Nest library and meeting rooms in the nineteenth century, to the Society.
Rutgers University student organizations
Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College and was affi ...