Sometimes a story is just so good that it no longer matters whether it's true or not. Generally, I don't think veracity should stand in the way of a story of real quality, but once people start treating these entertaining tales as factual explanations, we have a problem on our hands. Here at Hopkins, there are a number of commonplace stories I hear constantly that just aren't true. Let's go over a few.
Did Hopkins ever have a law school? At some point in your life you will probably meet a person who will swear to you that they know someone who got a law degree from Hopkins. They did not. Hopkins has never given out JDs and has never taken law students.
The basis of this myth probably lies in the fact that Hopkins once had an institute for the study of law from a social sciences perspective. However, the law institute was for research only; it did not teach and it did not grant degrees of any kind. It was staffed by social scientists, not lawyers. Also, the institute opened right around the time the Great Depression began, and when funding for higher education more or less dried up in 1934, it had to be closed. Therefore, unless the person in question is really old, they probably were not involved with it.
Has Hopkins always had undergraduates? You may have heard that undergraduates were not originally part of Hopkins and were added only as an afterthought. This is only somewhat true. Johns Hopkins left in his will money for the establishment of a university and a hospital, and this was read as referring primarily to graduate education.
However, well before the university actually opened, it became clear that the local community had no intention of supporting the University if it wasn't going to teach undergraduates, who were then added to the plan. Thus, when the school opened it did so with an undergrad curriculum.
Indeed, twice during the 20th century, University presidents tried to cut back on undergraduate education by eliminating the first two years and only accepting junior and senior transfer students. However, these plans were total failures and the university always went back to a full program for undergraduate education.
Did Hopkins lose its endowment? Almost. It is true that the original Hopkins endowment was largely invested in Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co. stock, and the University's annual income came mostly from dividends on this investment. However, in the late 19th century things started to go badly for B&O and the company ceased paying dividends to shareholders.
This did lead to a crisis and several frantic fundraising campaigns by the University, as a result of which the school was saved. Without a doubt, this hurt the school's financial position for a long time, but even now our endowment is above $2.5 billion. Granted, Harvard has an endowment roughly 10 times as large, but this still makes ours one of the larger endowments in the country, surpassing those of schools like Brown and New York University.
Why are there no sorority houses? You've probably heard that here are no sorority houses at Hopkins because of some obscure Baltimore or Maryland law that forbids more than six women living in the same house. Supposedly, such an arrangement constitutes a brothel. No. No such law exists. Anywhere. None.
This same story is told at many colleges around the country, and no one has ever found such a law in existence. Information disproving this one has even been posted to the University's Wikipedia entry, and the rumor still persists.
In 1998, Tulane students, who also heard such a rumor, actually searched for the law and came up empty. In 2003, the editors of http://www.snopes.com looked nationally and failed to find any such law. Zoning laws that limit the number of unrelated people living in a single-family dwelling do exist in many places, but they do not, and cannot, discriminate on the basis of gender, and they have nothing to do with brothels. If boys can do it, girls can too.
Students at Hopkins enjoy interesting bits of knowledge and we love to pass them on. Usually, this is a good thing, but let's have no more of these fallacious stories, especially when a few minutes on the Internet is all it takes to disprove most of them. It just looks bad.
Vijay Phulwani is a senior political science and ancient law major from Johnstown, Pa.
