Remembering the First College Protest

By USABR.

Profile America — Sunday, January 29th. Protests by college students in America have a long pedigree, going back 251 years. The first such action occurred in 1766, when there were just seven colleges in Colonial America.  The students at Harvard—the first college– were unhappy with on-campus dining, specifically, the rancid butter. The so-called Butter Rebellion began with the cry “Behold, our butter stinketh!”  About half the student body supported the complaint, and they took to dining in nearby taverns. The administration soon yielded and replaced the offending spread. In America today, there are over 4,700 degree-granting institutions; 3,000 of them are four-year universities.  About 19 million students are enrolled in those colleges, which presumably stock acceptable butter. Profile America is in its 20th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources: Kane’s Famous First Facts, 3007
Colonial colleges/accessed 11/7/2016:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Colonial_Colleges#The_nine_Colonial_Colleges
Butter rebellion/accessed 11/7/2016: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/10/20/city-protests-history/
Degree-granting colleges/accessed 11/7/2016:  https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84
College enrollment/Current Population Survey  t. 1 All Races: http://www.census.gov/hhes/school/data/cps/2015/tables.html

Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotion of the U.S. Census Bureau. Statistics and accounts drawn from cited non-Census sources are employed for illustrative or narrative purposes, and are not attested to by the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for “Audio” in the “Library” pull-down menu).

SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau