University School

For other uses, see University School (disambiguation).

University School
File:USseal.jpg
Location
Shaker Heights and Hunting Valley , OH USA
Information
Type	Private
Motto	Responsibility, Loyalty and Consideration
Religious affiliation(s)	none
Established	1890
Headmaster	Stephen S. Murray
Faculty	64 upper
Enrollment	807 total 405 upper 402 lower
Average class size	17 students
Student to teacher ratio	6:1
Campus	Suburban, 297 acres upper: 264 acres lower: 33 acres
Color(s)	Maroon and Black
Athletics	12 varsity sports
Mascot	Prescot the Prepper
Website	www.us.edu

University School is a private all-boys, day school located near the city of Cleveland, Ohio. This school has two campuses, the Lower School located in Shaker Heights, which serves grades K through 8, and the Upper School in Hunting Valley, for grades 9 through 12. The school's historic athletic and academic rivals are Hawken School, Western Reserve Academy, Shaker Heights Public School and Gilmour Academy in nearby Gates Mills, Ohio, and its sister schools are Hathaway Brown School and Laurel School. The school is commonly referred to as US, and its main focus is as a preparatory academy; it prides itself on its excellant college matriculation percentage. University school is a member of the Cleveland Council of Independent Schools.

History & Headmasters

The school was established in 1890 by Headmaster Newton Anderson, (1890–1900), who deplored the practice of sending boys away from home for the purely classical education of an Eastern boarding school. He convinced 70 public-spirited Clevelanders to pledge $100,000 for his concept of a day school that would blend traditional education with a training in the manual arts and a rugged athletic program to produce well-rounded and practical leaders for industry and commerce. The School's first building was erected on 10 acres at the corner of Hough Avenue and East 71st Street.Headmaster George D. Pettee (1900–1908) — notable for leading the entire student body to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo — first suggested the idea of moving the School to what later became the eastern suburbs of Cleveland. The school mascot is Prescot the Prepper.

Publications

US publishes several publications. Most notable is the monthly school newspaper, The US News, which has been published for over a century and is actually older than the more well-known U.S. News and World Report.

Another popular publication is the annual Record, the school's literary publication. Students may contribute their best work (done in or outside of school) in poetry, short stories, photography, and more recently, drawing. Faculty members frequently host a Writing Forum, where students can meet after school (typically over pizza) to work on their writing and discuss each other's work.

The Upper School's yearbook, The Mabian, has been published every year since 1919, and is nearly entirely student run. The name "Mabian" comes from the school colors, maroon and black. The Tower is the Lower School's counterpart.

Disciplinary Policies

US's Upper School has a demerit based system for disciplinary action: any faculty member may give a student one or more demerits for misbehavior. After a student has accrued five demerits, he receives a detention. The number of demerits a student has continues to accumulate, and twenty demerits is grounds for a suspension. After each semester is over, however, students are cleared of any outstanding demerits. Being late to school is customarily one demerit, and skipping a class is five. For conduct deemed especially unacceptable, teachers may issue immediate detentions.

For severe matters, the school will deliberate punishments with the Student Disciplinary Committee. The S.D.C. is a board of faculty members and two responsible students, as well as a senior head, from each grade who speak to the offending student and consider what disciplinary action should be taken. Occasionally this will result in expulsion or suspension.

In the Lower School, there is a merit and reminder system that begins in third grade. Merits are rewarded to a boy who has done something above and beyond what is expected of him; reminders are equivalent to demerits, and boys who earn three or more reminders in a week must serve a detention the day that they receive the third reminder. However, each boy receives a "clean slate" at the start of a new week. Marks are recorded (as "M"s and "R"s) in students' assignment notebooks, and boys with exceptional numbers of merits are rewarded annually.

However, because the school is unable to keep its students well behaved (e.g. in classes, in the library and in the computer lab), it has fallen to Wikipedia to block the US IP address from editing pages. Around the same time of this suspension of editing privileges, the latest in a series of suspensions had taken place. It can, and has, been said by many that the school is, in fact, the epicenter of armageddon. This fact is still up for debate in the hallowed halls of Congress.

House System

In the 1990s, University School began observing a House System — a tradition historically associated with boarding schools. Each student belongs to a House that integrates students from kindergarten through grade twelve. At the Upper School, Houses are composed of roughly 40 students with even numbers of freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors. In the Lower School, boys are assigned buddies with whom they participate in many activities. Faculty belong to Houses as well, and upcoming freshman students are assigned an individual faculty sponsor who belongs to the same House.

Houses are organized to encourage greater interaction between students, especially students in different grades. As such, the system is a large part of student life: House meetings occur weekly at the Upper School, in which faculty and students may plan activities and community service projects such as the annual Thanksgiving food drive. Each House elects a prefect from the senior class who acts as the House's leader. Upper School freshman, sophomores, and juniors are required to sit with members of their House during lunch as well, but seniors may eat separately in the cafeteria, or off-campus.

House rivalry is not commonplace, however both the Upper and Lower schools do observe a traditional school sports day called Founder's Day, in which students have an inter-house sporting competition with the aim of winning the House Cup. Founder's Day often takes place in the early fall, and activities include Ultimate, tug of war and soccer.

Houses are typically named after former Headmasters or notable alumni, and each House has a color to represent it. The numbers, names and colors of Houses over the years have changed, but the current House names are Anderson (maroon), Cruikshank (white), Goodwillie (dark blue), Hawley (purple), McCarraher (orange), McKinley (light blue), Peters (red), Pottee (black), Pickands (green), and Sanders (yellow). Hawley House was formerly Brown House until Dr. Richard Hawley retired in 2005.

Diversity Day

University School, bored with its politically correct House System, has developed a new way to divide the student body - by race. Once annually these races meet seperated from each other (jokingly called "Diversity Day") to discuss pressing racial issues, like the seperation of the races, racial polarization or the institutionalism of racism. These are pressing issues that must be discussed.

Athletics

The school's athletic teams are known as the Poopers. US fields varsity teams in twelve sports, four per athletic season: football, soccer, cross country and golf in the fall, ice hockey, wrestling, swimming, and basketball in the winter, and in the spring, lacrosse, tennis, track and field, and baseball. The varsity football team wish they were one of the top five most successful football programs in Northeast Ohio, while the varsity hockey and lacrosse teams are almost never state champion caliber. Varsity wrestling produces many state, sometimes national caliber wrestlers as well. In 2003, the 81,000 square-foot William S. Kilroy (Class of 1943) Field House was added to the Hunting Valley campus. The multi-purpose indoor practice facility features two basketball courts, three squash courts, a 200-meter cantilevered indoor track and practice areas for track events.

The complex also includes a fitness center equipped with the latest in weight training and aerobic equipment. In addition, the Field House houses wrestling rooms, a gymnasium and an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool with a separate diving well. Outdoor sports facilities include a football stadium, an all-weather track, four soccer and other practice fields, a football field, two baseball diamonds, and seven all-weather tennis courts. These outdoor facilities are spread over the 221 acre Hunting Valley campus.

Until a rape scandal in 1997, the unofficial mascot was The Beaver who was rumored to live in Lake Kilroy on the campus of the Upper School. Today their mascot is Prescott the Prepper. Legend has it that there was no mascot for a very long time (actually about two years), and when the Preppers were fed up with watching other teams' spirits get boosted because of theirs, they went to the local Bob's Big Boy and stole the Big Boy costume. They dressed him up in a suit and Prescott was born. A more credible story is that Prescott began as a self-deprecating joke, as students were tired for being teased about their teams being named "The Preppers". There may be some truth to the story that the head was stolen, though most likely as a rental costume that was never returned. Prescott often stars in student-made videos which promote attendance at athletic events. These videos were usually shown in the morning assembly. Over the summer of 2006 Prescott was stolen and remained absent for the for the first part of the 06-07 school year. Prescott was found at the bottom of the lost-and-found the morning of the final school day before Thanksgiving Break, and was re-instated at assembly later that morning. His return was met with much applause. The Head of the Upper School, Michael Obel-Omia introduced him as, "someone we have to be thankful for".

Ohio High School Athletic Association State Championships

• Boys Golf: 1990, 2003, 2006, 2007
• Hockey: 2003

Other State Championships

• Tennis: 1990, 1992, 1993, 1996, 2002, 2005 **
• Lacrosse: 1999 **

** (Not OHSAA sanctioned)

Notable alumni

• Jim Backus, TV's Mr. Magoo and Thurston Howell, III
• Townsend Coleman, Most notably the voice of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Michelangelo
• Jason Garrett, current Dallas Cowboys Offensive Coordinator, former NFL QB for the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Miami Dolphins and 2-time super bowl champ. Won the 1988 Asa S. Bushnell Cup, as Ivy League POY. 3rd All-Time Leader in Passing yards for Princeton.
• John Garrett Former NFL wide receiver where he played for the Cincinnati Bengals. Now is the Tight Ends coach for the Dallas Cowboys.
• Judd Garrett, Princeton running back and 2nd all-time leading rusher at Princeton, current tight ends coach for the Rams. The 1989 Asa S. Bushnell Cup winner, as Ivy League POY. Was the last football player from Princeton to be drafted, when in 1990 the Philadelphia Eagles selected him in the 12th round.
• Tom Griswold, co-host of the nationally syndicated Bob and Tom morning radio show
• Darren Katz, Resident Director of Broadway show The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
• Henry Meyer III, President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of KeyCorp
• Clark T. Randt, Jr., United States Ambassador to the People's Republic of China
• Paul Rice , #5, starting cornerback for the Yale University football team.
• Chris Rose, television personality and one of the hosts of The Best Damn Sports Show Period on Fox Sports Net
• Michael Ruhlman, author of 11 books including Boys Themselves (1996), a profile of the school and its headmaster
• Kitao Sakurai, one of the stygian triplets from Dogma
• Chuck Seelbach, former Detroit Tigers pitcher and current history teacher at University School
• Michael Seelbach, Broadway theatre actor
• Jeff Terrell, NFL Quarterback who was cut by the Kansas City Chiefs, former starting quarterback and captain for the Princeton University football team.
• Bob Harris, Jeopardy! champion, writer and comedian.

External links

• Official website
• Upper School Intranet
• Upper School
  • Street Map
  • Satellite Image
• Lower School
  • Street Map
  • Satellite Image