William Frederick Slocum, Jr. (born Grafton, Massachusetts, 29 July 1851; died 1934) was an American educator. In 1917 he was forced to retire as President of Colorado College after an investigation confirmed the accusations of multiple women that he had sexually harassed and sexually assaulted them.
Biography
He was the son of William F. Slocum, a Boston lawyer, and Margaret Tinker. He graduated from Amherst College in 1874. In 1874 and 1875, he was a newspaper correspondent in England and Germany. By 1876, he was at Andover Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1878. He held Congregational pastorates at Amesbury, Massachusetts (1878–83), where in 1880 he married Mary Goodale Montgomery, and in Baltimore, Maryland (1883–88). He then became president of Colorado College.
In 1917 he was forced to retire after an investigation confirmed the accusations of multiple women that he had sexually harassed and sexually assaulted them.
After these events, Slocum moved to Newton Center, Massachusetts. He lectured and wrote on educational and sociological subjects.
Early life
William Frederick Slocum grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts, where his family went to the Congregational Church. He attended Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His years at Amherst were important, because he spent much of his professional life striving to make Colorado College a liberal arts college in the mode of Amherst College. He prepared for the ministry at Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts, and became the pastor of the Congregational Church in Amesbury, Massachusetts, a classic New England mill town. Along with his new wife, Mary Goodale Montgomery, Slocum ministered to the social and economic needs as well as the religious needs of his Amesbury parishioners.
In 1883 William F. Slocum became pastor of the First Congregational Church in Baltimore, Maryland. He became acquainted with Daniel Coit Gilman, the famous president of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Slocum joined with Gilman and other civic leaders in organizing the Associated Charities of Baltimore.
While in Baltimore, Slocum received a visit from Professor George N. Marden of Colorado College, who was on a fund-raising trip on the East Coast. Marden told Slocum of Colorado College in far-off Colorado Springs, Colorado, and of its desperate need for a new president. William Slocum accepted the job, and he and Mary Slocum went west to see if they could save the foundering institution. "At the age of 37 he cast his lot with [Colorado] College, and from that time forth, for almost a third of a century, the story of William Frederick Slocum and the story of Colorado College are one story."
At Colorado College
When he arrived in the fall of 1888, William Slocum found Colorado College in dire straits. There was only one building - Cutler Hall - and fewer than 50 students. There were only four faculty members, three men and one woman.
Slocum began his presidential tenure by reforming the calendar. Three unequal terms were replaced with the standard two-semester calendar found at most colleges and universities. Slocum strongly emphasized the religious side of education, giving Friday morning chapel sermons called "Ethicals." He built a central heating plant to keep students warm in the residence halls. He hired Colorado College's first administrator, Ruth Loomis, to be the Dean of Women. A graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, Dean Loomis was said to "bring to a small western college the sophistication, gentility, and sense of proper behavior typified by an eastern college for women."
As the student body grew in size under Slocum's leadership, he began hiring additional faculty. "The faculty that President Slocum did succeed in bringing to Colorado College gave to the institution a name among the best colleges and universities in the land."
President Slocum also participated actively in community life in Colorado Springs. When gold miners in the nearby community of Cripple Creek went on strike for an eight-hour day, Slocum courageously walked through the picket lines in an effort to get the striking miners to peacefully settle their differences with the mine owners. The strike was settled, and the miners got both their goals - an eight-hour day and a $3 daily wage. Later, when a major fire roared through Cripple Creek, Slocum mobilized the students of Colorado College to canvas nearby residential areas for clothing, food, and firewood to help the burned out gold miners and their families.