Icky Imperialist Ivy (League)

I spent more of today than I should have trying to uproot some very invasive and very firmly established ivy in my front yard. My to do list keeps getting longer, and the garden is an addicting escape.  The plants always instill in me this feeling of urgency, a life or death-type thing that MUST BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY.  On close examination, I realize that some plant is trying to take out another plant.  I will cut back some branches and notice that there is another plant, shivering and gasping, hidden within the branches of the first.  Or an insidious vine will seem just moments away from dominion over some massive tree.  So I convince myself that these lawless plants must be taken care of STAT.

The absolute worst, I have noticed, is the ivy.  Once planted, I believe, as a pleasant ground cover some 50-odd years ago, the ivy has now grown to epic proportions.  It climbed 2 dogwood trees and hung so prolifically from its branches that most people thought it was part of the tree.  It's berries looked lush and radiant in the sky!  It's vine had thickened and hardened into a bullying strong arm, snaking its way up the tree.  The dogwood tries to stretch its long arms out, just to grab at a few bits of sunshine, to bloom just a few flowers.
 
I so loved the tree's ardent attempt at survival, that I took to that ivy with a hedge clipper big enough to clip a bike lock and I had at it. And I'll tell you, I fucked that ivy up.  Ivy is now toast.

But while out there clipping, I started thinking about "Ivy League" schools.  I just finished my PhD and am about to embark-- I hope-- on some kind of academic career.  So what kind of school I would like to teach at rattles about in my brain when my thoughts are quiet enough for me to survey my inner landscape.  It is really quite an interesting analogy, in some ways, I think, that they have chosen to see themselves as ivy.   Ivy is self-interested and self-important, dominant, subversively powerful, ever climbing to the top, unapologetically limiting the possibilities of those trying to grow around it.

So, where did this term come from?  Let's look it up on Wikipedia, that awesome, reputable source!

Origin of the name

The first usage of Ivy in reference to a group of colleges is from sportswriter Stanley Woodward (1895–1965).

“	A proportion of our eastern ivy colleges are meeting little fellows another Saturday before plunging into the strife and the turmoil.	”
—Stanley Woodward, New York Tribune, October 14, 1933, describing the football season

According to book Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1988), author William Morris writes that Stanley Woodward actually took the term from fellow New York Tribune sportswriter Caswell Adams. Morris writes that during the 1930s, the Fordham University football team was running roughshod over all its opponents. One day in the sports room at the Tribune, the merits of Fordham's football team were being compared to those of Princeton and Columbia. Adams remarked disparagingly of the latter two, saying they were "only Ivy League." Woodward, the sports editor of the Tribune, picked up the term and printed the next day.

Note though that in the above quote Woodward used the term ivy college, not ivy league as Adams is said to have used, so there is a discrepancy in this theory, although it seems certain the term ivy college and shortly later Ivy League acquired its name from the sports world.

The first known instance of the term Ivy League being used appeared in The Christian Science Monitor on February 7, 1935. Several sportswriters and other journalists used the term shortly later to refer to the older colleges, those along the northeastern seaboard of the United States, chiefly the nine institutions with origins dating from the colonial era, together with the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Naval Academy, and a few others. These schools were known for their long-standing traditions in intercollegiate athletics, often being the first schools to participate in such activities. However, at this time, none of these institutions would make efforts to form an athletic league.

Ivy covering West College, Princeton University

 

The Ivy League universities are also called the "Ancient Eight" or simply the Ivies.

A common folk etymology attributes the name to the Roman numerals for four (IV), asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins helped to perpetuate this belief. The supposed "IV League" was formed over a century ago and consisted of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a 4th school that varies depending on who is telling the story.However, it is clear that Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia met on November 23, 1876 at the so-called Massasoit Convention to decide on uniform rules for the emerging game of football, which rapidly spread.

Interesting.... so the term "ivy league" hasn't been around since forever?  I imagined it to be as old as those institutions, as old as the institutions those institutions uphold!

I say this somewhat tongue in cheek, for I know that while these schools do represent something I don't much appreciate in our American culture-- white patiarchal hegemony (look it up if you need to) -- they are actually places where really interesting and exciting research and academic work is going on.  For instance, I have a girl crush on Ellen Langer of Harvard.  She's my Angelina Jolie, a bold bad-ass I find brilliant.  But I can't get past the ways in which ivy league schools legitimate and perpetuate the social, economic, and political dominance of a select and almost impenetrable elite.

I know that my next move career wise will possibly set the tone for the entire trajectory of my career.   And I want to aim high.  But part of me can't imagine ever being chosen to teach at an ivy league school.  As you get to know me, dear reader, you will see that one of the limiting beliefs I am fighting (what's a limiting belief?  See my post called LIMITING BELIEFS!) is that I am "weird," "deviant," that "I don't belong," I'm "not a member."  I confront this belief quite often, whether in social circles or academically.  I have in many ways convinced myself that I don't fit in...  But we'll talk about that later.  Anywho, all this to say that part of me feels this would be impossible, so why even try?  And would I want to teach at an ivy anyway?

I look up at the tree.  Its truck is covered in thick, serpentine swirls of ivy-- grown to resemble a tree itself now, brown and hard.  Most of the branches closest to the trunk are dripping with ivy, its pretty, preppy, peppy green leaves, its bunches of purple black berries.  But two or three branches still reach for the sunlight, their white flowers not just beautiful, but also hardworking.

I am more dogwood than ivy, I decide.

My goal, my hope, my intention, dear reader, is to chat with you as I create a garden in my home and in my life.  I want to mindfully choose what I want in these gardens-- things that will sustain me and things that will add beauty, color, and sweetness to my life.  I know that it won't be easy, but I am not scared of hard work.  I hope that sharing my thoughts will help illuminate my path.