As the college approaches its 100th anniversary,
Reed’s alumni association has begun documenting the life of the college through an
extensive oral history project. Volunteers plan to interview 250 selected alumni, faculty,
staff members, and friends of Reed over a ten-year period, with an initial focus on those
affiliated with the college before 1960. Oral historians are documenting the on-campus
raspberry farm, the honor principle, elaborate Gilbert and Sullivan productions, the antics
of the Doyle Owl, the humanities requirement, Canyon Day activities, long commutes by day-dodgers,
dormitory life, and inspiring teachers and dedicated students. Reed plans to share excerpts
from these interviews on these pages of the magazine.
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George Joseph ’51* entered Reed as a
transfer student and majored in history. He went on to earn a J.D. at the University of Chicago
Law School in 1955 and an
LL.M. at New York University
Law School in 1959. After clerking for Oregon Supreme Court Justice Hon. George Rossman, he taught
in the law schools at Ohio Northwestern University, Dickinson, New York University, and the University
of Arkansas; he was a part-time professor at the Northwestern College of Law (Lewis & Clark
College). From 1963 to 1966 he was a deputy district attorney for Multnomah County, then worked
in private practice until 1975, when he was appointed Multnomah County counsel. In 1977 Oregon
governor Bob Straub appointed him to the Oregon Court of Appeals, where he was named chief judge
in 1981. He retired from the court in 1992. Joseph was honored for his outstanding legal career
by awards of merit from the Oregon State and Multnomah Bar Associations. He received Reed’s
Foster-Scholz Club distinguished service award in 2001. This interview was conducted by Becky
Chiao ’85 in August 2001; George Joseph died June 23, 2003, of respiratory failure due
to complications from polio. Excerpts from his interview follow.
Reedspeak: a unique characteristic As
a prospective student George Joseph remembers being interviewed by Dorothy Johansen ’33, “a
one-woman admission committee,” and learned that he was in charge of his own success. “I
thought then (and I think now): perfect, absolutely perfect. This is the place for me.” He
found that faculty and students at Reed differed remarkably from those he had encountered in
other academic institutions. At Reed one learned for the sake of learning—not to achieve
success as a test-taker or to create a smooth career path after college. Learning was characterized
by discussions that moved from the classroom to the coffee shop and even to the “coffee
shop extension,” the bookstore. “Talk was what we did at Reed. We talked at lunch,
we talked at breakfast, we talked at dinner, we talked in the evening. We had a lot of reading
to do. But we talked very little about trivia or what we would have thought of as trivia. We
talked about important things; we had important fish to fry.”
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