Talk:Westminster School (Connecticut)

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Steph Riefe (talk · contribs) has been paid by unknown.

2006 SAT

The 2006 SAT was on a scale of 2400, the listing of the school average as 1220 is refering to the SAT that was administered for the last time in January 2005. The national average of all high school seniors is for the current SAT is 1518, so I doubt that the westminster population is that far behind. I have now found that the statistic of 1220 is from the website boardingschoolreview.com and I dont belive is for the most recent year. Whomever placed a 2006 in parenthesis should change that, it is incorrect. Jamesym 07:37, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously

Whoever wrote this needs to understand that just because they're admissions officers working for Westminster, they cannot copy their brochure to wikipedia and expect it to fly Tim Wochomurka 17:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree. A ground-up rewrite seems necessary. But I think this may have originally been bot-generated and edited my someone who cared enough to provide Westminster with a wiki entry but not enough to provide it with a good and independent one -- not the school's Admissions department. I'm an alumna and familiar with the school's culture, and I think you're giving its Admissions office far too much credit for sophistication. :) --7Kim 19:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, major changes.

Yes, I took a chainsaw to this article, and I will now explain and justify my decision to do so. Nearly all of my edits here were motivated by a desire to eliminate the bases for the Noncompliant and Advertising flags. (Disclosure: I am a Westminster School alumna, class of 1987.)

First, I removed the section "Mission and Core Values" in toto. While it might be appropriate, in certain contexts, to quote these in an encyclopedic article, it is flatly inappropriate to state them there. That belongs on the School's official website; since the Wikipedia article links directly to that website, stating mission and core values here would be unnecessary even if it were appropriate.

Second, I removed the one-sentence paragraph: Mr. Cushing’s formula for education was endorsed by many in the emerging influential American families, who sent their sons to Westminster, including John Hay, Advisor to Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State to Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt for the reason that it has no relevance in an encyclopedic article. Attempting to cast the doubly and triply-reflected glory of Victorian-era U.S. presidents on an institution in the present day is not even in spyglass range of NPOV behaviour, and smacks of advertising.

Third, I edited

Williams Hill, the site of the school, offered more than 230 acres, with commanding views of the Farmington River. The Simsbury location also provided train service for students to New York and Boston, a boon to families from those areas.

to

Williams Hill, the site of the school, was chosen for its more than 230 acres, its view of the Farmington River, and availability of train service to New York and Boston.

in order to bring the tone closer to NPOV and tighten up choppy and awkward sentences.

Fourth, regarding the paragraph

Mr. Cushing remained as headmaster until his death in 1921. Along with his educational philosophy, he also left the school its inspiring motto. The Cushing family coat of arms bears the Latin motto Virtute et Numine (“by human righteousness and Divine grace”) which translated literally as “Grit and Grace,”

I made the following changes:

Removed the word "inspiring" as needlessly POV;
Removed the commentary about the Cushing family coat of arms as irrelevant;
corrected the Latin translation -- virtute translates literally as "by virtue", not as "by righteousness" or especially "by grit"; and the "human" and "divine" specifiers are glosses that do not exist in the original Latin.

Fifth, I removed the subsection Career and Service (... Westminster graduates have gone on to achieve eminent positions in industry, the military, government, social services, the arts, and athletics, thanks to the outstanding teachers and headmasters who followed in the tradition of William Cushing’s teaching ideals of “performing daily tasks cheerfully, fostering an ambition to learn lessons well, playing fair in sports, being clean in thought and word, and cleaving to that which is good.”) as blatant advertising copy. Again, this belongs on the school's website, not its Wikipedia entry. And again, it may be appropriate to quote it here, but it is not appropriate to state it here.

Sixth, I removed Headmaster Cole's commentary on the Edge bequest for a reason that should now be familiar to you, Gentle Reader: it belongs on the school's website, not its Wikipedia entry. Wikipedia is not Headmaster Cole's podium.

Finally, I added a (hopefully) NPOV introductory paragraph.

A lot has been sliced out of this article, but I really do believe that it all needed to go. This is not an end; it is a beginning. There is a lot more that can be said abut Westminster School that is to its credit and can be said in NPOV (for example, Centennial Theatre and its artistic services to the community, the Gothic chapel and ice rink, notable alumni/ae, and the School's efforts to provide educational access to students traditionally shut out of college-preparatory education), but that can and will be addressed over time, now that the most obvious non-encyclopedic content has been excised.

I don't mind if that material is added by Westminster School officials, faculty, alumni/ae, or students -- in fact I invite and urge people intimately connected with the school to add that material. Who else knows the school and its history best? But it must be presented in NPOV, with an encyclopedic distance from the subject. School employees or faculty are urged, if they have not already done so, to become familiar with Wikipedia guidelines.

Do others now feel that the Advertising and/or Noncompliant flags can be removed? If not, what more needs to be done to justify removing them?

--7Kim 21:25, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Hi, any photos of the school that we could share here available? -- Cheers Horst-schlaemma (talk) 15:33, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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Westminster School (Connecticut) edit warring

There are several IP editors who clearly have some stake in this school in that keep re-adding content that is either unattributed or copyrighted. I purged all of the unattributed data because it had been up with tags for years. There's also the issue that everything on [1] is copyrighted and cannot be plagiarized here. Please feel free to discuss this here, but continued editing of this article in this fashion will lead to the article getting locked. Thank you, Markvs88 (talk) 01:20, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:27, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Article Content

This article really does not do Westminster justice.

Unnecessarily, pre existing information was cut out (such as the names of the 34 other buildings on campus).

There is a lack of actual information about the school and we should focus on adding onto the scope of the article before hammering it with thousand byte deletions.

Compared to the other peer school articles, this one is held to an impossibly high standard, and it really is unfair.

Expulsion of current and former information is not the way to go for this article - that will kill it.

It needs nourishment and love.

Please try to fix, not just rid of.

Bobbernaut123 (talk) 19:50, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Bobbernaut123. Simply put, what was added back in was copy and pasted from a copyrighted website and therefore was in violation of wp:copyvio. That said, it would be illegal for it to remain. As for an "impossibly high standard", I think you're making more out of this than you should. The standard is that a) the information has a source and b) the text isn't copy and pasted. As for other schools, I think if you search around that you will find all the other various Connecticut schools (yes, including those in the Founder's League) are held to the same standard, and you can likewise find massive deletions in many of them, too. I'm all for having you (and anyone else!) improve the article, but it must be done properly. Markvs88 (talk) 21:03, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 14 June 2020

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In the athletics section please add the following.

Football was part of Westminster's Athletic department until 2017. The Football program was canceled after a 0-8 2017 season and was replaced with Water Polo in the 2018. Igbroadbent (talk) 19:46, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:52, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]