the tree was actually taller than the college (itself a five- and six-story building in different places), the tree posed a real danger to the college structure and students. The college was eventually fully renovated over the 2008-09 school-year. Namesakes and Calhoun controversy John C. Calhoun John C. Calhoun grew up on a plantation in South Carolina. He entered Yale College in November 1802 and lived in Union Hall, a dorm on Yale's Old Campus. His professors included Benjamin Silliman, and Yale Presidents Jeremiah Day and Timothy Dwight. Calhoun was socially ostracized at Yale and wrote to his cousin that he found “a considerable prejudice here against both the southern states and students.” He did well academically, was selected as a member of the Linonia literary society, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1804. He was selected to give his commencement address, but was prevented from doing so by illness. Calhoun remained in Connecticut for several years to obtain a law degree from Litchfield Law School, then returned to South Carolina. After his student years, Calhoun never again had significant involvement in Yale and was never a benefactor. Calhoun's plantation estate later became the campus of Clemson University. Elected to the United States Congress in 1810, he made his name as a War Hawk before the War of 1812, then became Secretary of War under President James Monroe. He was elected Vice President in 1825 and served two terms before resigning to fight for South Carolina's nullification of federal tariffs as a Senator. During his political career, Calhoun gained a reputation as a great rhetorician and intellectual. In addition to his advocacy of states' rights, Calhoun was a proponent of slaveholder rights and believed that slavery was justified by white supremacy. Inheriting his father's farm, Calhoun remained a slaveholder his entire life and profited from the cotton trade. Naming of Calhoun College Because of his political, military, and intellectual achievements, Calhoun was venerated as an illustrious Yale alumnus beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. He was the only Yale graduate to be elected to a federal executive office in the school's first two centuries, until the election of U.S. President William Howard Taft in 1909. A 1914 biography of Calhoun by Yale Secretary Anson Phelps Stokes details his accomplishments as an "eminent Yale man" without once mentioning his slaveholdings or pro-slavery leadership. Already holding some of Calhoun's papers, Yale offered its