Ormond College, Melbourne

Ormond College is the largest of the residential colleges of the University of Melbourne located in the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is home to around 350 undergraduates, 90 graduates and 35 professorial and academic residents.

History

Beginnings (1853)

The University of Melbourne was established by an act of the Parliament of Victoria in 1853. were set aside for residential colleges, of which each were allotted to the Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic denominations. The Presbyterian allotment became Ormond College.

At the end of August 1877, Alexander Morrison, headmaster of Scotch College and convener of the Presbyterian Church assembly's committee to "watch over the land", received a letter from the director of the Victorian Education Department, proposing that if the church did not mean to take the land for a college, that it be sold and the proceeds divided, half to the church and half to the state for university purposes. This spurred Morrison into action. A subscription list was opened, with a target of £10,000; on this list Francis Ormond's name appears against a donation of £3,000. The foundation stone of the college (now lost) was laid by the governor of Victoria, George Phipps, 2nd Marquess of Normanby, on 15 November 1879. The formal opening of the college took place on 18 March 1881. At this ceremony it was announced that Francis Ormond had offered to bear the whole cost of the remainder of the planned buildings.

thumb|Allen House

In honour of the silver jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, Francis Ormond funded the building of the Victoria Wing which came into use in 1889. In 1893 the dining hall, kitchens, staff quarters and the original master's residence (Allen House) were opened. The neo-Gothic dining hall is reminiscent of an Oxbridge building and is often compared to Hogwarts from J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter. A Hogwarts-themed episode of MasterChef was filmed there in 2013. John Dickson Wyselaskie was a Western District squatter, who also gave generously to the Presbyterian Ladies' College. The building contained a lecture hall and two residences for theological professors and was adapted and divided in 1968 so as to provide for four residences. On 6 July 1887, the portrait of Francis Ormond, which now hangs above the college's dining hall door, was unveiled by Sir James McBain.

In honour of the silver jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, Francis Ormond funded the building of the Victoria Wing which came into use in 1889. In 1893 the dining hall, kitchens, staff quarters and the original lodge (Allen House) were opened. On either side of the end window of the hall are effigies representing Francis and Mary Ormond.

Post WWII expansion (1950s)

Ormond College from The Law Building|thumb

View into main courtyard|thumb

Creeper-covered exterior of Ormond College|thumb

View from across university cricket oval|thumb

The period after World War II saw great demands for accommodation; for the first time the college passed 150 students. Following an appeal for funds in 1949, a series of improvements were made to Main Building. The kitchens were extensively modernised and general maintenance was brought up to date after the lag resulting from the Depression of the 1930s and the shortages of men and material during and after the War. In 1955, a squash court was built to commemorate the Ormond men who died in the Second World War. A new Master's residence was designed by the prominent architects Grounds, Romberg and Boyd and was completed in 1958. At the same time, a permanent residence was provided for the Vice-Master by the conversion of a rooms of the old lodge (Allen House) and the addition of a semi-circular cream brick building. which itself was embroiled in controversy over bias toward the master, its criticism of third wave feminism and fictionalisation of various events and circumstances. Since this case, Ormond College has reformed its procedures in regards to sexual harassment and assault.

21st century

In 2009, Rufus Black was appointed master of Ormond College. An ethicist and Rhodes scholar, Black ushered in a new era of change and development. In that year, Ormond launched an Indigenous program which supported Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to live at Ormond and study at the University of Melbourne.

The college developed also major new facilities during this period. In 2010 the junior common room was redeveloped into cafe style space and lounge. In May 2011 the college opened a $4m student academic centre, containing several formal and informal learning spaces along with the college library and information technology facilities. Since 2010 the college has expanded its undergraduate facilities by creating a series of loft rooms in its main building and McCaughey Court. The college has also developed a cohort of graduate students in its two dedicated graduate buildings opened in 2014 and 2015.

In 2016, the college opened the Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship. Established with a gift from entrepreneur Peter Wade, the institute delivers programs for investors, entrepreneurs and schools, including a new University of Melbourne Masters of Entrepreneurship. The degree is a collaboration between Ormond and the university's Faculty of Business and Economics and its School of Engineering. The building is designed along "passivhaus" principles, by Melbourne architectural firm Lovell Chen.

In 2018, Lara McKay became master of Ormond.

Admission of women

From the beginning Ormond accepted women as non-residents, able to attend tutorials and participate in college life whilst living offsite with funding from the college. Female students were amongst its most notable early scholars. Later, from 1968 to 1972, female students were able to live in college in return for waiting duties and attend tutorials; they were admitted as members of the Ormond College Students' Club in 1969. In 1973, Ormond accepted women students as residents for the first time. Women quickly rose to leadership roles in both the staff and student bodies including being elected chair of the students' club and appointed to the role of vice-master (deputy head of college).

Renate Kamener Oration

Renate Kamener (8 June 1933 – 12 March 2009) was a German-born Jew whose family escaped before the Holocaust and settled in South Africa, where she became a teacher. She and her husband Bob were active in the anti-apartheid movement and migrated to Australia in 1965, where after teaching English for some time she became head of Humanities at Swinburne Technical College. She was dedicated to peace and social justice, and founded Salaam-Shalom, a Muslim-Jewish women's group that promoted dialogue and friendship.

To honour her memory, the Kamener Family set up the Renate Kamener in collaboration with Ormond College, "to help and encourage Indigenous students to achieve their tertiary education ambitions". It is funded mainly by the annual Renate Kamener Oration, managed by volunteers, and held in the Past speakers at the oration include:

2010: Peter Singer
2011: Gareth Evans
2012: Glyn Davis
2013: James Button
2014: Mark Dreyfus
2015: Marcia Langton
2016: Julian Burnside
2017: Abdi Aden
2018: Tim Costello
2019: Julia Gillard
2020: Jon Faine
2021: (Cancelled – COVID-19 pandemic)
2022: Noel Pearson
2023: Catherine Liddle
2024: Thomas Mayo (22 September)
2025: Helen Clark

List of masters

1881–1914 Sir John Henry MacFarland
1915–1943 David Kennedy Picken
J.C. McPhee, acting master, August 1943 – September 1944
1903–1910 Robert Gillespie
2022–present Richard Loveridge

Notable alumni

Politics and government

Neil Brown – politician, Commonwealth Attorney General
Mark Dreyfus – federal member for Isaacs, Attorney General of Australia
Sir Littleton Groom – federal minister and Speaker in Federal Parliament
Greg Hunt – federal member for Flinders, Federal Minister for Health
David Kemp – politician and federal government minister
Richard Marles – deputy prime minister of Australia
Sir Robert Menzies – Prime Minister of Australia (Menzies was a non-resident postgraduate law tutor)
Sir Frank Keith Officer – was an Australian public servant and diplomat
Tim Smith – Victorian state politician
Haddon Storey – politician and Attorney General of Victoria
Alan Tudge – Minister for Education
Sir (John) Keith Waller – Senior Australian public servant and diplomat.
Vernon Wilcox – Victorian State Transport Minister and Attorney General
Philip Alston – international law scholar and human rights practitioner, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law
Hilary Charlesworth – Melbourne Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, director of the Centre for International Governance and justice at the Australian National University
Alex Chernov – Supreme Court justice and Governor of Victoria
Rowan Downing – barrister and international jurist, member of the international judiciary of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Sir Daryl Michael Dawson – former justice of the High Court of Australia
Sir David Derham – lawyer and university administrator, expert in Australian constitutional law. Monash University Law School is called the David Derham School of Law in his honour
Kate Jenkins – federal sex discrimination minister
Sir John Latham – politician and judge who served as the fifth Chief Justice of Australia
Timothy McEvoy – justice of Federal Court of Australia.
Clifford Menhennitt – justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria who delivered the landmark 1969 Menhennitt ruling
Richard Henry Searby – was an Australian lawyer, company director and academic.
Ross Sundberg – former judge in the Federal Court of Australia from 1995 to 2010
Sir Henry Winneke – justice of the Supreme Court and Governor of Victoria

Business

David Crawford – businessman and company director
Sir Peter Derham – business executive and philanthropist who was managing director of Nylex
Charles Goode – Stockbroker and public company director
Ben Gray – private equity investor who is a founding partner of the private equity firm BGH Capital and former head of TPG
Sir Russell Grimwade – chemist, botanist, industrialist and philanthropist
Sir Ian McLennan – chairman of BHP
Andrew Michelmore – mining executive, company director and former chair of the Ormond College Council; rowing world championship gold medal in 1974
Ziggy Switkowski – business executive, nuclear physicist, chief executive officer of Telstra and Chancellor of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University)

Academia

Robert Bartnik – mathematician, serving as professor of mathematics at Monash University
Sir Zelman Cowen – was an Australian legal scholar and university administrator who served as the 19th Governor-General of Australia, in office from 1977 to 1982
Rod Crewther – physicist, notable in the field of gauge field theories
Patrick McCaughey - art historian and academic
Stuart Macintyre – historian, academic and public intellectual, president of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
Neil McQueen – educational innovator, scientist, psychologist and medical doctor
Joanna Masel – theoretical evolutionary biologist. Since 2016 she has been a full professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona
Brigadier Sir Lindsay Tasman Ride - physiologist, soldier, and vice chancellor of the University of Hong Kong
Peter Singer is a moral philosopher and Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University
John McKellar Stewart – professor of philosophy at the University of Adelaide and its vice-chancellor from 1945 to 1948
Hugh Stretton – historian

Military

Major General Rupert Downes – Australian soldier, surgeon and historian.
Major General Harold "Pompey" Elliott – senior officer in Australian Army during WWI, senator, solicitor, VFL footballer, athlete
General Peter Gration – Australian Army officer, served in the positions of Chief of the General Staff (1984–87) and Chief of the Defence Force (1987–93).
Lieutenant General Sir James McCay – Australian general and politician, champion of women's suffrage and federation – Australian virologist known for his contributions to immunology; awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine
Brigadier Sir Thomas Peel Dunhill – Australian thyroid surgeon and honorary surgeon to the monarchs of the United Kingdom
Hilda Esson – doctor and pioneer actress
Brigadier Sir Neil Hamilton Fairley – physician, medical scientist, and army officer who was instrumental in saving thousands of Allied lives from malaria and other diseases
Mary Glowrey – medical missionary, founder of the Catholic Health Association of India
Gordon Clunes Mackay Mathison – physician, medical researcher, and soldier; appointed the first director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, died from wounds received during the Gallipoli campaign before he could take up the position

Sport

Arthur Davidson – Australian rules footballer for the Fitzroy Football Club
Keith Doig Australian rules footballer for the Melbourne University Football Club
Donald Duffy – chairman of the Melbourne Football Club
Chris Fogarty – Australian rules footballer for the Essendon Football Club
Joe Fogarty – Australian rules footballer for the Melbourne Football Club
Henry Hagenauer – Australian rules footballer for the Melbourne Football Club
Jim Howden – Australian Rower, Olympic bronze medalist and county court judge
Charles Littlejohn – Olympic silver medallist in rowing, Rhodes Scholar
Stan Reid – Australian rules footballer for the Fitzroy Football Club
Paul Sheahan – test cricketer, president of the Melbourne Cricket Club
Raymond “Ray” Steele – an Australian rules footballer who played for the Richmond Football Club and cricket administrator
Westmore Frank Stephens – was an Australian rules footballer who played with University in the Victorian Football League (VFL).
John Duigan – film director
Phil Harvey – manager of Coldplay
Elijah Moshinsky – opera director, theatre director and television director who worked for the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal National Theatre and BBC Television
John Bernard O'Hara – poet and schoolmaster
Mark Seymour – singer and musician in Hunters and Collectors

Rhodes scholars

John Seitz (1906)