Talk:James A. Doonan

University vs. College

I believe the line "who was the president of Georgetown University from 1882 to 1888" is technically incorrect. I think probably Georgetown was a "College" during Doonan's presidency. The school was known as Georgetown College originally; colleges changing the name to University is a relatively recent phenomenon. This line probably should read "who was the president of Georgetown College (now Georgetown University) from 1882 to 1888." Zaslav (talk) 21:48, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

The law recognized no such institution as "Georgetown University" until 1966 (see here for explanation. However, in common parlance and writing, the term "Georgetown University" appears much earlier than 1966 and, indeed, is far more common than "Georgetown College" for many decades before then. There is no definitive date on which it became more common to refer to it as a university than as a college, so what I have done with all the Georgetown presidents articles is to refer consistently to one or the other within individual articles based on what the contemporaneous sources use predominantly. In the case of Doonan, most of the sources at this time period refer to it as Georgetown University, so that is what I have gone with. Ergo Sum 23:35, 9 November 2021 (UTC)