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Benjamin Franklin College is a residential college for undergraduates of Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut. It is scheduled to open in 2017.
History
In 2008, Yale University President Rick Levin announced that the college had the resources to educate more students and thus would expand its enrollment by opening two new residential colleges for a total of fourteen. In April 2016, the university announced that the colleges would be named after Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was chosen at the behest of Charles B. Johnson, class of 1954, who had made the single largest gift in Yale's history. Johnson saw Franklin as a personal role model and was the chairman of Franklin Templeton Investments, a global investment firm named after Franklin. Johnson asked for its consideration but did not stipulate that Yale use the name. The naming decision was met with an outcry by students and faculty.
Benjamin Franklin College will be the southern of the two new colleges, referred to as "South College" in some earlier documents.
Charles Bailyn, A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of Astronomy and Physics, is the first head of Benjamin Franklin College, and Jessie Hill, the former dean of Silliman College, is its first dean.