Colgate's Rhodes Scholar (The Colgate Scene, January 1999)

The Colgate Scene
January 1999

Colgate's Rhodes Scholar

A 'desire to know' motivates
senior Antonio Delgado

As a student at Schenectady, NY's Bishop Gibbons High School, Antonio Delgado thought he might travel east, into New England, to attend college. Then he visited Colgate and found a fit. "It felt like academia," he said recently.

When he entered in the fall of 1995 he chose as his required first-year seminar Professor Joseph Wagner's What is Real and What is True. "That seminar turned my life around," said Delgado.

In the essay that accompanied his application for a Rhodes Scholarship (see excerpts), Delgado described his transformation from a high school senior whose "passion was basketball . . . it represented the core of me," to a person seeking to understand his own experience in a larger philosophical context: "There was something in me that would not let the issue die . . . the something was my desire to know."

On December 5, Delgado emerged from a demanding selection process as one of only 32 students nationwide named Rhodes Scholars for 1999. The scholarship will pay all of Delgado's expenses for two years of study at the University of Oxford in England, where he intends to major in philosophy, politics and economics. He will have the option of applying for a third year of study, which could lead to a PhD. Delgado said he hopes to use his time at Oxford "to develop my thoughts and ideas for my thesis," with the goal of earning a PhD in philosophy and teaching at the college level.

The history of the
Rhodes at Colgate

Whitney Hart Sheparsdon '10
Franklin H. Worland '46
Dale A. Johnson '57
Richard L. Schaper '67
Thomas W. O'Brien '71
Antonio Delgado '99

Rhodes Scholarships are funded from the estate of British colonial pioneer and statesman Cecil J. Rhodes, who "dreamed of bettering the lot of humankind through the diffusion of leaders motivated to serve their contemporaries, trained in the contemplative life of the mind, and broadened by their acquaintance with one another and by their exposure to cultures different from their own."

Delgado enrolled at Colgate expecting to become a doctor, but the experience of his first-year seminar turned him toward an eventual dual concentration in philosophy and political science. Professor Wagner (political science) became Delgado's academic adviser and is one of many faculty members who the senior credits with influencing him over the past four years.

Delgado played basketball at Colgate during his first two years on campus, which included the team's latest trip to the NCAA championships in 1996 at Indianapolis. A Dean's List student, he is a head resident in the college's housing system, coordinating the efforts of resident advisers who staff college-owned apartments. He is also host to a regular program on the student television station CUTV. Titled Race-ing Times, the program examines issues of race and gender. Delgado is a member of the Dream Team, which sponsors campus events to foster racial harmony; Skin Deep, which explores racial issues; and the college's Society of Leaders. JL