Until 1884, Yale had functioned without a dean, but with enrollment approaching 1,100, President Noah Porter asked Wright to help him by taking over the records of the junior and senior classes.

For the first two years Wright kept all of the records without help, while teaching a full schedule as Dunham Professor of Latin Language and Literature.

Wright felt that if the spirit of true democracy at Yale were to be perpetuated, it was essential that freshmen should be better integrated to the College and the University.

The alumni committee of “Wright’s boys” responded by raising funds for a dormitory that for the first time would be a cooperative gift, rather than one person or family.

[1] Henry P. Wright was a trustee of the Connecticut College for Women at New London and of the Hopkins Grammar School at New Haven.

We all know how volcanic is the one, and how full of horned cattle is the other.” During the construction of Wright Hall in 1911, a poignant testimonial by a former student was published in The Heir of Slaves, by William Pickens, Class of 1904: “Dean Henry P. Wright of Yale, after reading the recommendations of my former teachers, had written that I could enter the junior class.