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Draize test

The Draize test is an acute toxicity test devised in 1944 by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) toxicologists John H. Draize and Jacob M. Spines. Initially used for testing cosmetics, the procedure involves applying 0.5 mL or 0.5 g of a test substance to the eye or skin of a restrained, conscious animal, and then leaving it for set amount of time before rinsing it out and recording its effects. The animals are observed for up to 14 days for signs of erythema and edema in the skin test, and redness, swelling, discharge, ulceration, hemorrhaging, cloudiness, or blindness in the tested eye. The test subject is commonly an albino rabbit, though other species are used too, including dogs. The animals are euthanized after testing if the test renders irreversible damage to the eye or skin. Animals may be re-used for testing purposes if the product tested causes no permanent damage. Animals are typically reused after a "wash out" period during which all traces of the tested product are allowed to disperse from the test site.

The tests are controversial. They are viewed as cruel as well as unscientific by critics because of the differences between rabbit and human eyes, and the subjective nature of the visual evaluations. The FDA supports the test, stating that "to date, no single test, or battery of tests, has been accepted by the scientific community as a replacement [for] ... the Draize test". Because of its controversial nature, the use of the Draize test in the U.S. and Europe has declined in recent years and is sometimes modified so that anaesthetics are administered and lower doses of the test substances used. Chemicals already shown to have adverse effects in vitro are not currently used in a Draize test, thereby reducing the number and severity of tests that are carried out.

Background
John Henry Draize (1900–1992) obtained a BSc in chemistry then a PhD in pharmacology, studying hyperthyroidism. He then joined the University of Wyoming and investigated plants poisonous to cattle, other livestock, and people. The U.S. Army recruited Draize in 1935 to investigate the effects of mustard gas and other chemical agents.

In 1938, after a number of reports of coal tar in mascara leading to blindness, the U.S. Congress passed the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, placing cosmetics under regulatory control. The following year Draize joined the FDA, and was soon promoted to head of the Dermal and Ocular Toxicity Branch where he was charged with developing methods for testing the side effects of cosmetic products. This work culminated in a report by Draize, his laboratory assistant, Geoffrey Woodard, and division chief, Herbert Calvery, describing how to assess acute, intermediate, and chronic exposure to cosmetics by applying compounds to the skin, penis, and eyes of rabbits.

Following this report, the techniques were used by the FDA to evaluate the safety of substances such as insecticides and sunscreens and later adopted to screen many other compounds. By Draize's retirement in 1963, and despite never having personally attached his name to any technique, irritancy procedures were commonly known as "the Draize test" To distinguish the target organ, the tests are now often referred to as "the Draize eye test" and "the Draize skin test".

Reliability
In 1971, before the implementation in 1981 of the modern Draize protocol, toxicologists Carrol Weil and Robert Scala of Carnegie Mellon University distributed three test substances for comparative analysis to 24 different university and state laboratories. The laboratories returned significantly different evaluations, from non-irritating to severely irritating, for the same substances. A 2004 study by the U.S. Scientific Advisory Committee on Alternative Toxicological Methods analyzed the modern Draize skin test. They found that tests would:
 * Misidentify a serious irritant as safe: 0–0.01%
 * Misidentify a mild irritant as safe: 3.7–5.5%
 * Misidentify a serious irritant as a mild irritant: 10.3–38.7%

Anti-testing
According to the American National Anti-Vivisection Society, solutions of products are applied directly into the animals' eyes, which can cause "intense burning, itching and pain". Clips are placed on the rabbits' eyelids to hold them open during the test period, which can last several days, during which time the rabbits are placed in restraining stocks. The chemicals often leave the eyes "ulcerated and bleeding". In the Draize test for skin irritancy, the test substances are applied to skin that is shaved and abraded (several layers of skin are removed with sticky tape), then covered with plastic sheeting.

Pro-testing
According to the British Research Defence Society, the Draize eye test is now a "very mild test", in which small amounts of substances are used and are washed out of the eye at the first sign of irritation. In a letter to Nature, written to refute an article saying that the Draize test had not changed much since the 1940s, Andrew Huxley wrote: "A substance expected from its chemical nature to be seriously painful must not be tested in this way; the test is permissible only if the substance has already been shown not to cause pain when applied to skin, and in vitro pre-screening tests are recommended, such as a test on an isolated and perfused eye. Permission to carry out the test on several animals is given only if the test has been performed on a single animal and a period of 24 hours has been allowed for injury to become evident."

Differences between the rabbit eye and the human eyes
Kirk Wilhelmus, professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine, conducted a comprehensive review of the Draize eye test in 2001. He also reported that differences in anatomy and biochemistry between the rabbit and human eye indicate that testing substances on rabbits might not predict the effects on humans. However, he noted "that eyes of rabbits are generally more susceptible to irritating substances than the eyes of humans" making them a conservative model of the human eye. Wilhelmus concluded "The Draize eye test ... has assuredly prevented harm" to humans, but predicts it will be "supplanted as in vitro and clinical alternatives emerge for assessing irritancy of the ocular surface".

Alternatives
Industry and regulatory bodies responsible for public health are actively assessing animal-free tests to reduce the requirement for Draize testing. Before 2009 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) had not validated any alternative methods for testing eye or skin irritation potential. However, since 2000 OECD had validated alternative tests for corrosivity, meaning acids, bases and other corrosive substances are no longer required to be Draize tested on animals. The alternative tests include a human skin equivalent model and the transepicutaneous resistance test (TER). In addition, the use of human corneal cell line (HCE-T cells) is also another good alternative method to test eye irritation on potential chemicals.

In September 2009 the OECD validated two alternatives to the Draize eye test: the bovine cornea opacity test (BCOP) and isolated chicken eye test (ICE). A 1995 study funded by the European Commission and British Home Office evaluated these among nine potential replacements, including the hens' egg chorioallantoic membrane (HET-CAM) assay and an epithelial model cultivated from human corneal cells, in comparison with Draize test data. The study found that none of the alternative tests, taken alone, proved to be a reliable replacement for the animal test.

Positive results from some of these tests have been accepted by regulatory bodies, such as the British Health and Safety Executive and US Department of Health and Human Services, without testing on live animals, but negative results (no irritation) required further in vivo testing. Regulatory bodies have therefore begun to adopt a tiered testing strategy for skin and eye irritation, using alternatives to reduce Draize testing of substances with the most severe effects.

UK
In Britain, the Home Office publishes guideline for eye irritancy tests, with the aim of reducing suffering to the animals. In its 2006 guidelines, it "strongly encourages" in vitro screening of all compounds before testing on animals, and mandates the use of validated alternatives when available. It requires that the test solution's "physical and chemical properties are not such that a severe adverse reaction could be predicted"; therefore "known corrosive substances or those with a high oxidation or reduction potential must not be tested."

The test design requires that the substance be tested on one rabbit initially, and the effect of the substance on the skin must be ascertained before it can be introduced into the eye. If a rabbit shows signs of "severe pain" or distress it must be immediately killed, the study terminated and the compound may not be tested on other animals. In tests where severe eye irritancy is considered likely, a washout should closely follow testing in the eye of the first rabbit. In the UK, any departure from these guidelines requires prior approval from the Secretary of State.

title: Draize test


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Rotten.com

Rotten.com was a shock site active from 1996 to 2012. The website, which had the tagline "An archive of disturbing illustration", was devoted to morbid curiosities, pictures of violent acts, deformities, autopsy or forensic photographs, depictions of perverse sex acts, disturbing or misanthropic historical curiosities and hosted explicit, real-life, photographs and videos of real events such as suicides, murders, torture, open surgeries, mutilations and accidents. Founded in 1996, it was run by a developer known as Soylent Communications. Site updates slowed in 2009, with the final update in February 2012. The website's front page was last archived in February 2018.

History
In late 1996, Soylent wrote a program that identified unregistered Internet domain names consisting of one word with a corresponding dictionary entry. "Rotten" was one of the unclaimed words, and Soylent went on to register Rotten.com in the same year. Rotten.com presented itself as a bastion of online free speech, in an era when censorship rules in some countries had begun to restrict internet access.

Rotten.com had a sparse layout; no thumbnail images were present next to links, and the links had one-line descriptions couched in morbid humor, often carrying no hints at their content. Content consisted of user-submitted images, with developers rarely posting content themselves. Though submissions were marked as "real", often they were misattributed; in one instance, a file submitted as "motorcycle.jpg" was given the description of depicting a motorbike accident, but the developers admitted it was probably an attempted shotgun suicide.

Rotten.com received an alleged image of medical personnel recovering Princess Diana's body from a car accident, though this was later confirmed as fake. However, due to wide interest in the crash, the image was posted anyway, resulting in a large traffic spike. The website was also one of the first to publish images of the September 11 jumpers from the Twin Towers, under the title "Swan Dive". The September 11th attack's videos and photos were uploaded to the site and later uploaded to ogrish.com.

The site was also notorious for hosting videos such as the Dagestan massacre, which was later uploaded to Liveleak, and Chechclear, which was a video filmed by Chechen rebels in 1996, showing a Russian soldier being beheaded by Chechen rebels during the First Chechen War.

Legal disputes
Rotten.com was threatened with many lawsuits over the years, mostly in the form of cease and desist notices. These ranged from serious matters, such as requests to remove pictures of dead relatives from the site, to Burlington Coat Factory asking to take down 'trenchcoat.org', a domain bought by Rotten.com as a Trenchcoat Mafia reference, though it simply linked to Burlington Coat Factory's webpage.

On June 24, 2005, the US federal government ordered that the "Fuck of the Month" section of the site be removed, along with content from several ancillary sites. In posting the page's removal notice, the site's moderator criticized supporters of both Alberto Gonzales and the Bush Administration for the enablement of censorship.

Rotten Library
In 2003, The Rotten Library was created as an encyclopedia to supplement the website. The Library contained hundreds of articles under 17 different headings, including culture, art, medicine, crime, travel, and the occult. Articles contained detailed research, timelines, and occasionally included previously unseen images of various well-known events. The headings inside of entries are humorous in nature, with a description of the subject (for example, a medical condition) in an informal and often insulting tone. In the entry dedicated to eating disorders, the heading above the section for bulimia is titled "Betty Bulimia."

Merchandise
Rotten.com had a store that carried t-shirts, mousemats, stickers, magnets, and bizarre DVDs.

The Daily Rotten
In late 1999, The Daily Rotten was started by Thomas E. Dell, which published news stories on a daily basis, focusing mostly on terrorism, murder, suicide, abuse and excrement. Daily Rotten, also known as Rotten News, is driven by user submissions, which are edited by a self-described "Rotten Staff Duder". This also features comments for each one of the articles, posted by the registered members; they usually bring similar histories, gruesome and graphic images of real gore and dead bodies. They refer to themselves as "rotteneers", a satirical reference to Walt Disney's Mouseketeers, and/or "rottentots".

Boners.com
Rotten.com launched Boners.com in response to viewers who wanted a daily pictures page alongside the Daily Rotten newsboard. The word "boner" suggests an embarrassing mistake or a male organ in a state of arousal. The images typically consisted of amusing public signs, phallic imagery, and members of the public in embarrassing situations.

The Gaping Maw
In 2000, The Gaping Maw – an editorial/commentary archive – was founded. Most of the articles were written by cartoonist Tristan Farnon under the alias "Spigot" (from Leisure Town) or by other webmasters. The pages contained news, satire, and commentary on modern society. Along with the Rotten Library, this improved Rotten.com's standing in many communities since it introduced a humane and intellectual aspect to the website. On June 22, 2005, The Gaping Maw went dark to comply with new government bookkeeping requirements regarding the distribution of pornography, specifically governmental age-verification of models, under. All articles were taken down, and the site's title page was replaced with a statement lamenting the passage of the laws, headed by the banner, "CENSORED BY US GOVERNMENT!". In January 2006, The Gaping Maw came back online with some articles heavily edited.

Rotten Dead Pool
In November 2003, the Rotten Dead Pool was launched. The Dead Pool was a game in which players picked ten people they believed would die over the course of the next 12 months. A point was awarded to a player for each of their correct picks. A pick did not count as correct if the pick was executed or murdered, or died some other way, after the 12 months had passed.

NNDB
In mid-2002, Rotten.com launched NNDB, an online database. NNDB is a steadily-updated website that contained information about thousands of notable people. The news section ceased updating on January 16, 2016, and the celebrity deaths section last updated on December 31, 2021. The website itself is still live.

Sports Dignity
Sports Dignity was a gallery of pictures showing embarrassing or NSFW incidents in sports games and tournaments.

Publications

 * (pp. 194–204 consists of the Rotten Library entry for John Ashcroft)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Rotten.com


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Wikipedia:Emailing users

This page sets out information on the Special:EmailUser feature, a MediaWiki feature that allows registered users to exchange emails with other registered users privately ("off-wiki").

Users can send emails to other users via the built-in email facility on Wikipedia and any of its sister websites. Both the sender and recipient must have provided email addresses in their preferences. The sender's username and email address are disclosed but not their IP address.  (Note that "the wrong way"  disclose personal information—see Privacy issues below for how to avoid this if needed, when you reply) .

Emails sent using Wikimedia's mail facility are private. Their contents cannot be read by administrators or anyone else, even to check for appropriateness, so only limited help is possible if the feature is being abused. It is possible for users able to access the CheckUser tool to confirm if and when a user sent any emails, but not the content of the emails. In the event of abuse, threats, or harassment through this facility, users may contact any administrator for advice and assistance (by email or any other way, if they wish, in order to keep it private). In more serious cases they should email the Volunteer Response Team for help.

Users have the right to disable the email facility on their account at any time (and can ask users who email them to communicate on-wiki instead), although users active in roles that require accepting of user email should probably consult appropriately first (on or off wiki). Use of the email facility can also be disabled by any administrator as part of blocking an account, although usually this is only done if the blocked user has abused or is likely to abuse the email facility.

There are some important "best practices" about this facility – Wikipedia is designed to work based upon public dialog, so communication between users is often better if it's in public (on users' talk pages or elsewhere on Wikipedia's talk and project pages), where others can review and note them. This is especially the case where improper use might later be claimed (canvassing, harassment and so on); this would not be possible to claim if the posts are on the website itself. Also, unlike messages on the website, messages via email are not subject to Wikipedia's free license and therefore are copyright by their sender, and should not be pasted onto the website in a way that breaches copyright law.

General information about the Wikimedia email facility
If you've added and confirmed an email address in your user preferences, you can exchange emails with other Wikipedia accounts using the Wikipedia interface. To send an email to another Wikipedia account, simply visit your correspondent's user page, and click on the "Email this user" link that is located in the "toolbox" on the left-side navigation menu. This link is only present if the correspondent has enabled the "Allow other users to email me" option in their user preferences. The email address that you've set and verified in your user preferences will be provided to the recipient so that they can respond to you directly. It will appear in the "From" address of the email they receive, so that the recipient can easily respond just by clicking "reply".

Users who have openly disclosed their email addresses can be emailed directly. However, Wikipedia does not encourage such open disclosure. Emailing users through Wikipedia is a privacy feature that protects your email address from spam.

Wikipedia emails are sent immediately when you click on "send". You can set your preferences so that you'll also receive a copy of every email you send; if you don't choose this option, this can still be done for individual emails. It may be useful at times to leave a brief message with a courtesy notification on the recipient's user talk page that you've emailed them, as some users may not check their inbox regularly.

A link to the email feature can be created in text or a signature by typing.

Enabling and disabling user email
Email is disabled unless you specify and verify an email address with your account. This can be done while you are setting up your account for the first time, or at any time by adding one to your user preferences. Your preferences can be accessed from the top-right corner of any page on Wikipedia while you're logged into your account. If you are enabling the ability to send emails to other users, MediaWiki requires you to verify that the email address you provide actually belongs to you. It will do this by sending a confirmation email to the address that you provided. Simply access your email's inbox, open the confirmation message, and click on the link that is provided in the message. The link will navigate you to the Wikipedia site, which will mark your email address as 'confirmed' and inform you of the successful completion of the process. The confirmation link will expire seven days from the time that it was generated and sent to you. If you don't click on the link within that time, you will need to have another one resent. See Help:Email confirmation for help and additional information.

Once you have confirmed an email address to your Wikipedia account, you may enable or disable the email ability by visiting "my preferences", and by ticking or un-ticking the "Allow other users to email me" option. You can also prevent users without the autoconfirmed permissions level from emailing you by un-ticking the "Allow emails from brand-new users" option.

Prohibiting email from specified users
If you have the email preference enabled, you can specify usernames which you do not want to be able to send you emails. These users will not see the "Email this user" link on your user page and will see a standard error message when using Special:EmailUser as if your entire email preference has been disabled.

Emails triggered by watchlist and notifications are not affected by this preference.

Reposting emails publicly
There is no formal consensus by the community regarding the act of reposting private off-wiki correspondence onto public Wikipedia locations, or the restriction or prohibition of the exercise thereof. However, it is often considered to be an unacceptable action for legal reasons. Unlike edits and posts to Wikipedia's web pages, emails that are sent through the email facility are not automatically "freely" licensed by the sender, and therefore, reposting the messages or correspondence to a public Wikipedia location would suggest or imply to any and all readers that the text is freely licensed for reuse and republication by its author, which is generally not the case.

Users who feel that they are allowed to repost text from an email or other off-wiki source, or that doing so is necessary or the right to do so given a certain situation, discussion, report, or event, are advised to take extreme caution, and to consult with other trusted and experienced users before doing so, in order to ensure that the act will not accidentally create a problem for themselves, or create a negative perception or result in negative consequences. This might involve consulting, or asking the sender if they will allow the email to be quoted under Wikipedia's license in a post on Wikipedia's discussion pages. Note that this only applies to reposting on Wikipedia and its sister projects – other forms of quoting which do not involve risk of copyright breach (such as forwarding the text to an administrator for advice, or quoting words or brief phrases in a way that constitutes Fair Use) are generally unaffected by this concern.

Privacy issues and protecting personal information
Sending an email via the Special:EmailUser system will disclose your email address for the purposes of a reply, but no other information will be provided by the system to the recipient. (Note that emails sent this way are private – they are sent as written, as a private communication between willing parties who have agreed to send and receive emails.)

If you receive an email via this feature, it is important to know that you are not obligated in any way to reply or respond to the message. If you do wish to respond to the user, you may do so in three ways:

This will disclose whatever information your emails usually contain, including your email address. It may contain your IP address, or a signature line, or time zone, or the like. This will disclose nothing except your email address. You can do this by visiting the sender's user page (their name will appear in the header or footer of the email), then selecting "Email this user" from the "toolbox" on the left of the page. In some cases, you may wish to leave a note on their user talk page, for example, to inform them that their email was received, or to provide a brief response there. Since communication using email is usually performed (as opposed to starting a public discussion or correspondence on Wikipedia) in order to facilitate private communication or to discuss private or confidential matters, it is often courteous to keep such replies made on Wikipedia as brief as possible and without disclosing private details or breaching any level of privacy or confidentiality as possible, since the sender will usually expect such details or information to be communicated back to them using private channels.
 * By replying with your email client
 * By visiting the user page of the sender, and using the "Email this user" feature
 * By replying to their message on Wikipedia (usually done by visiting the editor's user talk page)

Abuse handling
If you receive an objectionable email through this system, you should contact an administrator, possibly by email, to ask advice. In serious cases you may wish to escalate the matter, especially if there is a pattern of harassment involved. Please note the following:

You should not post the email itself on the wiki without permission (although you can describe briefly in summary what it contains or shows). This is partly due to copyright concerns, given that Wikipedia pages can be re-used by anyone. For information on posting emails on Wikipedia in general, see WP:POSTEMAIL. See Prohibiting email from specified users for instructions. See Enabling and disabling user email for instructions. You may need to refer to them again. At a minimum, consider saving the email header and text for future reference. Posting real names or email addresses not previously and voluntarily disclosed on Wikipedia can be considered outing. Such information may be communicated privately to the Arbitration Committee.
 * Do not post the email on-wiki without permission
 * You can prevent specific users from emailing you
 * Email can be disabled at any time
 * Retain objectionable emails in case they are needed
 * Do not disclose any personal information disallowed on Wikipedia

Permitted uses
The email facility described here is intended to support the goal of building an encyclopedia and other WMF projects. Any widespread use of this facility for other reasons is considered abuse. Please note that the WMF Terms of Use prohibit transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users.

title: Wikipedia:Emailing users


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Mary Schmich

Mary Theresa Schmich (born November 29, 1953) is an American journalist. She was a columnist for the Chicago Tribune from 1992 to 2021, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2012. Her columns were syndicated nationally by Tribune Content Agency. She wrote the comic strip Brenda Starr, Reporter for the last 28 of its 60 years and she wrote the 1997 column Wear Sunscreen. The line "Do one thing every day that scares you" from the column has frequently been misattributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Biography
Born in Savannah, Georgia, the oldest of eight children, Schmich spent her childhood in Georgia. She attended high school in Phoenix, Arizona, and earned a B.A. from Pomona College.

After working in college admissions for three years and spending a year and a half in France, Schmich attended journalism school at Stanford. She has worked as a reporter at the Palo Alto Peninsula Times Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and since 1985 at the Tribune, where she was a national correspondent based in Atlanta for five years. Her column started in 1992 and was interrupted for a year when she attended Harvard on a Nieman Fellowship for journalists.

From 1985 Schmich was the writer of Brenda Starr, Reporter until its final appearance in January 2011. The long-lived comic strip, set in Chicago, was created by Dale Messick for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate in 1940. Messick continued to the early 1980s; Schmich was the third and final writer, working with the second and third artists.

She has also worked as a professional barrelhouse and ragtime piano player.

About four times a year for some years, Schmich and fellow Tribune metro columnist Eric Zorn wrote a week of columns that consisted of a back-and-forth exchange of letters. Each December since 1999, Schmich and Zorn have hosted the "Songs of Good Cheer" holiday caroling parties at the Old Town School of Folk Music to raise money for the Tribune Holiday Fund charities. On December 18, 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Schmich and Zorn held a virtual streaming event that was livecast over YouTube.

Schmich won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, recognizing 2011 work with the Tribune, citing "her wide range of down-to-earth columns that reflect the character and capture the culture of her famed city."

'Wear Sunscreen'
Schmich's June 1, 1997, column began with the injunction to wear sunscreen, and continued with discursive advice for living without regret. In her introduction to the column, she described it as the commencement address she would give if she were asked to give one. The column was circulated around the Internet, with an erroneous claim that it was a commencement address by Kurt Vonnegut, usually at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the misattribution became a news item when Vonnegut was contacted by reporters to comment. He told The New York Times, "What she wrote was funny, wise and charming, so I would have been proud had the words been mine."

In 1998, Schmich published the column as a book, Wear Sunscreen. In 1999, Baz Luhrmann released a song called "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" in which this column is read word for word as written by Schmich, who gave permission and receives royalties. This song was a number one hit in several countries.

Schmich's June 1, 1997, column (as well as the Baz Luhrmann song based on it) includes the sentence "Do one thing every day that scares you." The statement was Schmich's original work, but has frequently been misattributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Works

 * Wear Sunscreen (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1998) ISBN 978-0-8362-5528-7. 54 pages
 * Even the Terrible Things Seem Beautiful to Me Now: the best of Mary Schmich (Chicago: Midway, 2013) ISBN 978-1-57284-145-1. – 415-page collection of "ten Pulitzer-winning columns along with 154 others"

title: Mary Schmich


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Walter Winchell

Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972) was a syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator. Originally a vaudeville performer, Winchell began his newspaper career as a Broadway reporter, critic and columnist for New York tabloids. He rose to national celebrity in the 1930s with Hearst newspaper chain syndication and a popular radio program. He was known for an innovative style of gossipy staccato news briefs, jokes, and Jazz Age slang. Biographer Neal Gabler claimed that his popularity and influence "turned journalism into a form of entertainment".

He uncovered both hard news and embarrassing stories about famous people by exploiting his exceptionally wide circle of contacts, first in the entertainment world and the Prohibition era underworld, then in law enforcement and politics. He was known for trading gossip, sometimes in return for his silence. His outspoken style made him both feared and admired. Novels and movies were based on his wisecracking gossip columnist persona, as early as the play and film Blessed Event in 1932. As World War II approached in the 1930s, he attacked the appeasers of Nazism, then in the 1950s he aligned with Joseph McCarthy in his campaign against communists. He damaged the reputation of Josephine Baker as well as other individuals who had earned his enmity.

He returned to television in 1959 as the narrator of the 1930s-set crime drama series The Untouchables. Over the years he appeared in more than two dozen films and television productions as an actor, sometimes playing himself.

Early life
Winchell was born in New York City, the son of Jennie (Bakst) and Jacob Winchell, a cantor and salesman; they were Russian Jewish immigrants. He left school in the sixth grade and started performing in Gus Edwards's vaudeville troupe known as the "Newsboys Sextet", which also featured Eddie Cantor and George Jessel. During this time, Winchell performed as a tap dancer. Winchell served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, reaching the rank of lieutenant commander.

Professional career
Winchell began his career in journalism by posting notes about his acting troupe on backstage bulletin boards. He joined the Vaudeville News in 1920, then left the paper for the Evening Graphic in 1924, where his column was named Mainly About Mainstreeters. He was hired on June 10, 1929, by the New York Daily Mirror, where he became the author of the first syndicated gossip column, entitled On-Broadway. The column was syndicated by King Features Syndicate.

He made his radio debut over WABC in New York, a CBS affiliate, on May 12, 1930. The show, titled Saks on Broadway, was a 15-minute feature that provided business news about Broadway. He switched to WJZ (later renamed WABC) and the NBC Blue (later ABC Radio) in 1932 for the Jergens Journal.

Underworld connections
By the 1930s, Winchell was "an intimate friend of Owney Madden, New York's no. 1 gang leader of the prohibition era," but in 1932 Winchell's intimacy with criminals caused him to fear he would be murdered. He fled to California and "returned weeks later with a new enthusiasm for law, G-men, Uncle Sam, [and] Old Glory". His coverage of the Lindbergh kidnapping and subsequent trial received national attention. Within two years, he befriended J. Edgar Hoover. He was responsible for turning Louis "Lepke" Buchalter of Murder, Inc. over to Hoover.

His newspaper column was syndicated in a wide array of newspapers worldwide, and he was read by millions, every day from the 1920s until the early 1960s. His Sunday night radio broadcast was heard by another 20 million people from 1930 to the late 1950s. In 1948, Winchell had the top-rated radio show when he surpassed Fred Allen and Jack Benny. One indicator of his popularity was being mentioned in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's 1937 song "The Lady Is a Tramp": "I follow Winchell and read every line."

Outspoken views
Winchell was Jewish and was one of the first commentators in America to attack Adolf Hitler and American pro-fascist and pro-Nazi organizations such as the German-American Bund, especially its leader Fritz Julius Kuhn. He was a staunch supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal throughout the Depression era, and frequently served as the Roosevelt Administration's mouthpiece in favor of interventionism as the European war crisis loomed in the late 1930s. Early on, he denounced American isolationists as favoring appeasement of Hitler, and was explicit in his attacks on such prominent isolationists as Charles Lindbergh, whom he dubbed "The Lone Ostrich", and Gerald L.K. Smith, whom he denounced as "Gerald Lucifer KKKodfish Smith". Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Winchell was also an outspoken supporter of civil rights for African Americans, and frequently attacked the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups as supporting un-American, pro-German goals.

During World War II, he attacked the National Maritime Union, the labor organization for the civilian United States Merchant Marine, which he said was run by Communists, instancing West Coast labor leader Harry Bridges. In 1948 and 1949, he and influential columnist Drew Pearson attacked Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in columns and radio broadcasts.

Subsequently, Winchell began to denounce Communism as the main threat facing America.

Television
During the 1950s, Winchell supported Senator Joseph McCarthy's quest to identify Communists in the entertainment industry. His weekly radio broadcast was broadcast on ABC television on the same day. His program debuted on TV on October 5, 1952. Sponsored by Gruen Watch Company, it originated from WJZ-TV from 6:45 to 7 p.m. Eastern Time. By 1953, his radio and television broadcasts were simulcast until he ended that association because of a dispute with ABC executives in 1955. He starred in The Walter Winchell File, a television crime drama series that initially aired from 1957 to 1958, dramatizing cases from the New York City Police Department that were covered in the New York Daily Mirror. In 1956, he signed with NBC to host a variety program called The Walter Winchell Show, which was canceled after only 13 weeks—a particularly bitter failure in view of the success of his longtime rival Ed Sullivan in a similar format with The Ed Sullivan Show. ABC re-hired him in 1959 to narrate The Untouchables for four seasons. In 1960, a revival of the 1955 television simulcast of Winchell's radio broadcast was cancelled after six weeks.

In the early 1960s, a public dispute with Jack Paar effectively ended Winchell's career—already in decline due to a shift in power from print to television. Winchell had angered Paar several years earlier when he refused to retract an item alleging that Paar was having marital difficulties. Biographer Neal Gabler described the exchange on Paar's show in 1961:

"Hostess Elsa Maxwell appeared on the program and began gibing at Walter, accusing him of hypocrisy for waving the flag while never having voted [which, incidentally, wasn't true; the show later issued a retraction]. Paar joined in. He said Walter's column was 'written by a fly' and that his voice was so high because he wears 'too-tight underwear' … [H]e also told the story of the mistaken item about his marriage, and cracked that Walter had a 'hole in his soul'."

On subsequent programs, Paar called Winchell a "silly old man" and cited other examples of his underhanded tactics. No one had previously dared to criticize Winchell publicly, but by then his influence had eroded to the point that he could not effectively respond. The New York Daily Mirror, his flagship newspaper for 34 years, closed in 1963; his readership dropped steadily, and he faded from the public eye.

Personal ethics
Winchell became known for his attempts to destroy the careers of his political and personal enemies as his own career progressed, especially after World War II. Favorite tactics were allegations of having ties to Communist organizations and accusations of sexual impropriety. He was not above name-calling; for example, he described New York radio host Barry Gray as "Borey Pink" and a "disk jerk". Winchell heard that Marlen Edwin Pew of the trade journal Editor & Publisher had criticized him as a bad influence on calling him "Marlen Pee-you".

For most of his career, his contracts with newspaper and radio employers required them to hold him harmless from any damages resulting from lawsuits for slander or libel. He unapologetically would publish material told to him in confidence by friends; when confronted over such betrayals, he typically responded, "I know—I'm just a son of a bitch." By the mid-1950s, he was widely seen as arrogant, cruel, and ruthless.

While on an American tour in 1951, Josephine Baker, who would never perform before segregated audiences, criticized the Stork Club's unwritten policy of discouraging black patrons, then scolded Winchell, an old ally, for not rising to her defense. Winchell responded swiftly with a series of harsh public rebukes, including accusations of Communist sympathies. He spurned any attempts by friends to mitigate the heated rhetoric. The ensuing publicity resulted in the termination of Baker's work visa, forcing her to cancel all her engagements and return to France. It was almost a decade before U.S. officials allowed her back into the country. The adverse publicity of this, and similar incidents, undercut his credibility and power.

In his radio and television broadcasts on April 4, 1954, Winchell helped to stoke public fear of the polio vaccine. Winchell said, "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America ... and all the ships at sea. Attention everyone. In a few moments I will report on a new polio vaccine claimed to be a polio cure. It may be a killer." Winchell claimed that the U.S. Public Health Services found live polio viruses in seven of ten vaccine batches it tested, reporting, "It killed several monkeys ... the United States Public Health Service will confirm this in about 10 days." Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, immediately responded that the vaccine, which had been recently tested on 7,500 school children at the University of Pittsburgh, had been triple tested for the absence of live virus by its manufacturers, the National Institutes of Health, and in his own research lab, and that similar testing would continue to screen out future batches containing live virus.

Style
Many other columnists began to write gossip soon after Winchell's initial success, such as Ed Sullivan, who succeeded him at the New York Evening Graphic, and Louella Parsons in Los Angeles. He wrote in a style filled with slang and incomplete sentences. Winchell's casual writing style famously earned him the ire of mobster Dutch Schultz, who confronted him at New York's Cotton Club and publicly lambasted him for using the phrase "pushover" to describe Schultz's penchant for blonde women. Winchell's best known aphorisms include: "Nothing recedes like success" and "I usually get my stuff from people who promised somebody else that they would keep it a secret".

Herman Klurfeld, a ghostwriter for Winchell for almost three decades, began writing four newspaper columns per week for Winchell in 1936 and worked for him for 29 years. He also wrote many of the signature one-liners, called "lasties", that Mr. Winchell used at the end of his Sunday evening radio broadcasts. One of Klurfeld's quips was "She's been on more laps than a napkin". In 1952, the New York Post revealed Mr. Klurfeld as Mr. Winchell's ghostwriter. Klurfeld later wrote a biography of Winchell entitled Winchell, His Life and Times, which was the basis for the television film Winchell (1998).

Winchell opened his radio broadcasts by pressing randomly on a telegraph key, a sound that created a sense of urgency and importance, and using the catchphrase "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press." He would then read each of his stories with a staccato delivery (up to a rate of 197 words per minute, though he claimed a speed of well over 200 words per minute in an interview in 1967), noticeably faster than the typical pace of American speech. His diction also can be heard in his breathless narration of the television series The Untouchables (1959–1963), as well as in several Hollywood films.

Personal life
On August 11, 1919, Winchell married Rita Greene, one of his onstage partners. The couple separated a few years later, and he moved in with Elizabeth June Magee, who had already adopted daughter Gloria and given birth to her and Winchell's first child Walda in 1927. Winchell eventually divorced Greene in 1928, but he never married Magee, although they lived together for the rest of their lives.

Winchell and Magee had three children. Daughter Gloria died of pneumonia at the age of nine and Walda spent time in psychiatric hospitals. Walter Jr. died by suicide in the family garage on Christmas night of 1968. Having spent the previous two years on welfare, Walter Jr. had last been employed as a dishwasher in Santa Ana, California; for a time, he wrote a column in the Los Angeles Free Press, an underground newspaper published from 1964 to 1978.

Later years
In the 1960s, Winchell wrote some columns for the film magazine Photoplay. He announced his retirement on February 5, 1969, citing his son's suicide as a major reason as well as the delicate health of his companion, June Magee. Exactly one year after his retirement, Magee died at a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, while undergoing treatment for a heart condition.

Winchell spent his final two years as a recluse at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Winchell died at the age of 74, in Los Angeles. He is buried at Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery in Phoenix. Larry King, who replaced Winchell at the Miami Herald, recalled:

He was so sad. You know what Winchell was doing at the end? Typing out mimeographed sheets with his column, handing them out on the corner. That's how sad he got. When he died, only one person came to his funeral: his daughter.

Several of Winchell's former co-workers had expressed a willingness to go but were turned back by his daughter Walda.

Legacy
Even during Winchell's lifetime, journalists were critical of his effect on the media. In 1940, St. Clair McKelway, who had earlier written a series of articles about him in The New Yorker, wrote in Time:

"the effect of Winchellism on the standards of the press... When Winchell began gossiping in 1924 for the late scatological tabloid Evening Graphic, no U.S. paper hawked rumors about the marital relations of public figures until they turned up in divorce courts. For 16 years, gossip columns spread until even the staid New York Times whispered that it heard from friends of a son of the President that he was going to be divorced. In its first year, The Graphic would have considered this news not fit to print... Gossip-writing is at present like a spirochete in the body of journalism... Newspapers... have never been held in less esteem by their readers or exercised less influence on the political and ethical thought of the times."

Winchell responded to McKelway saying, "Oh stop! You talk like a high-school student of journalism."

Despite the controversy surrounding Winchell, his popularity allowed him to leverage support for causes that he valued. In 1946, following the death from cancer of his close friend and fellow writer Damon Runyon, Winchell appealed to his radio audience for contributions to fight the disease. The response led Winchell to establish the Damon Runyon Cancer Memorial Fund, since renamed the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. He led the charity with the support of celebrities, including Marlene Dietrich, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Marilyn Monroe, and Joe DiMaggio, until his death from cancer in 1972.

In 1950, Ernest Lehman, a former publicity writer for Irving Hoffman of The Hollywood Reporter, wrote a story for Cosmopolitan titled "Tell Me About It Tomorrow". The piece is about a ruthless journalist, J.J. Hunsecker, and is generally thought to be a thinly veiled commentary on the power wielded by Winchell at the height of his influence. It was made into the film Sweet Smell of Success (1957), with the screenplay written by Lehman and Clifford Odets.

Walter Winchell is credited for coining the word "frienemy" in an article published by the Nevada State Journal on 19 May 1953.

Winchellism and Winchellese
Winchell's colorful and widely imitated language inspired the term "Winchellism." An etymologist of his day said, "Winchell has achieved the position of dictator of contemporary slang." His use of slang, innuendo and invented euphemisms also protected him from libel accusations.

Winchell invented his own phrases that were viewed as slightly racy at the time. Some of the expressions for falling in love used by Winchell were: "pashing it", "sizzle for", "that way", "go for each other", "garbo-ing it", "uh-huh"; and in a similar vein, "new Garbo, trouser-crease-eraser", and "pash". Some Winchellisms for marriage are: "middle-aisle it", "altar it", "handcuffed", "Mendelssohn March", "Lohengrin it", and "merged".

In popular culture

 * Buddy Greco in 1960 recorded an updated version of the 1937 Rodgers and Hart song "The Lady is a Tramp" to include several 1950s cultural references. Among the lady's peculiar habits and attitudes listed in the lyrics, Greco adds "Why, she even reads Walter Winchell and understands every line. That’s why the lady is a tramp."
 * The song "Let's Fly Away" from the 1930 Cole Porter musical The New Yorkers includes the lines "Let's fly away, and find a land that's so provincial, we'll never hear what Walter Winchell might be forced to say."
 * Lee Tracy starred in the 1932 movie "Blessed Event" as a thinly-disguised version of Winchell. The movie's title refers to Winchell's way of describing a pregnancy/birth on his radio broadcast.
 * Winchell was a character in the 1992 movie Citizen Cohn.
 * Groucho Marx did a Winchell parody in the Marx Brothers movie "Horsefeathers" (1932). It included burlesques of Winchell's use of the phrase 'blessed event', his radio sign-off of "O.K., America!", and his use of a toy siren whistle on the program to punctuate items.
 * Winchell starred as himself in the movie Wake Up and Live (1937) and its follow-up, Love and Hisses (1937).
 * In the Warner Brothers cartoon, Porky's Movie Mystery (1939), a radio announcer at the beginning of the short identified himself as "Walter Windshield."
 * Waldo Winchester, newspaper scribe, was a recurring figure in Damon Runyon's fiction.
 * In the film Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Burt Lancaster plays J. J. Hunsecker, a tyrannical gossip columnist widely understood by audiences at the time to be based on Winchell.
 * In Robert Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, characters refer to syndicated columnist Ben Caxton as a "winchell", the lower case indicating that in the future world of the novel, "winchell" had become a common noun.
 * He was caricatured as a bird in the Warner Brothers' cartoons The Coo-Coo Nut Grove and The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos in 1936 and 1937 respectively.
 * Longtime San Francisco gossip columnist Herb Caen used Winchell for a model, calling the style 'three dot journalism'.
 * Winchell is listed in the first verse (concerning the 1950s) of Billy Joel's 1989 song, "We Didn't Start the Fire", between South Pacific and Joe DiMaggio.
 * Winchell was portrayed by Vaughn Meader in the 1975 crime biopic Lepke starring Tony Curtis.
 * In 1991, Winchell was portrayed by Craig T. Nelson in the HBO biopic The Josephine Baker Story.
 * The HBO biopic entitled Winchell (1998), cast Stanley Tucci in the title role and Paul Giamatti as Herman Klurfeld, his sidekick and ghostwriter.
 * In Douglas Kennedy's The Pursuit of Happiness  (2001), Winchell appears in connection with McCarthyism.
 * Walter Winchell has a major role in Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (2004, adapted as miniseries 2020), an alternate history novel which depicts Charles Lindbergh winning the 1940 presidential election.
 * In the 1991 film Oscar, Sylvester Stallone's character asks, "Why don't you phone it in to Walter Winchell?"
 * In the 2001 musical The Producers and its 2005 film adaptation, Matthew Broderick's character briefly mentions wanting to "read (his) name in Winchell's column."
 * In the second season of television series Fargo, which was released in 2015, Betsy Solverson tells her husband "Good night, Mr Solverson" and Lou replies "Good night, Mrs. Solverson – and all the ships at sea," paraphrasing how Winchell introduced his radio broadcasts.
 * In October 2020, Walter Winchell: The Power Of Gossip, an episode of American Masters on PBS, profiled Winchell's life and times, touching on his career, connections, and controversy.

title: Walter Winchell


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Gallaudet University

Gallaudet University is a private federally chartered university in Washington, D.C., for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. It was founded in 1864 as a grammar school for both deaf and blind children. It was the first school for the advanced education of the deaf and hard of hearing in the world and remains the only higher education institution in which all programs and services are specifically designed to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing students. Hearing students are admitted to the graduate school and a small number are also admitted as undergraduates each year. The university was named after Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a notable figure in the advancement of deaf education.

Gallaudet University is officially bilingual, with American Sign Language (ASL) and written English used for instruction and by the college community. Although there are no specific ASL proficiency requirements for undergraduate admission, many graduate programs require varying degrees of knowledge of the language as a prerequisite. It is classified among "Doctoral/Professional Universities".

Early history (1856–1900)
In 1856, philanthropist and former United States postmaster general Amos Kendall became aware of several deaf and blind children in Washington, D.C., who were not receiving proper care. Kendall had the courts declare the children to be his wards and donated 2 acre of his land to establish housing and a school for them. The school was established in 1857 with considerable efforts being made by several concerned citizens, including Edward Miner Gallaudet, of Washington, D.C. Two houses were used at the school's inception, one purchased and one rented.

In 1857, the 34th Congress passed H.R. 806, which chartered the grammar school as the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind and funded tuition costs for indigent deaf, dumb (mute), or blind children belonging to the District of Columbia. Edward Miner Gallaudet was the first superintendent of the new school.

On November 1, 1858, the First Annual Report was submitted to the Secretary of the Interior.

During the school's second full year of operation (1858–1859), 14 deaf students and 7 blind students were in attendance. Superintendent Gallaudet, anticipating the future growth of the school, requested money for more buildings, lamenting the fact that the money was not issued in the year prior, due to federal budget problems. The Second Annual Report was submitted November 5, 1859.

During the third academic year (1859–1860), Kendall beseeched the federal government for funds to relocate the school to more spacious grounds. Gallaudet praised Kendall for donating money needed to construct a new brick building; both existing school buildings were already at capacity. There were 24 deaf students, necessitating a second teacher of the deaf. The teacher of the 6 blind students resigned due to health concerns.

By the start of the 1860–1861 academic year, the Civil War had been in progress for over six months. Gallaudet reported that the students were safe and free from fear. There were 35 deaf students and 6 blind students in attendance during the academic year. An art teacher was hired for the first time.

During 1861–1862, new monies provided for industrial education were used to rent a nearby shop in order to teach cabinet-making to the male students. Plans were underway to construct a new building using $9,000 that Congress appropriated to the school. There were 35 deaf students and 6 blind students. During vacation in August a regiment of Union troops used the brick building for a hospital, and some of the students who stayed over the summer helped with tending to the sick soldiers. One soldier died. For the first time, Gallaudet proposed expanding the school to create a college for deaf students.

Even with new construction completed for the 1862–1863 school year, the school was still at capacity and more money was needed to purchase 13 acre of adjoining land and then build still more buildings. Gallaudet asked for money to pipe in water from the Anacostia River, as the existing cistern and well were inadequate for the school's burgeoning needs.

College-level courses were offered for the first time during the 1863–64 academic year. In early 1864, the 38th Congress authorized the institution to grant and confirm college degrees and an enabling act was signed by President Lincoln on April 8. Today, April 8 is celebrated at Gallaudet as Charter Day in commemoration of the official beginning of Gallaudet University. The collegiate department became known as the National College for the Deaf and Dumb from 1864 to 1865 and then would be known as the National Deaf-Mute College until 1894. In recognition of his hard work in helping the institution grow during its formative years, Gallaudet was also promoted from superintendent to president. An elaborate inauguration ceremony of Gallaudet as president was held in June with Laurent Clerc in attendance. 14 acre of land was purchased with money supplied by the government. He continued to push for funds for expansion and new buildings.

The enrollment numbers increased rapidly during the 1864–1865 academic year. That same year, in early 1865, the 38th Congress removed the provision that the institution was to educate the blind, and renamed it the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. (This would be the corporate name for the entire institution, including the collegiate division, until 1911, when the legal name was changed to the Columbia Institution for the Deaf. ) Gallaudet asked the government for money to accomplish several projects, including the construction of an ice house and a gas house, sewer lines, and more. Major construction from earlier projects continued on campus. Following Gallaudet's proposal a year earlier to discontinue services for the small number of blind students the institution had at the time, explaining that the blind students would be better served at a specialized facility, the blind students were henceforth transferred to the school for the blind in Baltimore, Maryland.

During the 1865–1866 academic year, Gallaudet responded to criticism from supporters of the oral method in Massachusetts, saying that oral instruction is usually of little value to congenitally deaf children. Gallaudet proposed that a representative of the school be sent to Europe to study the methods employed there, in order to determine which types of instructional methods might be added to those methods already being used successfully at the Columbia Institution and other American schools. Combined enrollment of all levels of instruction, including the collegiate level, exceeded 100 for the first time during this year. There were 25 students enrolled in the college, including students from 14 states. Edward Allen Fay joined the faculty as a professor of history, having learned to sign as a child.

In the 1866–1867 academic year, the building for the primary school was extended and sickness was thereby reduced. A mathematics professor was hired for the first time. More money was needed to accommodate additional students expected to swell the ranks of the school.

Gallaudet gave a lengthy account of his travels to Europe in 1867 and was very critical of the extent to which speech is taught to deaf children in European schools for the deaf. Nevertheless, he recommended that a limited amount of speech training be afforded to deaf students in America to those who show they can benefit. His travels took him to: Doncaster, England; Birmingham, England; Manchester, England; Liverpool, England; Glasgow, Scotland; Belfast, Ireland; Dublin, Ireland; Geneva, Switzerland; Nancy, France, Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort, France; Vienna, Austria; Leipsic, Saxony (Leipzig, Germany); Lubec (Lübeck, Germany); Frankfort On-the-Main (Frankfurt, Germany); Brussels, Belgium; Zürich, Switzerland; Rotterdam, Netherlands; Paris, France; Weissenfels, Prussia (Weißenfels, Germany); Prague, Bohemia; (Prague, Czech Republic); Berlin, Prussia (Berlin, Germany); Milan, Italy; Genoa, Italy; Turin, Italy; Dresden, Saxony (Dresden, Germany); London, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; Bordeaux, France; Marseilles, France; Munich, Bavaria (Munich, Germany); Bruges, Belgium; Saint Petersburg, Russia; Åbo, Finland (Turku, Finland); Stockholm, Sweden; and Copenhagen, Denmark.

The biggest educational conference in the then-history of deaf education was held during the month of May 1868 in Washington, D.C., largely made up of principals of schools for the deaf. Fourteen of the twenty-two schools for the deaf were represented. The chief topic of discussion was the recommendations put forth by Edward Gallaudet regarding adding articulation lessons to schools' curricula.

In 1868–1869, the first students completed a full course of college studies, all three men graduating with bachelor's degrees in June.

The founder of the school, Amos Kendall, died in November 1869. Gallaudet delivered a eulogy at the board meeting in January 1870. The main central building, now called Chapel Hall, was partially completed, with rooms in the basement and on the first floor first being used. Plans were being made to purchase Amos Kendall's estate, which adjoined the grounds of the school. Gallaudet cautioned Congress that Kendall's heirs had plans to subdivide the property if it was not sold to the Columbia Institution, and hence the land would never again become available for purchase as a whole.

In the 1871–1872 academic year, the diplomas of the graduates that summer were signed by President U.S. Grant, beginning a tradition of all Gallaudet graduates having their diplomas signed by the then-serving US president.

In 1881, Laura Sheridan, a hearing woman, inquired about the school accepting women. She was told that deaf women could not enter the institution at the time. In 1887 Gallaudet agreed to allow women to matriculate for the 1887-1888 and 1888–1889 academic years with the understanding that it would be considered an experiment. Temporary living arrangements were made for the 11 students who initially entered. Five female students remained when the school announced in 1889 that the college would be permanently coeducational, with two graduating. One of the students was Agatha Tiegel in the class of 1893, who later married the well-known deaf architect Olof Hanson.

In 1894, the collegiate division was officially renamed Gallaudet College from the National Deaf-Mute College in honor of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, President Gallaudet's father.

20th century
In 1911, Congress amended the charter of the institution, changing the corporate name to Columbia Institution for the Deaf. It would remain the legal name for the institution until 1954, when Congress amended the charter to rename it Gallaudet College, which had been the official name of the collegiate department since 1894.

During his 17 years as Dean of the college in the 1950s and 1960s, George Ernst Detmold was a significant figure in helping the college achieve accreditation. He also led the college in developing new departments, especially drama. He directed Gallaudet theater productions, which eventually led to starting the National Theatre of the Deaf.

In 1965, professors at Gallaudet compiled the first-ever dictionary of ASL signs.

In 1986, Congress again amended the charter of the institution, renaming it Gallaudet University.

Deaf President Now (1988)
Student strikes at Gallaudet University starting March 6, 1988, revolutionized the perception and education of Deaf culture. Deaf students were outraged at the selection of another hearing president, Elisabeth Zinser; the university had never selected a deaf person for this position. Alumni, faculty, staff, and students demanded that the next president of the university be deaf. After a week of protest and activism, Zinser resigned and was replaced by I. King Jordan. This movement became known as Deaf President Now (DPN).

Unity for Gallaudet Movement (2006)
Jordan announced his retirement in September 2005. On May 1, 2006, the university's board of trustees announced that Jane Fernandes, the university's then-current provost, would be the university's next president. This was met with protests from the student body – in person, on campus, and in internet blogs and forums.

Initially, students cited the lack of racial diversity among finalists, Fernandes's lack of warmth, and her lack of fluency in American Sign Language.

Jordan publicly accused some critics of rejecting Fernandes because "she is not deaf enough." He described the protest as "identity politics", saying, "We are squabbling about what it means to be deaf."

The Washington Post reported that Fernandes "would like to see the institution become more inclusive of people who might not have grown up using sign language", stating that Gallaudet must embrace "all kinds of deaf people". Those who opposed her said that they feared a "weakening of American Sign Language at an institution that should be its standard-bearer." Protesters said Fernandes distorted their arguments and that the protest centered on her inability to lead, an unfair selection process and longstanding problems at the school.

In the spring 2006 protest, students blocked entrances to the Gallaudet campus, held rallies, and set up tents near the university's main entrance. Fernandes, appointed to serve as president-designate until Jordan retired, said that she would not step down. On May 8, the faculty gave a vote of no confidence for Fernandes.

When the fall 2006 academic year resumed, some students, faculty, staff, and alumni continued their protest, calling for Fernandes to step down and for the presidential search to be done again. On October 11, a group of protesting students shut down the campus. On October 16 at a regularly scheduled meeting, faculty members voted 138 to 24 to block Fernandes from becoming president of Gallaudet University.

Fernandes said, "I really don't understand so I have to believe it's not about me. ... I believe it's about evolution and change and growth in the deaf community."

On October 29, the university withdrew the appointment of Fernandes. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, Jordan defended Fernandes's remarks and denounced the board's decision and the actions of the protesters, saying, "I am convinced that the board made a serious error in acceding to the demands of the protesters by terminating Fernandes's presidency before it began."

On December 10, 2006, the Board of Trustees announced that Robert Davila would serve as interim president for a period of up to two years. He was formally installed on May 9, 2007, during a ceremony that included a speech by D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who spoke positively of the 2006 protest. He stepped down on December 31, 2009.

On June 29, 2007, in the aftermath of the controversy over the university's presidency, Gallaudet was temporarily placed on probation by its accreditation organization, the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. It was also reported that in 2006, the Office of Management and Budget had found that "Gallaudet failed to meet its goals or showed declining performance in key areas, including the number of students who stay in school, graduate and either pursue graduate degrees or find jobs upon graduation." In January 2007, former president Jordan wrote an editorial on the topic that appeared in the Washington Post. The Middle States Commission later reaffirmed Gallaudet's accreditation on June 27, 2008.

On October 18, 2009, the Board of Trustees announced that Gallaudet's tenth president would be Alan Hurwitz. He began his tenure on January 1, 2010, and served until he retired on December 31, 2015, succeeded by Roberta Cordano, the eleventh president.

Congressional charter
The university acknowledges that it "is a congressionally created corporation that serves governmental objectives." The university and the US Department of Education explain that Gallaudet has been structured by the Federal Government to take the form of a "federally chartered, private, non-profit educational institution." The federal government plays various roles within the institution:
 * Congress incorporated the Columbia Institution in 1857, significantly amended its charter in 1954, and authorized permanent congressional appropriations. In 1986, Congress passed the Education of the Deaf Act and amended it in 1992. These Congressional acts are part of "the supreme law of Gallaudet University."
 * Gallaudet must obtain authorization from the secretary of the US Department of Education in order to sell or transfer title of any of its real property.
 * The diplomas of all Gallaudet graduates are signed by the current U.S. president, which dates from President U.S. Grant signing students' diplomas in 1869.
 * Three members of Congress are appointed to the university's board of trustees as "Public Members".
 * Gallaudet must provide annual reports to the secretary of education.
 * "Gallaudet receives the bulk of its income in the form of an annual appropriation from Congress, and the Department of Education oversees the University's appropriation for the Federal government."
 * Gallaudet University (and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf) are authorized to make purchases through the General Services Administration.

Gallaudet's Fifty-Fifth Annual Report contains an appendix that includes the text of 99 Federal Acts related to Gallaudet/Columbia which were enacted between 1857 and 1912.

Presidential visits
There have been 15 occasions to date in Gallaudet's history when a US president has visited either the campus or attended an official function off campus. President Johnson's second visit, in 1966, was unannounced and impromptu. President Taft had promised to attend President Percival Hall's installation on May 10, 1911, and give an address, but cancelled at the last minute before the ceremony. President Kennedy had planned to attend the centennial celebration at Gallaudet in 1964, but was assassinated.

 * President Ulysses S. Grant, 1870 and 1871.
 * President Rutherford B. Hayes, 1877, 1878, 1879, and 1880.
 * President James A. Garfield, 1881.
 * President Chester A. Arthur, 1882.
 * President Grover Cleveland, 1885.
 * President Benjamin Harrison, 1889 (two visits, May and June).
 * President Theodore Roosevelt, 1906.
 * President Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1964   and 1966.
 * President Bill Clinton, 1994.

Academics
Several programs and majors are offered at Gallaudet University. The five most popular majors are business, visual and performing arts, communication studies, physical education, and psychology. Gallaudet University offers thirty graduate programs in ten Departments as well as on-line and on-campus continuing education courses. Over 90 percent of the classes offered at Gallaudet University contain fewer than 20 students. The freshman retention rate at the university is 69–77 percent, the four-year graduation rate is 17–27 percent, and the six-year graduation rate is 43–53 percent (for freshmen entering 2008–2012).

Classes are conducted in ASL with no spoken English, and curriculum materials are designed in both ASL and English. The classrooms are visually-oriented, and are organized around the philosophy of DeafSpace, such as all the desks arranged in a circle so that all students and teachers can see one another for discussions. If a professor needs to get the attention of the classroom, they will flash a light signal.

Historic designations
The Gallaudet campus, comprising the Gallaudet College Historic District, has been designated a historic place on several registries and surveys:
 * Gallaudet College Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
 * District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites (listings added in 1964 and 1973).
 * National Historic Landmarks designation (added 1965).
 * Historic American Buildings Survey (added 1933).

Pre-college education
The campus is shared with Kendall Demonstration Elementary School, a day school serving deaf and hard of hearing students from birth through grade 8, and the Model Secondary School for the Deaf, a day and residential high school for deaf and hard of hearing students.

Gallaudet also operates a child development center with admissions priority for children of faculty, staff, and students. Separate from the KDES Early Childhood Program, the child development center is inclusive of, but not exclusively for, deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

Redevelopment of campus (2015–2024)
In October 2014, the Gallaudet University board of trustees announced a 10-year, $450 million development of its campus along 6th Street NE. The development, which includes both campus property as well as college-owned residential and retail property across the street, will be overseen by JBG Smith.

Athletics

Gallaudet athletic teams are the Bison. The university is a member of the Division III level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), primarily competing as a core member of the United East Conference (formerly known as the North Eastern Athletic Conference (NEAC) until after the 2020–21 academic year) for most its sports since the 2010–11 academic year; in the Eastern Collegiate Football Conference for football; and as Independents for their men's and women's swimming & diving and track & field teams. The Bison previously competed in the Capital Athletic Conference from 1989–90 to 2009–10.

Their colors are buff and blue, which were chosen after Union soldiers' uniforms in the Civil War.

Gallaudet competes in 16 intercollegiate varsity sports: Men's sports include baseball, basketball, cross country, football, soccer, swimming and track & field (indoor and outdoor); while women's sports include basketball, cross country, soccer, softball, swimming, track & field (indoor and outdoor) and volleyball. Club sports include cheerleading for both men and women.

Facilities
The football and soccer teams play at Hotchkiss Field with the track and field teams using Berg Track located within Hotchkiss Field for track meets. Basketball and volleyball use the GU Field House for home games. Hoy Field is home to the baseball team and the GU Softball Complex hosts the softball team.

Women's basketball
Gallaudet women's basketball made its biggest splash in 1999, with a group of players from the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf among those leading the way. Ronda Jo Miller, most certainly the greatest women's basketball player in the program's history, was a three-time Division III All-America selection, as well as one of the top women's volleyball players.

Under the leadership of coach Kitty Baldridge, Miller, Touria Ouahid, Ronda Johnson and Jenny Cooper led the Bison to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three seasons. Receiving one of the lowest seeds as an at-large team into the Division III NCAA Tournament field, which numbered just 48 teams, the Bison traveled to St. Mary's College (Md.), the school which had just defeated them in the Capital Athletic Conference tournament, and came away with an 80–73 win. In the second round, Gallaudet faced a team from The College of New Jersey which had received a first-round bye and was highly favored, but Miller poured in 38 points, using a variety of impressive shots. The Bison advanced to the Sweet 16 round of the 1999 tournament before falling to host school Salem State College (Mass.).

Miller finished with 2,656 points scored, 1,545 rebounds and 373 blocked shots, and was called "one of the best basketball players in Division III history" by the NCAA.

Kevin Cook coached the team briefly to success. The team had not won a conference game in five years and even lost a game by 75 points in Cook's first year in charge. Cook's persistence on defense and discipline turned the program around. Gallaudet began the 2010–11 season on a 20-game winning streak and finished the season 24–4 (20–2 in conference play). Cook was named North Eastern Athletic Conference Coach of the Year, and senior Easter Faafiti was voted NEAC Player of the Year. The 2010–11 season ended in the first round of the Division III NCAA Championships with a loss to Juniata.

After a victory over Penn State-Berks in the 2010–11 season, Penn State guard Corin Bishop "said that she views the Gallaudet team as a great basketball team, not a team of deaf players." Hayes of Gallaudet later said, "I feel like there are people who stereotype us as deaf players, I'm just like everyone else who plays basketball". In an interview with Lydia Lum of Diverse, he said, "Because of us, there's a growing awareness that there are differences between deaf people, but we're all the same."

Football

The football huddle originated at Gallaudet when the team noticed that their opponents were trying to see and read their signs in order to try to guess their plays.

After an undefeated season in 2005, which was achieved after 122 years, head coach Ed Hottle began his campaign to return Gallaudet to the NCAA ranks. With support from the Gallaudet administration, the Bison played their last season of club football in 2006 and played a full NCAA slate of eight games in 2007.

After the 2009 football season, Coach Hottle left to become the first head coach of the first football team at Stevenson University. Offensive Coordinator Chuck Goldstein was tapped to be the interim head coach of the football team. On December 17, 2009, the interim tag was removed and he is now the permanent head coach of the team.

Gallaudet University's football team has a longstanding rivalry with Catholic University of America, another school in the Washington, D.C., area. On September 7, 2012, Gallaudet University defeated Catholic University of America for the first time in the 106-year history of the rivalry between the two D.C. schools.

In the fall of 2013, Gallaudet's football program began a remarkable run for the Division III playoffs and garnering a considerable amount of publicity, winning the regular season with a 9–1 record, before falling to Hobart College in the first round of the playoffs and ending the season with a 9–2 (.818) overall record.

Volleyball
In 2006, the Gallaudet women's volleyball team ended their season 30–10 after a history-making run to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA Division III tournament. Tamijo Foronda, a senior outside hitter, was named to the AVCA All-American Team.

Noted athletes
Notable athletes that have attended the university include:
 * Dawn Birley won several national Canadian Taekwondo championships.

Greek life
The campus Greek community is relatively small with only three fraternities and three sororities. The three fraternities are Alpha Sigma Pi, Kappa Gamma and Kappa Sigma. The three sororities are Delta Epsilon, Phi Kappa Zeta, and Kappa Theta Phi.

National Deaf Life Museum
Gallaudet is home to the National Deaf Life Museum, established in 2007 as the Gallaudet University Museum. The museum focuses on the culture and history of deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States, with special attention given to Gallaudet history and alumni. The museum is located in Chapel Hall, while museum staff are housed in the campus Gate House. Exhibits created by the museum include highlighting notable alumni such as Olof Hanson, Robert Panara, and Andrew Jackson Foster; "Deaf HERstory", focusing on the lives and activism of deaf women; and "Deaf Difference + Space Survival", highlighting the story of the "Gallaudet Eleven" who contributed to NASA's studies of motion sickness and weightlessness during the Space Race.

Research
The Gallaudet Office of Research Support and International Affairs (RSIA) (formerly Gallaudet Research Institute or GRI) is internationally recognized for its leadership in deafness-related research. RSIA researchers gather and analyze data concerning the social, academic, and perceptual characteristics of deaf and hard of hearing populations, primarily to provide information needed by educators in the field. Staff are skilled in various research methodologies including surveys, test norming and assessment, ethnographic studies, clinical studies, and information management. In 2016, RSIA began hosting the Gallaudet Research Expo, to give students, faculty, and staff "the opportunity to share ideas and showcase scholarly pursuits and achievements." Presentations represent "education, linguistics, STM, neuroscience, interpretation and translation, computer science, audiology, psychology, deaf studies, and other fields that reflect Gallaudet's research priorities."

Gallaudet University Press publishes two academic journals, American Annals of the Deaf (est. 1847) and Sign Language Studies (est. 1972). The Annals are "the oldest and most widely read English-language journal dealing with deafness and the education of deaf persons."

The Department of Psychology's chapter of Psi Chi publishes the journal Gallaudet Chronicles of Psychology. The journal is managed and edited by graduate student members of the chapter. The Chronicles are designed to "mimic professional, peer-reviewed journals" and provides graduate students with an opportunity disseminate their original psychology research. In 2018, the chapter will be publishing the fifth volume of the Chronicles.

In the fall of 2010, the university's Department of Deaf Studies launched the Deaf Studies Digital Journal (DSDJ), the first peer-reviewed academic and creative arts journal in American Sign Language and English. The DSDJ itself is published in entirely video-based content and is available online. To date, only four issues of DSDJ have been released, the most recent being published in 2014.

title: Gallaudet University