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Grand Valley State University

Grand Valley State University (GVSU, GV, or Grand Valley) is a public university in Allendale, Michigan. It was established in 1960 as Grand Valley State College. Its main campus is situated on 1322 acre approximately 12 mi west of Grand Rapids. The university also features campuses in Grand Rapids and Holland and regional centers in Battle Creek, Detroit, Muskegon, and Traverse City.

GVSU enrolls more than 24,000 students as of fall 2021 from all 83 Michigan counties and dozens of other states and foreign countries. It employs more than 3,000 people, with about 1,780 academic faculty and 1,991 support staff. The university has alumni from 50 U.S. states, Canada, and 25 other countries.

GVSU's NCAA Division II sports teams are the Lakers and they compete in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) in all 21 intercollegiate varsity sports. They have won 28 NCAA Division II National Championships.

Formation, planning and construction
In 1958 the Michigan Legislature commissioned a study that demonstrated a need for a four-year college in the Grand Rapids area, Michigan's second largest metropolitan region. Local businessman Bill Seidman created a committee to study the report and spearhead the planning and promotion to create such an institution. In the following year the Michigan Legislature established the college. A naming contest was held, and out of 2500 submissions, "Grand Valley State College" was chosen. Private donations, including $350,000 to purchase land and $1,000,000 for construction, were secured from 5,000 individuals, organizations, and business throughout West Michigan. In 1961, the Grand Valley State College Board of Control chose a 876 acre site in Ottawa County near the Grand River for the new campus, and construction of academic buildings began the following year.

Early years
Grand Valley State College accepted its first class of 225 students in 1963, Diane (Hatch) Paton was the first student, and was among the first graduation of 138 students on June 18, 1967. The middle-late 1960s saw the addition of the first dormitories and construction of new academic buildings, including the Zumberge Library, named for the university's first president, James Zumberge.

In 1969, the Grand Valley Lanthorn printed an issue containing several vulgarities and obscenities. After complaints from some at Grand Valley State College and the surrounding communities, the Ottawa County, Michigan, sheriff arrested the editor, and the prosecutor closed down the newspaper office. The university, then a co-ed college, sued the sheriff and prosecutor for closing the Lanthorn offices. Eventually, Michigan's Attorney General settled the case out of court, siding with the college because the Lanthorn's content was considered covered by Freedom of Speech.

During the 1970s Grand Valley organized its academic units into several colleges: College of Arts and Sciences, Thomas Jefferson College, William James College, Seidman College of Business, and College IV. Michigan Governor William Milliken signed the law changing the institution's name to Grand Valley State Colleges in 1973. However, the "s" was dropped and the name was reverted to Grand Valley State College in 1983 when the academic programs were reorganized into divisions.

College to comprehensive university
In 1987 the Michigan Legislature passed a law renaming the college to Grand Valley State University. The 1980s and 1990s saw addition of satellite campuses or centers in downtown Grand Rapids, Muskegon, Holland, and Traverse City. In 2004, the university's board reorganized the university structure again into a college system consisting of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, College of Interdisciplinary Studies, College of Community and Public Service, College of Education, College of Health Professions, Kirkhof College of Nursing, Seidman College of Business, and Seymour and Esther Padnos College of Engineering and Computing. Grand Valley completed its first 50 years with a comprehensive campaign that raised almost $100 million from over 17,000 donors, making it the university's largest campaign to date. Money raised during the campaign has helped fund many construction projects on campus, including the Mary Idema Pew Library and the L. William Seidman Center.

Continued growth beyond 50th anniversary
In 2012, GVSU announced several more construction projects and land purchases. Future buildings to be constructed include a new biology laboratory building and an addition and renovation to the Zumberge Library on the Allendale campus. Land purchases in 2012 included property in downtown Grand Rapids adjacent to the medical mile for healthcare program expansion. In 2013, GVSU announced it would add on to Au Sable Hall and construct a building to house the GVSU Laker Store (known as University Bookstore prior to April 2015), with expanded dining facilities.

Campuses and centers
Grand Valley has three campuses: the main campus in Allendale and two satellite campuses in the surrounding area. Smaller centers in Muskegon, Detroit and Traverse City also exist.

The Interurban Transit Partnership operates several The Rapid bus routes under contract with the university. The public can ride these buses by paying the fare, but rides are free to Grand Valley students, faculty and staff on all Rapid routes with a valid I.D. card.

Allendale campus
The university's main and original campus in Allendale is the site of most of the university's programs. The Allendale campus is composed of 1,322 acres perched above the Grand River next to a system of ravines and is divided into two areas, north and south campus, separated by West Campus Drive. State highway M-45 links the campus in suburban Allendale to US Highway 31/Lake Michigan to the west and Grand Rapids, Michigan to the east. Lubbers Stadium, the GVSU Fieldhouse and all other athletic facilities for the school's 19 varsity sports are also on the Allendale campus. The campus is dotted with many sculptures, including works by Dale Eldred and James Clover. Academic facilities on the Allendale campus include 122 classrooms, 144 research laboratories, 20 lab prep rooms, 21 computer labs, and the Mary Idema Pew Library Learning and Information Commons. The Allendale campus is also home to the Kindschi Hall of Science, a science facility that opened in the fall of 2015.

The Holton-Hooker Learning and Living Center, with space for 490 students, opened in August 2016. The building is LEED silver-certified.

Robert C. Pew Grand Rapids Campus
The 65 acre Robert C. Pew Grand Rapids Campus is in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids and on the banks of the Grand River. It consists of 11 buildings and three leased spaces and includes the Richard DeVos Center, L.V. Eberhard Center, Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences, L. William Seidman Center, Beckering Family Carillon Tower, The Depot (houses the Michigan Small Business and Technology Development headquarters), Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, Keller Engineering Laboratories, John C. Kennedy Hall of Engineering, Peter F. Secchia Hall (housing), Winter Hall (housing), and the Van Andel Global Trade Center. Winter Hall is typically occupied by graduate students and is fully furnished along with appliances. These facilities include 57 classrooms, 78 research laboratories, 23 lab prep rooms, 11 computer labs, and the Steelcase Library.

Health Campus
The 14.5 acre Health Campus is a part of the Grand Rapids Medical Mile area and houses many of GVSU's health programs. The Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences (CHS), which opened in 2003, reached capacity in 2011. To accommodate the growth in the health sciences, GVSU completed the $37.5 million Raleigh J. Finkelstein Hall north of the Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences, and in 2018 broke ground on the next phase, the Daniel and Pamella DeVos Center for Interprofessional Health, a $70 million building that is attached to the Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences and includes a parking structure shared with nearby Spectrum Health.

Meijer campus in Holland
The Meijer Campus, just outside downtown Holland, MI was opened in 1998 and was named for the Meijer Family for their generous donation of land. The campus houses continuing education programs in 30693 sqft of building space and contains 12 classrooms, 2 conference rooms, 3 labs and 11 offices.

Muskegon centers
GVSU has three locations in Muskegon:
 * James L. Stevenson Center for Higher Education at Muskegon Community College was established in the fall of 1995 as a joint venture between GVSU, Ferris State University, and Western Michigan University. The center offers several GVSU graduate and undergraduate programs.
 * Lake Michigan Center, which houses the Annis Water Resources Institute (AWRI).
 * The Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center (MAREC), which is the first fully integrated demonstration facility for distributed generation of electricity using alternative and renewable energy technologies in the United States.

Traverse City center
The Traverse City Regional Center was established in the fall of 1995 and is at the NMC University Center in a partnership with Northwestern Michigan College. The center offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in education, social work, and liberal studies. The GVSU Physician Assistant program enrolls 10-14 students at the TC campus.

Detroit center
The Detroit Center was established in 2012 when GVSU purchased the Barden Building adjacent to Comerica Park in downtown Detroit, Michigan to house its charter school offices. The center also houses the Southeast Michigan Region of the Michigan Small Business & Technology Development Center, of which GVSU is the supervisor.

Administration
Grand Valley State University is governed by an eight-member board of trustees, whose members are appointed by the Governor of Michigan and confirmed by the Michigan Senate for terms of eight years. This setup is provided for by the constitution of the state of Michigan of 1963. Members of the board serve without compensation. The board appoints the president of the university, formulates university policies, controls university finances, and acts as the supreme governing body of the institution. The president of the university administers the policies of the board of trustees.

Funding and financial
GVSU's general fund budget is $351 million, of which $275 million is from tuition and $72 million is from state appropriations. As of 2019, Grand Valley's amount of university-based student financial aid was $289 million, including $90 million of that in scholarships and grants. During the 2013–2014 academic year, full-time dependent students received an average award of $13,276.

Public safety
The Grand Valley Police Department provides law enforcement services for the Allendale Campus. While the department is self-empowered to enforce its jurisdiction, officers are also deputized by the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department. Because Allendale doesn't have a police department, the Grand Valley State University Police can handle cases anywhere in Ottawa County, mainly in Allendale and the area surrounding the campus. The department handles other security issues, such as parking and driving violations, community policing, as well lost and found. Allendale Fire Department serves the campus. The Department of Public Safety also employs several students who assist the department by performing a variety of clerical and security based duties and services. The Pew Campus Security and Regional Centers is an entity distinct from the Department of Public safety, and handles security and public safety issues for the Grand Rapids Pew Campus and all Regional Centers including the Holland (MI) Meijer Campus, the Muskegon (MI) campus and the Traverse City (MI) campus. This department is not sworn or certified and relies on the Grand Rapids Police Department and other local law enforcement agencies for official law enforcement when necessary.

Student government
Student government at Grand Valley is formally known as Student Senate. There are 50 student senators that serve on one of seven different committees. Student Senate offices are in the Kirkhof Center on GVSU's Allendale campus.

Academics
Grand Valley State University is a large, primarily residential comprehensive university that has a large undergraduate enrollment and emphasis. GVSU offers over 200 areas of study, including 82 undergraduate majors and 36 graduate programs that include 74 graduate emphases and certificate programs at the certificate, bachelor's, post-bachelor's, master's, post-master's, and doctoral levels. GVSU conferred 4,448 undergraduate degrees and 1,033 graduate degrees in 2012–2013. Its most popular undergraduate majors, by 2021 graduates, were:
 * Biomedical Sciences (262)
 * Health Professions and Related Clinical Sciences (250)
 * Exercise Science and Kinesiology (250)
 * Marketing/Marketing Management (226)
 * Psychology (226)
 * Registered Nursing/Registered Nurse (208)
 * Finance (205)

Grand Valley's student body consists of 21,636 undergraduates and 3,458 graduate students across all campuses and centers with the majority being on the Allendale campus (as of Fall 2014). The fall 2014 incoming freshman undergraduate class of 4,199 students, represented 80 Michigan counties, 23 states, and 20 countries. 86% of first year students live on campus: 3,591 freshman chose to live on-campus in fall 2014, while 608 chose to live off-campus. As of fall 2014, more than 400 international students were enrolled at the university representing 82 countries.

Undergraduate admissions
GVSU's undergraduate admissions are classified as "more selective" by U.S. News & World Report as Grand Valley admitted 69% of applicants for the 2008–2009 school year. For the Class of 2025 (enrolling Fall 2021), GVSU received 17,163 applications and accepted 15,730 (91.7%), with 3,807 enrolling. The middle 50% range of SAT scores for enrolling freshmen was 1010-1230. The middle 50% ACT composite score range was 21-27.

Colleges
The university consists of seven degree-granting colleges:
 * F.E. Seidman College of Business
 * College of Education and Community Innovation
 * College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
 * Seymour and Esther Padnos College of Engineering and Computing
 * College of Health Professions
 * Kirkhof College of Nursing
 * Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies

GVSU is also home to the Frederik Meijer Honors College, which is non-degree-granting but is meant to provide a more challenging interdisciplinary education in a learning-living environment. The honors college is in the Glenn A. Niemeyer Learning and Living Center on the south side of the Allendale campus.

Study abroad
The Padnos International Center collaborates with students who wish to study abroad. Grand Valley has more than 4,000 study abroad programs, both affiliated with and independent from GVSU, from which students can choose.

In 1995 Peimin Ni established GVSU's Shanghai, China study abroad program, and by the 2000s he and Geling Shang  co-lead it. Word of mouth and announcements in classes were used to promote it. Daniel Golden, author of Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America's Universities, stated that the organizers initially had trouble finding interested students.

Rankings
U.S. News & World Report ranked Grand Valley third in the "Top Public Regional Universities in the Midwest" category and 26th in the "Regional Universities (Midwest) tier 1" category for 2014.

US News & World Report noted in its "Best Colleges 2011" that 98 percent of Grand Valley graduates find employment or pursue advanced degrees after graduation.

Research
During the two years prior to October 2009 university researchers engaged in over 186 research projects funded by more than $32.7 million in grants. Grand Valley's Annis Water Resources Institute conducts research on water resources, including: ecosystem structure and function, contaminants and toxicology, hydrology, land use, watershed, stream, and wetland ecology, water quality, and basic and applied limnology. GVSU's Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center (MAREC) recently received funding for its $3.7 million Lake Michigan Offshore Wind Assessment Project to test wind energy on Lake Michigan. The research should take three years as a floating buoy will be used and moved to collect data from different locations on the lake.

Accreditation
Grand Valley as an institution is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. Grand Valley also has baccalaureate program accreditation with AACSB, ABET, APTA, CSWE, NASAD, NASM, NCATE, and NLN.

GVSU and MSU partnerships
The Michigan State University College of Human Medicine maintains the Secchia Center, a medical campus in downtown Grand Rapids. Along with GVSU and two Grand Rapids hospitals, it is a founding member of the Grand Rapids Medical Education Partners. This partnership allows "educational opportunities for residents, fellows, practicing physicians, physician assistants, nurses and students in other health professions."

The Early Assurance Program reserves spaces in MSU's medical program for top-performing GVSU pre-medical graduates. One of the program's goals is to select first-generation college students, students from underprivileged areas, and students who have expressed a desire to work in high-demand medical specialties. Students entering the program must agree to work in under-served areas after they complete their medical degrees. The first group of six students entered this program during the fall 2010 semester.

The two universities have announced a joint program specializing in clinical trial management, aimed at providing the foundations for carrying out clinical drug trials in West Michigan. It is an online certificate program, and was started due to requests from local drug trial companies. The program was set to begin for the fall semester of 2011.

Library locations
Each library's collection is tailored to its location and the programs it serves, with daily deliveries between sites.
 * Mary Idema Pew Library (Allendale)
 * Seidman House (Allendale)
 * Steelcase Library (Grand Rapids)
 * Frey Foundation Learning Center (Grand Rapids)
 * Curriculum Materials Library (Grand Rapids)

Library services
The university libraries offer opportunities for research, collaboration, and individual study. Collectively, the libraries subscribe to over 60,000 print and electronic journals. They also house more than 1,482,633 books including more than 829,463 electronic books.

Collections

 * Government resources and maps

Grand Valley is a recipient of United States government documents and receives 44% of the documents distributed by the Federal Depository Library Program.

The Curriculum Materials Library in the DeVos Center downtown houses instructional materials for preschool through grade twelve and provide spaces where education majors can preview resources, develop lesson plans, create media for the classroom, and try out teaching aides.
 * Curriculum Materials Library (CML)

Seidman House on the Allendale Campus houses the University Archives, which include extensive collections of rare books and Michigan novels, the Harvey Lemmen Collection on Abraham Lincoln, the Young Lords project on line at Young Lords in Lincoln Park, the largest Latino oral history collection in the Mid-West by Jose Cha Cha Jimenez, and the American Civil War, and the papers of acclaimed Michigan author Jim Harrison. There is also an Anthony Powell collection, consisting of the many editions of Dance to the Music of Time, his other novels, a complete run of the Anthony Powell Society Newsletters and its journal, Secret Harmonies.
 * Special Collections & University Archives

A collection of over 15,000 works of art features public sculpture, prints and drawings, American Impressionism, Aboriginal art, Indian art, world photography, contemporary art, and more. Artists represented in the collection range from GVSU faculty, students, and alumni; to regional Michigan artists; to nationally and internationally renowned artists. Most of the collection is on view and can be found throughout university buildings on campuses in Allendale, Grand Rapids, Holland, Muskegon, Traverse City, and Detroit.
 * Art Galleries and Collections

The Digital Collections database contains a selection of photographs, correspondence, diaries, interviews, and publications from the holdings of the Libraries' Special Collections & University Archives, and other University entities.
 * Digital Collections

The Dorothy A. Johnson Collection is a collection on philanthropy, volunteerism, and nonprofit leadership. It is considered to be one of the most comprehensive in the United States and is the only one of its kind in Michigan.
 * Dorothy A. Johnson Collection for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership

Allendale campus library
Construction of a new library on the Allendale campus began in May 2011 and finished in the Spring 2013. The $70 million, 140000 sqft facility holds 150,000 books. It also has an automated storage and retrieval system that can handle 600,000 volumes. The library is named the Mary Idema Pew Library Learning and Information Commons, after the late Mary Idema Pew. The U.S. Department of Energy announced the library used part of the $21 million allocated for technical assistance projects to improve energy use in commercial buildings. The library was one of only 24 projects in the United States receiving the assistantships that was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Athletics
The Grand Valley State Lakers are the intercollegiate athletic teams of Grand Valley State University. The GVSU Lakers compete at the NCAA Division II level and offer 21 varsity sports including 11 for women and 10 for men. The university participates in and is a founding member of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC). Grand Valley's varsity athletic teams have won 28 national championships in several sports. GVSU has also won the prestigious National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) Directors' Cup for NCAA Division II schools fourteen times: in 2004 thru 2011, 2014 thru 2017, 2019, and 2022. The Lakers also have five second-place finishes in 2002, 2003, 2012, 2013 and 2018. The cup is awarded to the top athletic programs based on overall team national finishes. Grand Valley is the first college east of the Mississippi River to win the Director's Cup for NCAA Division II.

Mascot
The official mascot of Grand Valley State is Louie the Laker.

Fight song
"GVSU Victory!", which is sometimes referred to as "Grand Valley Victory", is the fight song for the Grand Valley State University Lakers.

Fine arts
GVSU has a National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) accredited art program, including emphases in illustration, graphic design, ceramics, printmaking, painting, visual studies, and sculpture. Art students attend classes at the Calder Art Center, named for contemporary artist Alexander Calder. The building includes exhibition space under the name of the Stuart & Barbara Padnos Art Gallery.

Admission into the GVSU art program requires an initial review of the potential student's work. Admitted students then undergo a series of foundation classes that properly introduce them to the formal basics of art. Passing the foundation review allows access to higher level art studies, and a choice of approaching an emphasis. Subsequent reviews may take place depending upon emphases, including both junior and senior level reviews.

Music
The music program at Grand Valley State University offers various performing ensembles, including 3 performing bands, an orchestra, several small performance ensembles, and the 230-piece Laker Marching Band and adjunct athletic bands. The Performing Arts Center (PAC) houses numerous rehearsal spaces, classrooms, labs, offices, practice halls, two dance studios, a theatre workshop, and the Louis Armstrong Theatre, along with the new Sherman Van Solkema recital hall. This space is of use to music, dance, and theater majors at Grand Valley.

In 2016, new renovations to the PAC were expected to begin, with construction scheduled to be finished in 2017. These include the addition of a small black box theater, new study spaces, rehearsal space, and labs, along with cosmetic renovations.

The New Music Ensemble (NME), directed by Bill Ryan, has released two critically acclaimed CDs, the first a recording of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, which appeared on the Billboard Classical Crossover chart, and the second entitled In C Remixed,  a remix project of Terry Riley's In C, which featured the work of some of the top electronic composers and DJs in the world, including Todd Reynolds, Michael Lowenstern, and Pulitzer prize winner David Lang. The NME performed at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City on November 2, 2009 and previously at the 2007 Bang on a Can festival.
 * New Music Ensemble

Directed by Richard Stoelzel, Grand Valley's trumpet ensemble has been a top competitor in the National Trumpet Competition for nearly a decade, placing first in the ensemble division in 2006 and 2008. The ensemble has commissioned four pieces by composer Erik Morales since 2005, two of which went on to become the winning pieces, and one of which is still unpremiered. The trumpet ensemble has performed twice during the International Trumpet Guild's summer conferences in 2007 and 2009.
 * Trumpet ensemble

Student life
The Office of Student Life at GVSU is in the Kirkhof Center near the center of the Allendale campus. Its offices are home to the Community Service Learning Center, Fraternity and Sorority Life, Laker Leadership Programs, Major Campus Events and Traditions, Student Organizations, and the Transitions Orientation Program.

Fraternity and sorority life
GVSU has 30 fraternities and sororities. As of the winter of 2016, the GVSU fraternity and sorority community consisted of 1600 undergraduate members, representing approximately 7.8% of the undergraduate population.

Fraternities

 * Interfraternity Council (IFC)
 * Alpha Epsilon Pi
 * Alpha Tau Omega
 * Delta Tau Delta
 * Pi Kappa Phi
 * Sigma Pi
 * Theta Chi
 * Multicultural Greek Council (MGC)
 * Sigma Lambda Beta
 * Phi Iota Alpha
 * National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC)
 * Alpha Phi Alpha
 * Phi Beta Sigma

Sororities

 * National Panhellenic Conference (NPC)
 * Alpha Omicron Pi
 * Alpha Sigma Alpha
 * Alpha Sigma Tau
 * Delta Zeta
 * Gamma Phi Beta
 * Phi Mu
 * Phi Sigma Sigma
 * Sigma Kappa
 * Sigma Sigma Sigma

 * Multicultural Greek Council (MGC)
 * Delta Phi Beta
 * Sigma Lambda Gamma
 * National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC)
 * Alpha Kappa Alpha
 * Delta Sigma Theta
 * Sigma Gamma Rho

Honorary and professional organizations

 * Delta Sigma Pi – Professional Fraternity Association
 * Order of Omega – national fraternity and sorority life leadership, honorary
 * Omicron Delta Kappa – national collegiate leadership, honorary
 * Alpha Phi Omega – national coed service fraternity
 * Kappa Kappa Psi – national honorary bands fraternity
 * Sigma Alpha Iota – national music fraternity for women
 * Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia – national music fraternity
 * Beta Alpha Psi – international honorary organization for finance, accounting, and information systems
 * Phi Sigma Pi – national honor fraternity
 * Phi Chi Theta – professional coed business fraternity
 * Alpha Kappa Psi - professional coed business fraternity

Sustainability
Sustainability is listed as the seventh of Grand Valley's core values. The institution's Office of Sustainability Practices provides best "practices in administration and campus operations, educational opportunities, student involvement, and community engagement." Notable programs include a community garden near the Allendale campus that also serves as a laboratory for interdisciplinary learning called the Sustainable Agriculture Project and the Sustainability Reinvestment Fund distributed in the form of mini-grants to students and staff with ideas that can improve the ecological footprint of the campus and community.

The university has created a formal climate action plan and set a goal to reduce its 2006 level of greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020. The university's sustainability efforts were awarded a "A−" by the Sustainable Endowments Institute for 2011. Grand Valley's overall sustainability grade is the highest amongst the nine Michigan universities that were surveyed and the 28th best in the nation. In other rankings GVSU was placed as high as 16th in the world and tenth in the United States for its sustainability efforts and environment-friendly university management by Universitas Indonesia GreenMetric World University Ranking for 2011.

The university is home to eleven Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) buildings or building additions. Several more buildings including the new Mary Idema Pew Library are in construction or planning stages to be LEED certified as well. All new construction and major renovations at GVSU must meet LEED standards required by the university. As of 2019 there have been 25 LEED certified projects completed at Grand Valley. $2.2 million is saved annually on Grand Valley's energy bill through a combination of energy conservation efforts and LEED construction projects.

The Student Environmental Coalition or SEC, is the student-run sustainability organization on campus. The mission of the group is "Helping to engage students at Grand Valley's campus to be conscious citizens by promotion of environmental awareness."

Additionally there are several academic programs offering the study of sustainability. Those housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences include Geography and Sustainable Planning (major and minor) and Natural Resource Management (major and minor). Those housed in the Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies include the Liberal Studies major and the Environmental Studies minor.

Grand Valley hosted meetings relating to sustainability, including a summit in which various sustainability issues were explored by university officials and local experts in April 2010, and a meeting of the Michigan Great Lakes Wind Council in July 2010 to discuss offshore wind energy generation.

Media
GVSU has a variety of media outlets offered to its campuses.

The Grand Valley Lanthorn is the student-run newspaper, published on Mondays and Thursdays during the academic year. Copies of the paper are free and available at both the Allendale and Grand Rapids campuses in designated newsstands and online. Until the fall of 2006, the paper was only published once per week. 8,000 copies of the paper are published per issue totaling 16,000 copies per week.

GVSU has several electronic media outlets including three radio stations and three television stations. The university owns and operates its own Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Public television station WGVU-TV in Allendale, Michigan and WGVK-TV, its full-time satellite station in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In addition, GVSU also operates a National Public Radio (NPR) station in WGVU-FM with the same call letters, which feature a mixture of jazz, blues, and news, including local and NPR programming. WCKS ("The Whale") is the student-run radio station, broadcasting over the internet and Tunein. Grand Valley TV (GVTV) is the student-run television station on channel 46.1 on the university cable system, while uploading its content to YouTube.

Student organizations
As of fall 2016, GVSU has over 486 student-run organizations. Student organizations include categories in, but are not limited to, Academic and Professional, Student Life Sports, Cultural, Honorary, Interfaith and Religious, Media, Performing Arts, Service and Advocacy, and Special Interests.

Housing and residence life
Grand Valley State University is home to 29 living centers (residence halls) and three on-campus apartment complexes on its main Allendale campus, and two residence halls on its Pew Grand Rapids campus, totaling 6,068 beds. GVSU also has six individual dining halls on campus for students and faculty. These dining halls are housed in five facilities with five halls being on the Allendale campus and one on the Pew campus. GVSU also has many on campus job opportunities. In 2016–2017, 7280 students were employed on campus and averaged a wage of $2,261 that year.

title: Grand Valley State University


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Old King Cole

"Old King Cole" is a British nursery rhyme first attested in 1708. Though there is much speculation about the identity of King Cole, it is unlikely that he can be identified reliably as any historical figure. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 1164. The poem describes a merry king who called for his pipe, bowl, and musicians, with the details varying among versions.

The "bowl" is a drinking vessel, while it is unclear whether the "pipe" is a musical instrument or a tobacco pipe.

Lyrics
The most common modern version of the rhyme is:

Old King Cole was a merry old soul, And a merry old soul was he; He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl, And he called for his fiddlers three. Every fiddler he had a fiddle, And a very fine fiddle had he; Oh, there's none so rare, as can compare, With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

The song is first attested in William King's Useful Transactions in Philosophy in 1708–9.

King's version has the following lyrics:

Good King Cole, And he call'd for his Bowle, And he call'd for Fidler's three; And there was Fiddle, Fiddle, And twice Fiddle, Fiddle, For 'twas my Lady's Birth-day, Therefore we keep Holy-day And come to be merry.

Identity of King Cole
There is much speculation about the identity of King Cole, but it is unlikely that he can be identified reliably given the centuries between the attestation of the rhyme and the putative identities; none of the extant theories is well supported.

William King mentions two possibilities: the "Prince that Built Colchester" and a 12th-century cloth merchant from Reading named Cole-brook. Sir Walter Scott thought that "Auld King Coul" was Cumhall, the father of the giant Fyn M'Coule (Finn McCool). Other modern sources suggest (without much justification) that he was Richard Cole (1568–1614) of Bucks in the parish of Woolfardisworthy on the north coast of Devon, whose monument and effigy survive in All Hallows Church, Woolfardisworthy.

Coel Hen theory
It is often noted that the name of the legendary Welsh king Coel Hen can be translated 'Old Cole' or 'Old King Cole'. This sometimes leads to speculation that he, or some other Coel in Roman Britain, is the model for Old King Cole of the nursery rhyme. However, there is no documentation of a connection between the fourth-century figures and the eighteenth-century nursery rhyme. There is also a dubious connection of Old King Cole to Cornwall and King Arthur found at Tintagel Castle that there was a Cornish King or Lord Coel.

Further speculation connects Old King Cole and thus Coel Hen to Colchester, but in fact Colchester was not named after Coel Hen. Connecting with the musical theme of the nursery rhyme, according to a much later source, Coel Hen supposedly had a daughter who was skilled in music, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing in the 12th century.

A legend that King Coel of Colchester was the father of the Empress Saint Helena, and therefore the grandfather of Constantine the Great, appeared in Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. The passages are clearly related, even using some of the same words, but it is not clear which version was first. Henry appears to have written the relevant part of the Historia Anglorum before he knew about Geoffrey's work, leading J. S. P. Tatlock and other scholars to conclude that Geoffrey borrowed the passage from Henry, rather than the other way around. The source of the claim is unknown, but may have predated both Henry and Geoffrey. Diana Greenway proposes it came from a lost hagiography of Helena; Antonia Harbus suggests it came instead from oral tradition.

Cole-brook theory
In the 19th century William Chappell, an expert on popular music, suggested the possibility that the "Old King Cole" was really "Old Cole", alias Thomas Cole-brook, a supposed 12th-century Reading cloth merchant whose story was recounted by Thomas Deloney in his Pleasant History of Thomas of Reading (c. 1598), and who was well known as a character in plays of the early 17th century. The name "Old Cole" had some special meaning in Elizabethan theatre, but it is unclear what it was.

"Old King Coal"
In political cartoons and similar material, especially in Great Britain, sometimes Old King "Coal" (note the spelling difference) has been used to symbolize the coal industry. One such instance is the folk song "Old King Coal" (different than "Old King Cole," Roud 1164), which was written by English folk musician John Kirkpatrick in 1994. It presents Old King Coal as "a kind of modernization of John Barleycorn," with the chorus being: There's fire in the heart of Old King Coal There's the strength of centuries in his soul There's a power that grows where his black blood flows So here's to Old King Coal

Modern usage
King Cole is often referenced in popular culture.

In art
The Maxfield Parrish mural Old King Cole (1894) for the Mask and Wig Club was sold by Christie's for $662,500 in 1996. Parrish executed a second Old King Cole (1906) for The Knickerbocker Hotel, which was moved to the St. Regis New York in 1948, and is the centerpiece of its King Cole Bar.

As a marching cadence
The United States military has used versions of the traditional rhyme in the form of marching cadences, since at least the 1920s up to the present.

In music
Old King Cole was the topic of a 1923 work by Vaughan Williams, a work created as a one-act ballet.

In 1960, a variation of the song was released on Harry Belafonte's Live Album Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall.

The first four lines of Old King Cole are quoted in the song The Musical Box, by British rock band Genesis on their third album, Nursery Cryme, released in 1971.

The melody is also used in the song Great King Rat, by British rock band Queen on their eponymous debut album Queen, released in 1973 with the lyrics adapted to: "Great King Rat was a dirty old man, And a dirty old man was he, Now what did I tell you? Would you like to see?"

The jazz musician Nathaniel Coles took the name Nat King Cole.

In the 2012 album Once Upon a Time (In Space), Old King Cole is used as inspiration for both the lyrics and melody of the second track, also titled Old King Cole.

"Old Queen Cole" was the name of a song by musical duo Ween, from their album, "GodWeenSatan: The Oneness"; the title and lyrics suggest a reference to the nursery rhyme.

In fiction
In his 1897 collection Mother Goose in Prose, L. Frank Baum included a story explaining the background to the nursery rhyme. In this version, Cole is a donkey-riding commoner who is selected at random to succeed the King of Whatland when the latter dies without heir.

In P. L. Travers’ Mary Poppins Opens the Door, the titular character tells her charges a story about how King Cole remembered that he was a merry old soul.

James Joyce made reference to the rhyme in Finnegans Wake (619.27f): "With pipe on bowl. Terce for a fiddler, sixt for makmerriers, none for a Cole." Joyce is also punning on the canonical hours tierce (3), sext (6), and nones (9), in "Terce ... sixt ... none", and on Fionn MacCool and his Fianna, in "fiddlers ... makmerriers ... Cole".

The Old King Cole theme appeared twice in 1933 cartoons: Walt Disney made a Silly Symphony cartoon called "Old King Cole", in which the character holds a huge party where various nursery rhyme characters are invited. Walter Lantz produced an Oswald cartoon the same year, entitled The Merry Old Soul, which is in reference to the nursery rhyme.

Old King Cole makes an appearance in the 1938 Merrie Melodies short film Have You Got Any Castles.

In John Agard's Poem "Checking out me History" "Ole King Cole was a merry ole soul" is used to show the Eurocentric nature of education and its irrelevance.

The Three Stooges' 1948 short film "Fiddlers Three" features Larry, Moe and Shemp as musicians in King Cole's court who must stop an evil wizard from stealing the king's daughter.

In the Fables comic book, King Cole was the long-time mayor of Fabletown.

In the fifteenth season of Dropout's tabletop role-playing game show Dimension 20, "Neverafter", Old King Cole is a character who was once the king of the kingdom of Jubilee.

In humour and satire
G. K. Chesterton wrote a poem ("Old King Cole: A Parody") which presented the nursery rhyme successively in the styles of several poets: Alfred Lord Tennyson, W. B. Yeats, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Much later, Mad ran a feature similarly postulating classical writers' treatments of fairy tales. The magazine had Edgar Allan Poe tackle "Old King Cole", resulting in a cadence similar to that of "The Bells": Old King Cole was a merry old soul Old King Cole, Cole, Cole, Cole, Cole, Cole, Cole.

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

title: Old King Cole


text:
Coel Hen

Coel (Old Welsh: Coil), also called Coel Hen (Coel the Old) and King Cole, is a figure prominent in Welsh literature and legend since the Middle Ages. Early Welsh tradition knew of a Coel Hen, a c. 4th-century leader in Roman or Sub-Roman Britain and the progenitor of several kingly lines in Yr Hen Ogledd (the Old North), a region of the Brittonic-speaking area of what is now northern England and southern Scotland.

Later medieval legend told of a Coel, apparently derived from Coel Hen. He was said to be the father of Saint Helena and through her the grandfather of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great.

Other similarly named characters may be confused or conflated with the Welsh Coel. The legendary "King Coel" is sometimes supposed to be the historical basis for the popular nursery rhyme "Old King Cole", but this has been said to be unlikely.

Name
Coel's name was rendered "Coil" in Old Welsh. Rare or unique as a Welsh name, its origin has long been seen as uncertain. John T. Koch has argued that it is simply the common noun which in Modern Welsh has the form coel, meaning "belief, credence; confidence, reliance, trust, faith" (and the secondary meaning "omen"), derived from Proto-Celtic *kaylo- "omen" and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *keh2ilo- "whole, healthy; blessed with good omen". In Koch's view, "these semantic and etymological aspects allow that Coil could be a legendary, or even a mythological, founder" of the dynasties that bear his name rather than a historical figure.

It may be the same as the Coel is often named as "Coel Hen", Hen being an epithet meaning "old" (i.e., "Coel the Old"). The genealogies give him an additional epithet or patronym, Godebog (Old Welsh: Guotepauc), meaning "Protector" or "Shelterer". His name is thus sometimes given as "Coel Godebog" or "Coel Hen Godebog". However, some of the Harleian genealogies list Godebog as Coel's father's name. Geoffrey of Monmouth rendered the name as both Coel and Coillus in his Historia Regum Britanniae. Some modern authors render it as "Cole".

Context and evidence
The historian Ben Guy has commented that "Coel Hen's role in medieval texts is solely legendary; there is no merit whatsoever in any attempt to assign him some historically significant role in late Roman Britain, as many over the years [...] have fruitlessly attempted to do". Coel Hen appears in the Harleian genealogies and the later pedigrees known as the Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd (The Descent of the Men of the North) at the progenitor of several post-Roman royal families of the Hen Ogledd. His line, collectively called the Coeling, included such noted figures as Urien, king of Rheged; Gwallog, perhaps king of Elmet; the brothers Gwrgi and Peredur; and Clydno Eiddin, king of Eidyn or Edinburgh. The poem Y Gododdin mentions some enmity between the "Sons of Godebog", possibly a reference to the Coiling, and the heroes who fought for the Gododdin at the Battle of Catraeth.

As an ancestor figure, he compares to Dyfnwal Hen, who is likewise attributed with founding kingly lines in the Hen Ogledd. Hector Boece and Ayrshire folklore both state that Coel and his entire army perished in the Battle of Coilsfield. According to Welsh tradition the region of Kyle was named for Coel, and a mound at Coylton in Ayrshire was regarded as his tomb. Projections back from dated individuals suggest that Coel Hen would have lived around AD 350–420, during the time of the Roman departure from Britain. In his book The Age of Arthur, historian John Morris suggested Coel may have been the last of the Roman Duces Brittanniarum (Dukes of the Britons) who commanded the Roman army in northern Britain, and split his lands among his heirs after his death. However, Morris's book has been widely criticized. It has been suggested that Coel was appointed governor of northern Britain, ruling from Eburacum (York), by Magnus Maximus.

Colchester legend
In the twelfth century, a story arose claiming that Colchester in Essex was named after a man called Coel, who was the father of Saint Helena, and therefore the grandfather of Constantine the Great. Though not initially associated with Coel Hen, the two Coels began to be conflated in Welsh scholarship from the fifteenth century. The legend originated from a folk etymology indicating that Colchester was named for Coel (supposedly from "Coel" and "castrum", producing "fortress of Coel"). However, the city was actually known as Colneceaster until the n was dropped in around the 10th century; its name likely comes from the local River Colne.

Around the same time, a further development of this legend that King Coel of Colchester was the father of Empress Saint Helena, and therefore the grandfather of Constantine the Great, appeared in Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. The passages are clearly related, even using some of the same words, but it is not clear which version was first. Henry appears to have written the relevant part of the Historia Anglorum before he knew about Geoffrey's work, leading J. S. P. Tatlock and other scholars to conclude that Geoffrey borrowed the passage from Henry, rather than the other way around. The source of the claim is unknown, but may have predated both Henry and Geoffrey. Diana Greenway proposes it came from a lost hagiography of Helena; Antonia Harbus suggests it came instead from oral tradition.

Geoffrey's largely legendary Historia Regum Britanniae expands upon Henry's brief mention, listing Coel as a King of the Britons following the reign of King Asclepiodotus. In the Historia, Coel grows upset with Asclepiodotus's handling of the Diocletianic Persecution and begins a rebellion in his duchy of Caer Colun (Colchester). He meets Asclepiodotus in battle and kills him, thus taking the kingship of Britain upon himself. Rome, apparently, is pleased that Britain has a new king, and sends senator Constantius Chlorus to negotiate with him. Afraid of the Romans, Coel meets Constantius and agrees to pay tribute and submit to Roman laws as long as he is allowed to retain the kingship. Constantius agrees to these terms, but Coel dies one month later. Constantius marries Coel's daughter, Helena, and crowns himself as Coel's successor. Helena subsequently gives birth to a son who becomes the Emperor Constantine the Great, giving a British pedigree to the Roman imperial line.

Local tradition came to suggest that Coel was responsible for some of the ancient buildings in Colchester; a public conduit in the High Street was named "King Coel's Pump", the Balkerne Gate in the Roman town walls was known as "King Coel's Castle" and the remains of the Temple of Claudius over which Colchester Castle was built were called "King Coel's Palace".

Other stories
There is an old story told in the North about Coel's last campaign. What is now Scotland was originally inhabited by both Brythonic and Pictish tribes. It was during Coel's time that the Scotti tribe began to settle the Western coast around Argyle. Coel, fearing that these Northern peoples would unite against his domain south of Hadrian's Wall, sent raiding parties across his northern border to stir up discord between them. The plan, however, backfired for the Picts and the Scots were not taken in. Coel merely succeeded in pushing the two even closer together, and they began to attack the Brittonic Kingdom of Strathclyde. Coel declared all out war and moved north to expel the invaders. The Picts and Scots fled to the hills ahead of Coel's army, who eventually set up camp at what became Coylton alongside the Water of Coyle (Ayrshire). For a long time, the British were triumphant, while the Scots and Picts starved. Desperate for some relief, however, the enemy advanced an all-or-nothing attack on Coel's stronghold. Coel and his men were taken by surprise, overrun and scattered to the winds. It is said that Coel wandered the unknown countryside until he eventually got caught in a bog at Coilsfield (in Tarbolton, Ayrshire) and drowned. Coel was first buried in a mound there before being removed to the church at Coylton. The year was about AD 420. After his death, tradition says that Coel's Northern kingdom was divided between two of his sons, Ceneu and Gorbanian.

title: Coel Hen


text:
Cole

Cole may refer to:

Plants

 * Cole crops of the genus Brassica, especially cabbage, kale, or rape (rapeseed).

People

 * Cole (given name), people with the given name Cole
 * Cole (surname), people with the surname Cole

Companies

 * Cole Motor Car Company, a pioneer American name automobile company (1909–1925)

Antarctic

 * Cole Peninsula, a peninsula on the continent of Antarctica

Canada

 * Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, a community of Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia
 * Cole Harbour
 * Cole Harbour (Guysborough), Nova Scotia

England

 * Cole, Somerset, a hamlet in Pitcombe parish
 * Cole (for Bruton) railway station, a former station in the hamlet

France

 * Côle, a river in southwestern France

Poland

 * Cole, Pomeranian Voivodeship

Northern Ireland

 * Cole, County Tyrone, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland

United States

 * Cole, Indiana, an unincorporated community in Grant County
 * Cole, Oklahoma, a town in McClain County, Oklahoma
 * Coleville, California, a town in Eastern California
 * Cole City, Georgia, a ghost town
 * Cole County, Missouri, a county located in the central part of Missouri
 * Cole Creek (Pennsylvania), a stream in Pennsylvania
 * Cole Creek (South Dakota), a stream in South Dakota
 * Cole Field, a baseball stadium located in Flint, Michigan
 * Cole's Hill, historic cemetery and settlement site of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts
 * Cole Valley, San Francisco, California, a small neighborhood in San Francisco, California
 * Cole Ranch AVA, California wine region in Mendocino County
 * Cole County, South Dakota, the original name of Union County, South Dakota, a county located in the south-eastern corner of South Dakota
 * Cole, Denver, a statistical neighborhood within the consolidated city and county
 * Cole Township (disambiguation)

Ships

 * USS Cole (DD-155), a United States Navy Wickes-class destroyer
 * USS Cole (DDG-67), a United States Navy Arleigh Burke-class "Aegis" guided missile destroyer
 * USS Cole bombing, an attack on the US military which occurred in 2000

Other uses

 * Cole (film), a 2009 Canadian film
 * Cole Prize, an award bestowed by the American Mathematical Society for achievements in algebra, first given in 1928
 * Brassica aka "cole crops", a genus of plants in the mustard family
 * Justice Cole (disambiguation)
 * River Cole (disambiguation)
 * Cole tribe, an earlier name for Kol people of India

title: Cole


text:
Balti

Balti may refer to:

Places

 * Bălți, a city in Moldova
 * Bălți County (Moldova), a former county of Moldova
 * Bălți County (Romania), a former county of Romania
 * Balti Power Plant, one of two Narva Power Plants in Estonia
 * Bălți Steppe, a grassland in northern Moldova
 * Balti Triangle, an area of Birmingham, England
 * Balti jaam (Baltic station), Tallinn railway station

People

 * Balti, Latin for the Balts
 * Bianca Balti, an Italian model
 * Balti (singer) (born 1980), Tunisian singer, rapper, composer and music producer

Other uses

 * Balti (food), a northern Pakistan-style food believed to originate from the UK
 * Balti dynasty, a branch of the ancient Visigoths
 * Balti language spoken in Baltistan and Ladakh in Kashmir
 * Balti people, an ethnic group of Tibetan origin in Baltistan

title: Balti


text:
Oliver Otis Howard

Oliver Otis Howard (November 8, 1830 – October 26, 1909) was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the Civil War. As a brigade commander in the Army of the Potomac, Howard lost his right arm while leading his men against Confederate forces at the Battle of Fair Oaks/Seven Pines in June 1862, an action which later earned him the Medal of Honor. As a corps commander, he suffered a major defeat at Chancellorsville and his performance was of question at Gettysburg in May and July 1863.[] However, he recovered from possible career setbacks as a successful corps and later army commander, commanding the Army of the Tennessee from July 27, 1864 until May 19, 1865 leading the army in the battles of Ezra Church, Battle of Jonesborough, Sherman's March to the Sea, and the Carolinas campaign in the Western Theater.

Known as the "Christian General" because he tried to base his policy decisions on his deep, evangelical piety, he was given charge of the Freedmen's Bureau in mid-1865, with the mission of integrating the former slaves into Southern society and politics during the second phase of the Reconstruction Era. Howard took charge of labor policy, setting up a system that required freed people to work on former plantation land under pay scales fixed by the Bureau, on terms negotiated by the Bureau with white land owners. Howard's Bureau was primarily responsible for the legal affairs of the freedmen. He attempted to protect freed blacks from hostile conditions, but lacked adequate power, and was repeatedly frustrated by President Andrew Johnson.

Howard's allies, the Radical Republicans, won control of Congress in the 1866 elections and imposed Radical Reconstruction, with the result that freedmen were given the vote. With the help and advice of the Bureau, freedmen joined Republican coalitions and won at the ballot boxes of most of the southern states. Howard was also a leader in promoting higher education for freedmen, most notably in founding Howard University in Washington, D.C., and serving as its president 1867–73; and aided in the charter of Howard University and Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) in 1867.

After 1874, Howard commanded troops in the West, conducting a famous campaign against the Nez Perce tribe, led by Chief Joseph. Utley (1987) concludes that his leadership against the Apaches in 1872, Nez Perce in 1877, Bannocks and Paiutes in 1878, and the Sheepeaters in 1879 all add up to a lengthy record, although he did not fight as much as George Custer or Nelson Miles.

Early years
Oliver Howard was born in Leeds, Maine, the son of Rowland Bailey Howard and Eliza Otis Howard. His great-grandfather, Rogers Stinchfield and great-granduncle Thomas Stinchfield founded Leeds. Rowland, a farmer, died when Oliver was 9 years old. Oliver attended Monmouth Academy in Monmouth, North Yarmouth Academy in Yarmouth, Kents Hill School in Readfield, and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1850 at the age of 19. He then attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1854, fourth in his class of 46 cadets, as a brevet second lieutenant of ordnance. He served at the Watervliet Arsenal near Troy, New York, and was the temporary commander of the Kennebec Arsenal in Augusta, Maine. In 1855, he married Elizabeth Anne Waite, with whom he would have seven children. In 1857 he was transferred to Florida for the Seminole Wars. It was in Florida that he experienced a conversion to evangelical Christianity and considered resigning from the Army to become a minister. His religious proclivities would later earn him the nickname "the Christian general." Howard was promoted first lieutenant in July 1857, and returned to West Point the following September to become an instructor of mathematics. As the Civil War began with the surrender of Fort Sumter, thoughts of the ministry were put aside and he decided to remain in the service of his country.

Civil War

Howard was appointed colonel of the 3rd Maine Infantry regiment and temporarily commanded a brigade at the First Battle of Bull Run. He was promoted to brigadier general effective September 3, 1861, and given permanent command of his brigade. He then joined Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac for the Peninsula Campaign.

On June 1, 1862, while commanding a Union brigade in the Fair Oaks, Howard was wounded twice in his right arm, which was subsequently amputated. (He received the Medal of Honor in 1893 for his heroism at Fair Oaks.) Brig. Gen. Philip Kearny, who had lost his left arm, visited Howard and joked that they would be able to shop for gloves together. Howard recovered quickly enough to rejoin the army for the Battle of Antietam, in which he rose to division command in the II Corps. He was promoted to major general in November 1862 and assumed command of the XI Corps the following April, replacing Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel. Since the corps was composed largely of German immigrants, many of whom spoke no English, the soldiers were resentful of their new leader and openly called for Sigel's reinstatement.

Failure at Chancellorsville
At the Battle of Chancellorsville, Howard suffered the first of two significant military setbacks. On May 2, 1863, his corps was on the right flank of the Union line, northwest of the crossroads of Chancellorsville. Robert E. Lee and Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson devised an audacious plan in which Jackson's entire corps would march secretly around the Union flank and attack it. Howard was warned by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, now commanding the Army of the Potomac, that his flank was "in the air", not anchored by a natural obstacle, such as a river, and that Confederate forces might be on the move in his direction. Howard failed to heed the warning and Jackson struck before dark, routing the XI Corps and causing a serious disruption to the Union plans.

Gettysburg

At the Battle of Gettysburg, the XI Corps, still chastened by its humiliation in May, arrived on the field in the afternoon of July 1, 1863. Poor positioning of the defensive line by one of Howard's subordinate division commanders, Brig. Gen. Francis C. Barlow, was exploited by the Confederate corps of Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell and once again the XI Corps collapsed, forcing it to retreat through the streets of Gettysburg, leaving many men behind to be taken prisoner. On Cemetery Hill, south of town, Howard quarreled with Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock about who was in command of the defense. Hancock had been sent by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade with written orders to take command, but Howard insisted that he was the ranking general present. Eventually he relented. Controversy centers on three points: 1) Howard's choice of Cemetery Hill as the key to defense; 2) the timing of Howard's mid-afternoon order to abandon positions north and west of town; and 3) Howard's reluctance to recognize that Hancock, his junior, had superseded him. Historian John A. Carpenter holds that Howard alone had wisely selected Cemetery Hill, that the order to withdraw was probably a sound one, and that the conflict between Howard and Hancock might have been avoided had Meade himself gotten onto the field.

Howard started circulating the story that his corps' failure had actually been triggered by the collapse of Maj. Gen. Abner Doubleday's I Corps to the west, and this was a partial reason for Doubleday's removal from command of the corps. However, this excuse was not accepted by history—the reverse was actually true—and the reputation of the XI Corps was ruined. Some argue that Howard should get some credit for the eventual success at Gettysburg because he wisely stationed one of his divisions (Maj. Gen. Adolph von Steinwehr's) on Cemetery Hill as a reserve and critical subsequent defensive line. For the remainder of the three-day battle, the corps remained on the defensive around Cemetery Hill, withstanding assaults by Maj. Gen. Jubal Early on July 2 and participating at the margin of the defense against Pickett's Charge on July 3. Also at Gettysburg, Howard's younger brother, Major Charles Henry Howard, served as his aide-de-camp.

Western theater

Howard and XI Corps were transferred to the Western Theater with fellow general Henry Slocum's XII Corps to become part of the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee; they were commanded once again by "Fighting Joe" Hooker. In the Battles for Chattanooga, the corps joined the impulsive assault that captured Missionary Ridge and forced the retreat of Gen. Braxton Bragg. In July 1864, following the death of Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson, temporary command of the Army of the Tennessee was given by order of William Tecumseh Sherman to the ranking officer on the field that day, Major General John A. Logan. Shortly after the success at the Battle of Atlanta, Sherman (who favored granting command to a West Point graduate) appointed Howard to permanent command of the Army of the Tennessee. At the closing of his "After Action Report" filed by Major General John A. Logan on September 10, 1864, Logan referred to his having served as Commander of the Army of the Tennessee for a scant four days. Logan's detailed report ended with: "I withdrew the Army of the Tennessee the night of the 26th, and moved it along the rear of the center and right of the army to a position across Proctor's Creek. After putting the army in position that night I was relieved by Maj. Gen.    Howard." Howard subsequently led the right wing of Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's famous March to the Sea, through Georgia and then the Carolinas. Sherman, having favored Howard over Logan for permanent command of the Army of the Tennessee, recognized Logan's success at Atlanta. In recognition of the outstanding leadership Logan displayed at Atlanta, Sherman asked Howard to allow Logan to ceremonially lead the Army in the May 1865 Grand Review in Washington. Howard agreed when Sherman appealed to him as a Christian gentleman. Ultimately, by the war's end, Gen. Sherman would commend Howard as a corps commander of "the utmost skill, nicety and precision".

Freedmen's Bureau
From May 1865 to July 1874, General Howard was commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau (the Army's Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands), where he played a major role in the Reconstruction era, and had charge of integrating freedmen (former slaves) into American society. Howard devised far-reaching programs and guidelines including social welfare in the form of rations, schooling, courts, and medical care. Howard often clashed with President Andrew Johnson, who strongly disliked the welfare aspects of the Freedman's Bureau, and especially tried to return political power to Southern whites. However, Howard had the support of the Radical Republicans in Congress. When the Radical Republicans gained power in 1867, they gave blacks the right to vote in the South and set up new elections, which the Republican coalition of freedmen, northern Republicans who came south and were referred to derogatorily as carpetbaggers, and southerners who supported Reconstruction, nicknamed scalawags, won (except in Virginia). The Bureau was very active in helping blacks organize themselves politically, and therefore it became a target of partisan hostility.

President Johnson called Howard a fanatic. Reconstruction's opponents alleged that, in abusing both civil and military power, the Bureau became a centralized dictatorship. Howard described the extent of his enormous powers as:

"...Almost unlimited authority gave me scope and liberty of action... Legislative, judicial and executive powers were combined in my commission."

Andrew Johnson reacted to the meaning of such unlimited scope of action against civilians:

"The power thus given to the commanding officer over all the people ... is that of an absolute monarch ... He alone is permitted to determine the rights of persons and property ... It places at his free disposal all the lands and goods in his district, and he may distribute them without let or hindrance to whom he pleases. Being bound by no State law, and there being no other law to regulate the subject, he may make a criminal code of his own; and can make it as bloody as any in history ... Everything is a crime which he chooses to call so, and all persons are condemned who he pronounces to be guilty."

The limited ideological framework of General Howard and his aides encouraged their attempt at radical reconstruction of southern society without realizing the need for essential legislation. They thought that the elimination of all statutory inequalities—for instance, Black court testimony—would be enough to assure protection. Southern states pretended to comply with this point in order to end the threat of the Freedmen's Bureau courts' system.

Military commands and Native American affairs

In 1872, Howard, accompanied by 1st Lt Joseph A. Sladen, who served as his aide, was ordered to Arizona Territory to negotiate a peace treaty with Cochise, resulting in a treaty on October 12. This episode of American history was dramatized in the movie "Broken Arrow" (see below) He was placed in command of the Department of the Columbia in 1874, went west to Washington Territory's Fort Vancouver, where he fought in the Indian Wars, particularly against the Nez Perce in Idaho and Montana territories in 1877, with the resultant surrender of Chief Joseph. He was criticized by Chief Joseph as precipitating the war by trying to rush the Nez Perce to a smaller reservation, with no advance notice, no discussion, and no time to prepare. Joseph said, "If General Howard had given me plenty of time to gather up my stock and treated Too-hool-hool-suit as a man should be treated, there would have been no war."

Subsequently, Howard was superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1881–1882. He served as commander of the Department of the Platte from 1882 to 1886 and the Military Division of the Pacific from 1886 to 1888. From 1888, his final command was of the Department of the East (Military Division of the Atlantic) at Fort Columbus on Governors Island in New York Harbor, encompassing the states east of the Mississippi River. He retired from the U.S. Army at that posting in 1894 with the rank of major general. The French government made him a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1884 and he was subsequently promoted to the ranks of officer and commander.

Howard University

General Howard is also remembered for playing a role in founding Howard University, which was incorporated by Congress in 1867. The school is nonsectarian and is open to both sexes without regard to race. On November 20, 1866, Howard was among ten members of various socially-concerned groups of the time who met in Washington, D.C., to discuss plans for a theological seminary to train black ministers. Interest was sufficient, however, to create an educational institute for areas other than the ministry. The result was the Howard Normal and Theological Institute for the Education of Preachers and Teachers. On January 8, 1867, the board of trustees voted to change the name of the institution to Howard University. Howard served as president from 1869 to 1874. He was quoted as saying "[t]he opposition to Negro education made itself felt everywhere in a combination not to allow the freed men any room or building in which a school might be taught. In 1865, 1866, and 1867, mobs of the baser classes at intervals and in all parts of the South occasionally burned school buildings and churches used as schools, flogged teachers or drove them away, and in a number of instances murdered them." He also founded Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, in 1895, for the education of the "mountain whites."

Memberships
General Howard was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States and the Grand Army of the Republic.

Death and burial
Oliver Howard died in Burlington, Vermont on October 26, 1909, and is buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Burlington. At his death, Howard was the last surviving Union Army general to have held the permanent rank of a general in the regular U.S. Army.

Legacy
A bust of Howard designed by artist James E. Kelly is on display at Howard University. An equestrian statue is on East Cemetery Hill on the Gettysburg Battlefield. A dormitory at Bowdoin College is named for Howard.

The Oliver O. Howard Relief Corps of the Grand Army of the Republic provided funds to help destitute former Union soldiers and to support worthy public causes. It contributed money and the design for the State Flag of Utah in 1920. An Army Reserve Center was named after him in Auburn, Maine, and is still used today by several U.S. Army Reserve units.

Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, Delaware, is named in his honor, as is Howard County, Nebraska and the Howard School of Academics and Technology, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Howard, Kansas is named in his honor.

The O. O. Howard House, located on Officer's Row within the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site was built in 1878 upon General Howard's order at a cost of $6,938.20 (~$ in ). Completed in 1879, the building suffered a fire in 1986 and was left vacant until renovated by the City of Vancouver in 1998. The building serves as the headquarters of the Fort Vancouver National Trust.

In Portland, Oregon, on the 150th Anniversary of Howard's acts of valor on June 1, 1862, while leading his troops at the Battle of Fair Oaks, a commemorative wreath was laid by the Oregon Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission at the site of General Howard's former residence in downtown Portland at the corner of SW 10th and Morrison. The month of June 2012 will be dedicated to Howard with a lecture and programs by the Oregon Civil War Sesquicentennial spotlighting General Howard's activities in Portland and at Fort Vancouver, Washington; and his post-war achievements at the Freedmen's Bureau, Howard University and Lincoln Memorial University and the Indian Wars. In a New York Times interview given the day after Howard retired from the Army on November 8, 1894, at the age of 64, it was reported that he was traveling West to stay at his daughter's house in Portland, Oregon, where he planned to start writing his memoirs.

Selected works
Howard was the author of numerous books after the war, including: He wrote an account of the Civil War's Atlanta campaign in Century Magazine for July 1887.
 * Donald's School Days (1878)
 * Nez Perce Joseph (1881)
 * General Taylor (1892)
 * Isabella of Castile (1894)
 * Fighting For Humanity, or Camp and Quarterdeck (1898)
 * Henry in the War: Or the Model Volunteer (1899)
 * Autobiography (1907)
 * My Life and Experiences among Our Hostile Indians (1907)

He translated:
 * Théodore Borel, Count Agénor de Gasparin, Life of Count Agénor de Gasparin (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1881)

In popular media
In the 1950 film Broken Arrow, Howard is played by Basil Ruysdael opposite James Stewart, who portrays Tom Jeffords. In the 1956 film The Last Wagon, he was portrayed by Carl Benton Reid. Both of these films were written and directed by Delmer Daves.

James Whitmore portrayed General Howard in the 1975 television film, I Will Fight No More Forever, about the U.S. Army campaign against the Nez Perce and the surrender of Chief Joseph in 1877. In episode 6 of The West, he was portrayed in voiceovers by Eli Wallach and is the protagonist of William T. Vollmann's novel The Dying Grass (2015).

Awards

 * Medal of Honor
 * Thanks of Congress
 * Civil War Campaign Medal
 * Indian Campaign Medal
 * Commander, Legion of Honor (France)

Medal of Honor citation
In the citation for Howard's Medal of Honor – issued June 1, 1862, at Fair Oaks, Virginia – he was described as "Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers". The citation reads: "Led the 61st New York Infantry in a charge in which he was twice severely wounded in the right arm, necessitating amputation."

title: Oliver Otis Howard


text:
Upsala

Upsala may refer to several places:

 * Upsala Glacier, a glacier in Argentina
 * Upsala, Ontario, a township in Canada
 * Upsala, Minnesota, a city in United States
 * Upsala (mansion), a historic mansion in Pennsylvania, United States
 * Upsala College, a defunct private college in New Jersey, United States
 * New Upsala, Wisconsin, a former Swedish-American settlement in Wisconsin, United States
 * Upsala (Gausantė), rivulet in Lithuania, tributary of Gausantė in Mituva basin

title: Upsala


text:
TWiki

TWiki is a Perl-based structured wiki application, typically used to run a collaboration platform, knowledge or document management system, a knowledge base, or team portal. Users can create wiki pages using the TWiki Markup Language, and developers can extend wiki application functionality with plugins.

The TWiki project was founded by Peter Thoeny in 1998 as an open-source wiki-based application platform. In October 2008, the company TWiki.net, created by Thoeny, assumed full control over the TWiki project while much of the developer community forked off to join the Foswiki project.

Major features

 * Revision control - complete audit trail, also for meta data such as attachments and access control settings
 * Fine-grained access control - restrict read/write/rename on site level, web level, page level based on user groups
 * Extensible TWiki markup language
 * TinyMCE based WYSIWYG editor
 * Dynamic content generation with TWiki variables
 * Forms and reporting - capture structured content, report on it with searches embedded in pages
 * Built in database - users can create wiki applications using the TWiki Markup Language
 * Skinnable user interface
 * RSS/Atom feeds and e-mail notification
 * Over 400 Extensions and 200 Plugins

TWiki extensions
TWiki has a plugin API that has spawned over 300 extensions to link into databases, create charts, tags, sort tables, write spreadsheets, create image gallery and slideshows, make drawings, write blogs, plot graphs, interface to many different authentication schemes, track Extreme Programming projects and so on.

TWiki application platform
TWiki as a structured wiki provides database-like manipulation of fields stored on pages, and offers a SQL-like query language to embed reports in wiki pages.

Wiki applications are also called situational applications because they are created ad hoc by the users for very specific needs. Users have built TWiki applications that include call center status boards, to-do lists, inventory systems, employee handbooks, bug trackers, blog applications, discussion forums, status reports with rollups and more.

User interface
The interface of TWiki is completely skinnable in templates, themes and (per user) CSS. It includes support for internationalization ('I18N'), with support for multiple character sets, UTF-8 URLs, and the user interface has been translated into Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

TWiki deployment
TWiki is primarily used at the workplace as a corporate wiki to coordinate team activities, track projects, implement workflows and as an Intranet Wiki. The TWiki community estimates 40,000 corporate wiki sites as of March 2007, and 20,000 public TWiki sites.

TWiki customers include Fortune 500 such as Disney, Motorola, Nokia, NYU, Oracle Corporation and Yahoo!, as well as small and medium enterprises, such as ARM Holdings and DHL. TWiki has also been used to create collaborative internet sites, such as the City of Melbourne's FutureMelbourne wiki where citizens can collaborate on the future plan.

Realization
TWiki is implemented in Perl. Wiki pages are stored in plain text files. Everything, including meta such as access control settings, are version controlled using RCS. RCS is optional since an all-Perl version control system is provided.

TWiki scales reasonably well even though it uses plain text files and no relational database to store page data. Many corporate TWiki installations have several hundred thousand pages and tens of thousands of users. Load balancing and caching can be used to improve performance on high traffic sites.

TWiki has database features built into the engine. A TWiki Form is attached to a page as meta data. This represents a database record. A set of pages that share the same type of form build a database table. A formatted search with a SQL-like query can be embedded into a page to construct dynamic presentation of data from multiple pages. This allows for building wiki applications and constitutes the TWiki's notion of a structured wiki.

Forks of TWiki
Forks of TWiki include:
 * 2001: Spinner Wiki (abandoned)
 * 2008: Foswiki, launched in October 2008 when a dispute about the future guidance of the project could not be settled, resulting in the departure of much of the TWiki community including the core developer team

title: TWiki


text:
National Alliance (United States)

The National Alliance is a white supremacist,  neo-Nazi, and Christian Identity   political organization founded by William Luther Pierce in 1974 and based in Mill Point, West Virginia. Membership in 2002 was estimated at 2,500 with an annual income of $1 million. Membership declined after Pierce's death in 2002, and after a split in its ranks in 2005, became largely defunct.

History
The National Alliance was reorganized from an earlier group called the National Youth Alliance (NYA), which in turn was formed out of the remains of the youth wing of Governor George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign. The NYA broke into factions as a result of infighting, and William Luther Pierce, a former physics associate-professor and author of the white supremacist novels The Turner Diaries and Hunter, gained control of the largest remnant and relaunched it as the National Alliance in 1974.

The Order was an offshoot of the National Alliance and modeled themselves after a similar group depicted in The Turner Diaries. Timothy McVeigh was in possession of a copy of The Turner Diaries at the time of his arrest following the Oklahoma City Bombing. McVeigh bought copies of the book (published by the National Alliance), sold them at gun shows, and otherwise distributed them.

In 1997, two National Alliance members were charged with committing bank robberies in Florida and Connecticut. One of them admitted to channeling funds from the robberies to the National Alliance. He was charged with attempting to detonate a series of pipe bombs in order to divert attention from a future robbery.

German fugitive Hendrik Moebus was captured near the National Alliance compound, at which he is believed to been hiding, in August 2000.

Following Pierce's death from cancer in 2002, the Alliance's board of directors appointed Erich Gliebe to succeed him as chairman of the organization. A series of power struggles began almost immediately, with high-ranking members either resigning or being fired. A boycott of the National Alliance's Resistance Records label resulted in a steep drop-off in generated funds.

In April 2005, prominent Alliance member Kevin Alfred Strom, then editor of National Vanguard magazine, issued a declaration calling for Gliebe to step down; the Alliance's executive committee and most of its unit coordinators supported the action. Gliebe refused, claiming that the Alliance operated under the "Leadership Principle" and stating that he would not yield to any coup. Strom formed a new group called National Vanguard. In January 2008, Strom pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography in exchange for the other charges to be dropped. He was sentenced to 23 months in prison on April 23, 2008. Strom told the court before being sentenced that he was "not a pedophile" and was "in fact the precise opposite of what has been characterized in this case", saying he had been "unwillingly" possessing 10 images of child pornography and that those came from an online forum he had visited which had been "flooded with spam", which included "sleazy, tragic" pictures of children that he deleted. The judge of the case responded: "Mr. Strom, you pled guilty to charges that now you're saying you're innocent. I prefer people plead not guilty than put it on me."

Shortly after the attempted coup by Strom, Gliebe resigned as chairman of the Alliance and briefly appointed Shaun Walker as his successor. However, following Walker's arrest in June 2006, Gliebe again assumed leadership of the organization. By that year, paid membership for the Alliance had declined to fewer than 800 and the paid staff was down to only ten people. By 2012, the Alliance reportedly consisted of fewer than 100 members, with no paid staff other than Gliebe. The following year, it was revealed that the Alliance's property in Mill Point, West Virginia, had been put up for sale. The end of the National Alliance as a "membership organization" was confirmed by Gliebe in September 2013.

Will Williams offshoot
In 2014, Will Williams became head of an organization which calls itself the National Alliance (NA). However, a rival faction disputes the claim that this group is maintaining continuity with the original Alliance which was founded by Pierce. The Williams led NA has since been embroiled in several legal issues.

In 2015, an accountant was hired to audit the NA's books by Williams. According to a lawsuit which was filed by a former Baltimore attorney against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there was a confrontation  between the accountant and Williams. The lawsuit further claims that after the accountant left the NA headquarters  he  released documents that he had scanned to the SPLC.

In December 2015, Williams was arrested and charged with battery after he allegedly hit and strangled a female employee on the grounds of the Mill Point compound. He was convicted, briefly incarcerated, and placed on probation. He appealed the sentence and the appellate court affirmed the conviction.

Williams was banned from the NA compound in West Virginia pursuant to a court order stemming from his 2015 arrest.

In 2018, NA filed an $850,O00 claim against the estate of John McLaughlin, a former NA director who had filed suit against the organization. The purpose of this legal action was for McLaughlin's "tortious breach of fidiciary duties." The claim was denied by the Circuit Court of Piatt County, IL.

Williams claims that the National Alliance "(is) back. We are definitely back". He also said in a letter to a newspaper sent from Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee (allegedly the NA's headquarters) that "(The National Alliance does) not appreciate being called 'haters' or being associated with some 'hate movement'."

Murder of a British MP
Thomas Mair, later to be convicted of murdering the British Labour Party politician Jo Cox, was connected to the National Alliance.

Business
Before the death of Pierce, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation called the National Alliance the best-financed and best-organized white nationalist organization of its kind in the United States. In 2002, the National Alliance was estimated to have 2,500 members, with an annual income of $1 million.

In 2004, Harry Robert McCorkill of New Brunswick, Canada, attempted to will his entire estate (valued at almost $250,000) to the National Alliance upon his death. However, in 2014, the Court of Queen's Bench of New Brunswick invalidated his will on the ground that the National Alliance was a criminal organization which was formed and existed for the purposes of spreading hate speech and inciting violence against non-whites.

Resistance Records
In the past, the organization ran a white power record label which was called Resistance Records. In 2002, it released the video game Ethnic Cleansing, an action which was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League.

American Dissident Voices
The organization also produces American Dissident Voices, a radio program which was broadcast on shortwave, AM and FM stations, and streaming audio on the Internet. At one point in the mid-1990s there were 22 radio stations, AM and FM, which carried the program. The original host was Kevin Alfred Strom, who continued to serve as the host of the program until early 1997, when Pierce took it over and hosted it full-time. Upon the death of Pierce in July 2002, Strom hosted it until April 16, 2005. Walker then became the host of American Dissident Voices until his arrest in June 2006. At that time, Gliebe became the host of the radio program. Broadcasts of the program continued until 2012, when the frequency of them became erratic. At some time in 2013, Gliebe ceased broadcasting the program altogether, but in December of that year, Kevin Alfred Strom resumed the broadcasting of the program.

Cosmotheist Church
The spiritual aspect of the National Alliance's ideology is espoused by the Cosmotheist Church, a Christian Identity group.

title: National Alliance (United States)


text:
Gillingham, Dorset

Gillingham is a town and civil parish in the Blackmore Vale area of Dorset, England. It lies on the B3095 and B3081 roads, approximately 4 mi south of the A303 trunk road and 5 mi northwest of Shaftesbury. It is the most northerly town in the county. In the 2011 census the civil parish had a population of 11,756. The neighbouring hamlets of Peacemarsh, Bay and Wyke have become part of Gillingham as it has expanded.

Gillingham is pronounced with a hard initial "g", unlike Gillingham, Kent, which is pronounced with a soft "g".

History
There is a Stone Age barrow in the town, and evidence of Roman settlement in the 2nd and 3rd centuries; however the town was established by the Saxons. The church of St Mary the Virgin has a Saxon cross shaft dating from the 9th century.

The name Gillingham was used for the town in its 10th century Saxon charter, and also in an entry for 1016 in the annals, as the location of a battle between Edmund Ironside and the Vikings. In the Domesday Book in 1086 it is recorded as Gelingeham, and later spellings include Gellingeham in 1130, Gyllingeham in 1152 and Gilingeham in 1209. The name derives from a personal name plus the Old English inga and hām, and means a homestead of the family or followers of a man called Gylla.

Half of the town's population of 2,000 died of the Black Death in the four months following October 1348.

In the Middle Ages, Gillingham was the site of a royal hunting lodge, visited by Kings Henry I, Henry II, John and Henry III. A nearby royal forest, Gillingham Forest, was set aside for the king's deer. The lodge fell into disrepair and was destroyed in 1369 by Edward III.

Edward Rawson, the first secretary to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was born in Gillingham.

Gillingham became a local farming centre, gained the first grammar school in Dorset in 1516 and a silk mill in 1769. Gillingham's church has a 14th-century chancel, though most of the rest of the building was built in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many other buildings in the town are of Tudor origin.

In the 1820s, the artist John Constable stayed at Gillingham vicarage and, being impressed by the beauty of the countryside, executed several local sketches and paintings. His painting of the old town bridge is in the Tate Gallery. In the 1850s, the arrival of the railway to the town brought prosperity and new industries including brickmaking, cheese production, printing, soap manufacture and at the end of the 19th century one of the first petrol engine plants in the country. In the Second World War Gillingham's position on the railway from London to Exeter was key to its rapid growth. In 1940 and 1941 there was large-scale evacuation of London and other industrial cities to rural towns, particularly in the north, southwest and Wales. Gillingham grew rapidly because of this.

Gillingham was the centre of a liberty of the same name.

Demography
In the 2011 census Gillingham civil parish had 5,345 dwellings, 5,107 households and a population of 11,756.

The population of the parish in the censuses between 1921 and 2011 is shown in the table below:

Governance
Gillingham is divided into four electoral wards for Town Council: Gillingham Town, Lodbourne, Milton and Wyke. Their total population in the 2011 census was 9,799. They form part of the constituency of North Dorset, which is currently represented in the UK parliament by the Conservative Simon Hoare.

After 2019 structural changes to local government in England, the Gillingham ward ahs elected three councillors to Dorset Council.

Economy and society
Gillingham has good transport links, being 4 mi south of the A303, the main road from London to the South West, and having a railway station on the Exeter to London railway line. Salisbury is about 30 minutes away by train, and 50 minutes by car. It is approximately two hours into central London, with trains arriving at Waterloo.

The town has 70 shops and two commercial estates (Brickfields Business Park and Brickfields Industrial Estate) and the Gillingham education area has 7 primary schools (4 in the town) and 1 secondary school.

The town plays host to the annual 'Gillingham & Shaftesbury Show', which is an agricultural show held every August at the showground on the outskirts of the town. Gillingham Town Carnival is held every October.

The biggest sports club in the town is North Dorset Rugby Club. This is located at Slaughtergate on the west side of Gillingham. The town also has a Non-League football club, Gillingham Town, which plays at Woodwater Lane.

Until 2009, when it ceased for financial reasons, Gillingham hosted an annual 10-day festival of music and sport. Gillingham has had a brass band since 1928 and perform at civic events and carnivals.

Media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC West and ITV West Country. Television signals are received from the Mendip TV transmitter.

Local radio stations are BBC Radio Solent, Heart West Country, Greatest Hits Radio South (formerly Vale FM) and Alfred Radio, a community radio station which broadcast from Shaftesbury.

The town is served by the local newspapers, Gillingham News and Dorset Echo.

title: Gillingham, Dorset


text:
Talk:District of Columbia (geography)

A question that I've had for a long time that maybe someone here can answer for me: the U.S. Constitution authorizes a 10 square mile federal district. So why is it so much larger (61 square miles, according to the article)? Schmeitgeist 15:13, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Should the table of Wards and ANCs really be in this article? This is really more on DC internal politics than geography. -- BRG

"The area is 159 sq. km (98.5 sq. miles)." 98.5 sq. miles are 255 sq. km. Does anybody know, which figure is right?

 * Where did that come from? The article says 61 sq. miles (135 sq. km), which is correct...  In response to the first question, it wasn't "10 square miles", but a square with 10 mile sides.  It is less than 100 sq. miles because of the cession back to Virginia of what is now Arlington and Old Town Alexandria, and maybe some of it is due to the Potomac too...  I don't know how much is within DC's jurisdiction, or if the 61 sq mi area just includes land.  Postdlf 00:01, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * From Article I of the Constitution: "[Congress shall have the power to] exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States." Source To me, "ten Miles square" sounds like 10 square miles. Schmeitgeist 22:59, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

 * Ten miles square is different from 10 square miles. It means a square that is 10 miles on each side, which would be an area of 100 sq. mi. Each of the sides of D.C. is, in fact, 10 miles long, though the Virginia portion was retroceded in the 1840s so the total area is now significantly less than 100 mi². --Polynova 06:15, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

 * Archaic language is fun. Schmeitgeist 14:53, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

Why merge with main article?
The main Washington, D.C. article is already 43KB, and this would seem to be one of the natural places to subdivide. -- choster 02:58, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:District of Columbia (geography)


text:
Talk:Militia group

What?
Isn't a militia by definition a group? -- ESP 15:24 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I redirected and merged w Militia.

 * Sam [Spade] 03:41, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Militia group


text:
User talk:Pointless Exercise

Hi, welcome to Wikipedia. As you have probably noticed, a couple of users (myself included) have taken issue with some of the material that you have added to AIDS reappraisal. Obviously, this is an inflammatory issue that is difficult to reconcile with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. Since the two primary contributors to that article (again, myself included) are of the dissident perspective, we welcome contributions by someone with a viewpoint opposed to our own, since it can provide the article with balance, so long as the conflict does not degenerate into edit wars and unhelpful debate.

User:Revolver and I feel that many of the contributions you have made to the article are phrased in such a way that they cause the article to be biased against those who believe AIDS should be re-evaluated. Such perspectives should certainly be included in the article, but as it currently stands, the article seems to be "arguing with itself", so to speak. This is generally not what is meant by our neutral POV policy; such disagreements should really be phrased in a manner similar to what I have done: So-and-so says this, so-and-so rebukes by saying this. This is, to my mind, the most neutral approach to the subject, especially when "facts" are under dispute.

Also, as I have noted on the talk page of the article, part of my objection to the material you have inserted is that it is disruptive to the flow of discussion that I was hoping to achieve in the "Arguments by dissidents" section. It was my intention that this section should provide an overview of the arguments made by dissidents, with an overview of the responses made by the supporters of the HIV theory. The article would become prohibitively lengthy if each point is to be discussed in such detail; a separate article may be a more appropriate place to expose the details of each point of contention.

I hope we can find a way to meet in the middle on this article. Please let me know what your thoughts are on how we can resolve these issues. Thanks! -- Wapcaplet 15:27 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Pointless Exercise