History
Geneva College was founded in 1848 in Northwood, Ohio, by John Black Johnston, a minister of the RPCNA. Originally called "Geneva Hall", the college was named after the Swiss center of the Reformed faith movement. After briefly closing during the American Civil War, the college continued operating in Northwood until 1880. By that time, the college leadership had begun a search for alternate locations that were closer to urban areas. After considering several locations in the Midwest, the denomination chose the College Hill neighborhood of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. The college constructed its current campus on land donated by the Harmony Society. Old Main, the oldest building on campus, was completed in 1881.
The most recent major campus construction project to be completed was the construction of the Rapp Technical Design Center in 2002. A major project to reroute Pennsylvania Route 18, which runs through the campus, was completed in November 2007. Improvements to Reeves Stadium and the construction of a campus entrance and pedestrian mall were completed in time for the fall semester in 2009.
On December 15, 2006, the college filed a federal lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, alleging that a decision by the state to block the college from participating in the state sponsored CareerLink job service amounted to a violation of the college's First Amendment rights. In response, the state argued that the college's requirement that faculty and staff members subscribe to the Christian religion amounted to discrimination, to which the college responded that the faculty religious test constituted a bona fide occupational qualification under existing federal employment law. The lawsuit was co-sponsored by the Association of Faith-Based Organizations and argued by the Christian Legal Society.
In April 2007, the college reached a settlement with CareerLink in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh. Geneva's right to access to CareerLink will be restored and the college will retain the statement on its employment applications stating, "Compliance with Geneva's Christian views is considered a bona fide occupational qualification ... and will have a direct impact on employment consideration."
Read more about this topic: Geneva College
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)