Latest news with #William&Mary
USA Today
07-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Who is Daniel Dixon? Learn more on OKC Thunder's 2025 Utah Summer League coach
The Oklahoma City Thunder have kicked off their 2025 Summer League. They will play at least eight games split between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas from July 5-20. The multi-week extravaganza allows teams to get their first look at some of their young prospects. The Thunder have several interesting names. Despite being the NBA champions, they have a blue-chip prospect ready to suit up and other players ready to make an immediate impact. Nikola Topic, Ajay Mitchell and Brooks Barnhizer are the top billing names of OKC's Summer League roster. The low-stakes environment also helps assistant coaches get some head coach reps. As usual, the Thunder split the Summer League head coach duties between two. Daniel Dixon will coach the three Utah games and Connor Johnson will coach the five-plus Vegas games. Here's a quick get-to-know-you piece on Dixon and his journey to being a Thunder assistant coach: Dixon played at William & Mary Dixon played four college seasons at William & Mary from 2013-17. After he came off the bench his freshman year, he spent his final three campaigns as a starter. The guard averaged 11.9 points, 3.3 rebounds and 1.6 assists in his collegiate career. Dixon was named to the 2017 All-CAA First Team in his senior season. Dixon's playing career After he went undrafted, he spent time in the G League and overseas during his three-year pro career. His first stop was on the Maine Red Claws. He played in France for a couple of months before returning to the G League with the Northern Arizona Suns and Windy City Bulls. He averaged 10.6 points, 3.9 rebounds and 2.3 assists in the G League. Dixon's coaching career Dixon retired from playing in 2020. He was a Charlotte Hornets intern for the 2020-21 season. He was an assistant video coordinator the following season. After that, Dixon was added to the G League's OKC Blue staff as an assistant coach. That lasted from 2022-24. He was then promoted to the Thunder's staff as an assistant coach under Mark Daigneault. His official title is "assistant coach for player development." He was the 2024 Las Vegas Summer League coach and is now the 2025 Utah Summer League coach.
Politico
03-07-2025
- Business
- Politico
Why Republicans can't quit Medicaid cuts
Republicans also largely see the two programs as earned entitlements because they are funded with payroll taxes, whereas Medicaid is still viewed by many in the party as a handout, even though most recipients work, policy experts said. 'Social Security and Medicare also clearly have a beneficiary group of elderly who are politically active, but Medicaid is politically easier to go after because you're talking about kids and poor people and people with disabilities,' said Chris Howard, a professor of government and public policy at William & Mary in Virginia. With Social Security and Medicare off the table, Medicaid became one of the only targets for Republicans to find cuts of the size they needed to pay for Trump's policy priorities. 'When you have to pay for stuff in the federal budget, there are only a couple of programs they can look at,' said GOP health strategist Joel White, president and CEO of the consulting firm Horizon Government Affairs. 'The money lined up.' Messaging war Trump's remaking of the Republican Party aside, the rhetoric around the Medicaid debate was familiar to anyone who's paid attention to politics over the last several decades. Republicans said the Medicaid expansion had exploded the welfare state by allowing 'video-game-playing young men' too lazy to work to enjoy taxpayer-funded health care. Democrats said Republicans were shredding the social safety net to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated an earlier version of the bill would lead to a $1.1 trillion cut to health spending over the next decade and 11.8 million people tossed off coverage. The CBO does not have an updated score yet on the version of the bill that narrowly passed the House on Thursday after several health provisions were dropped, such as a penalty on states for coverage of undocumented immigrants. Recent polling shows that Democrats appear to be winning the messaging war. A poll released June 26 from Quinnipiac University found 55 percent of U.S. voters were opposed to the bill compared with 29 percent in support and 16 percent didn't have an opinion. Another poll from health research group KFF found 64 percent of U.S. adults opposed the bill and 35 percent were in favor. 'The combination of these deep cuts to food and health care, which most people strongly believe are important kinds of benefits, and the tax cuts for the rich — it's going to be very easy for Democrats to portray Republicans as the sort of heartless friends of the rich,' said Howard. White said Republicans have long had problems talking about health care, and lawmakers must keep to their message that the policy changes go after abuses. 'There are simple things they can say: 'If you are an able-bodied adult, you need to work or volunteer in your community and get educated,'' he said. White added that Republicans need to explain more clearly why the cuts are necessary to shore up the program for those truly in need and that those kicked off can obtain insurance through an employer or an Obamacare exchange. 'All members of Congress need to say what is at stake, which is the integrity and long-term stability of the Medicaid program,' he said.
New York Post
25-06-2025
- General
- New York Post
Archaeologists unearth foundation of 1760s schoolhouse for black children near famed college
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Archaeologists in Virginia have unearthed the foundation of a building from the 1700s that once supported the nation's oldest surviving schoolhouse for black children, William & Mary announced Wednesday. The university in Williamsburg said the foundation is nearly completely intact. Archaeologists also uncovered a cellar that is layered with centuries of artifacts, including slate pencil fragments and jewelry. Advertisement 5 William & Mary College archaelogists excavating the foundation of a building that was once the nation's oldest schoolhouse for black children in the 1700s. William Mary/William Mary Center for Archaeological Research via AP 5 The Williamsburg Bray School taught mostly enslaved children in the 1760s. AP The schoolhouse was later used as a dormitory, housing some of the first generations of women to attend college in the US. 'The roots of our city and university entwine here,' said Katherine A. Rowe, William & Mary's president. 'Every layer of history that it reveals gives us new insights into our early republic, from the Williamsburg Bray School through the generations that followed, up through the early 20th century.' Advertisement The Williamsburg Bray School taught hundreds of mostly enslaved students in the 1760s. The school rationalized slavery within a religious framework. And yet becoming literate also gave them more agency, with students sharing what they learned with family members. Advertisement The schoolhouse then became a private home before it was incorporated into William & Mary's growing campus. 5 Buttons from clothing found during the excavation. William & Mary Center for Archaeological Research 5 Pieces of pottery and other remains discovered at the site of the schoolhouse. William & Mary Center for Archaeological Research The building was expanded for various purposes, including student housing, and later moved from its original location. Advertisement Historians identified the structure in 2020 through a scientific method that examines tree rings in lumber. It was then moved to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a living history museum that includes parts of the original city. The museum has restored the schoolhouse and is working to identify the students' descendants. Meanwhile, archaeologists with Colonial Williamsburg recently uncovered the foundation and cellar during a major project by William & Mary to renovate a university building, Gates Hall. The school's archaeologists are also involved. Tom Higgins of William & Mary's Center for Archaeological Research said the cellar is not lined with bricks and 'was probably dug soon after the foundations were laid.' Researchers have found handmade ceramics often associated with sites of enslavement and Indigenous communities, the university said. 5 According to the college, the schoolhouse's foundation was discovered completely intact. William & Mary Center for Archaeological Research There are also items that appear to be more recent, such as a shard of glass depicting Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, war and the arts. Advertisement From 1924 to 1930, the building housed Methodist women attending William & Mary. 'We know that the girls at Brown Hall were furnishing their dorms,' said Michele Brumfield, senior researcher at the university's archaeological center. 'So maybe they were bringing in things like this.'
Boston Globe
19-06-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Enslaved children were educated here. Now, the public can learn the history.
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The opening of the school comes at a particularly fraught time in the United States as Black history, diversity and established historical narratives are being challenged, sanitized or even erased. Its story also unlocks another layer of the historic city, whose identity is shaped, in part, by its role in the American Revolution. Located in the coastal Tidewater region, Williamsburg was once the capital of the British colony of Virginia. The city is a unique place to examine colonial life — including slavery — and the nation's founding ideals. Advertisement The school's discovery was based on research by Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor professor of English emeritus at William & Mary. It inspired a years-long mission among a broad community of scholars, historians, archaeologists, genealogists, and descendants to learn more about the school and its students. It was rare during the colonial period for a space to be dedicated to formally educating enslaved and free Black children. In 1831, decades after the school had closed, Virginia outlawed the practice. Advertisement 'The Bray School is happening around the same time that the fundamental ideas of American identity are being shaped and articulated. The existence of the school tells us that African Americans were a part of the fabric of Williamsburg despite the desire to not see them,' said Maureen Elgersman Lee, director of the William & Mary Bray School Lab. 'The children grew up. They created lives within the system they lived in, whether free or enslaved. They entered this new period, this soon-to-be republic, and they were part of America's story.' The Williamsburg school was one of five Bray schools in the colonial United States. As many as 400 Black children attended the school beginning in 1760. It moved to a larger facility after five years and closed in 1774 after the death of its only instructor, a white woman named Ann Wager. The existence of the school was known — through documentation and family stories — but it would be centuries before the original building was reclaimed from history. The first known record of the children, identified by name, is dated 1762. At the time, there were 30 students, ages 3 to 10. Twenty-seven were enslaved. Three were listed as free. They walked to school and attended Bruton Parish Church on Sundays. Around this time, African Americans represented more than half of Williamsburg's population. Advertisement 'I always knew there were pieces missing from the story of Blacks here in Williamsburg,' said Janice Canaday, who traces her family to Elisha and Mary Jones, who attended the Bray School in 1762 as free students. Canaday works as Colonial Williamsburg's African American community engagement manager and said she often thought about the children. 'I wonder what songs they sang.' she said, 'Did they go home, wherever home was, and share what they learned? Did they look out the window and somehow see hope?' Colonial Williamsburg, which re-creates the colonial era through a collection of more than 600 restored or reconstructed buildings and costumed interpreters, is taking steps to more comprehensively tell Black history. On Juneteenth, it is also breaking ground on a project to rebuild the African Baptist Meeting House, the first permanent structure used by the present-day congregation of the First Baptist Church, which was founded in 1776 and is just steps from where the school now sits. And, on the William & Mary campus, archaeologists have begun a formal dig in search of more pieces of Bray's remarkable history. Collectively, the three projects explore the complicated intersection of race and religion that shaped Williamsburg during the colonial period while also helping create a fuller portrait of enslaved and free Black life there. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which owns and operates the museum, has been accused of both presenting a whitewashed version of the colonial period and of going 'woke' by making the 18th-century storytelling more inclusive. Advertisement 'We are going to tell a full story,' said Ron Hurst, chief mission officer for the foundation and its senior vice president of education and historic resources. 'We are going to tell you the good and the bad. We are not going to tell you what to think about it. That's up to you.' For years, researchers have pored over official correspondence and archival documents related to Bray and have conducted oral interviews to piece together the school's history. The Bray schools were founded by the Associates of Dr. Bray, an Anglican Church missionary organization, to teach Black children to read and to follow the faith. The girls were also taught needlework. 'It was not exactly an altruistic mission,' Hurst said. 'The intent was to Christianize and particularly imbue the Anglican religion into children of color but at the same time reinforce what was perceived as their place in society. To me, one of the most interesting parts of this story is that once the tool of literacy is freed, you can't put that genie back in the bottle.'
19-06-2025
- General
Archaeologists unearth foundation of 1760s schoolhouse for Black children
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- Archaeologists in Virginia have unearthed the foundation of a building from the 1700s that once supported the nation's oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children, William & Mary announced Wednesday. The university in Williamsburg said the foundation is nearly completely intact. Archaeologists also uncovered a cellar that is layered with centuries of artifacts, including slate pencil fragments and jewelry. The schoolhouse was later used as a dormitory, housing some of the first generations of women to attend college in the U.S. 'The roots of our city and university entwine here," said Katherine A. Rowe, William & Mary's president. "Every layer of history that it reveals gives us new insights into our early republic, from the Williamsburg Bray School through the generations that followed, up through the early 20th century.' The Williamsburg Bray School taught hundreds of mostly enslaved students in the 1760s. The school rationalized slavery within a religious framework. And yet becoming literate also gave them more agency, with students sharing what they learned with family members. The schoolhouse then became a private home before it was incorporated into William & Mary's growing campus. The building was expanded for various purposes, including student housing, and later moved from its original location. Historians identified the structure in 2020 through a scientific method that examines tree rings in lumber. It was then moved to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a living history museum that includes parts of the original city. The museum has restored the schoolhouse and is working to identify the students' descendants. Meanwhile, archaeologists with Colonial Williamsburg recently uncovered the foundation and cellar during a major project by William & Mary to renovate a university building, Gates Hall. The school's archaeologists are also involved. Tom Higgins of William & Mary's Center for Archaeological Research said the cellar is not lined with bricks and 'was probably dug soon after the foundations were laid.' Researchers have found handmade ceramics often associated with sites of enslavement and Indigenous communities, the university said. There are also items that appear to be more recent, such as a shard of glass depicting Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, war and the arts. From 1924 to 1930, the building housed Methodist women attending William & Mary. 'We know that the girls at Brown Hall were furnishing their dorms,' said Michele Brumfield, senior researcher at the university's archaeological center. 'So maybe they were bringing in things like this.'
