Southwest Virginia Community College

After the House of Burgesses was dissolved by the British governor in 1774, Virginia’s revolutionary leaders continued to govern via the Virginia Conventions. On May 15, 1776, the Convention declared Virginia’s independence from the British Empire and adopted George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was then included in a new constitution. Another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, drew upon Mason’s work in drafting the national Declaration of Independence. Several European expeditions, including a group of Spanish Jesuits, explored the Chesapeake Bay during the 16th century. To help counter Spain’s colonies in the Caribbean, Queen Elizabeth I of England supported Walter Raleigh’s April 1584 expedition to the Atlantic coast of North America.

There is also a Children’s Theater of Virginia, Theatre IV, which is the second largest touring troupe nationwide. Notable music performance venues include The Birchmere, the Landmark Theater, and Jiffy Lube Live. Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts is located in Vienna and is the only national park intended for use as a performing arts center.

Virginia is predominantly Christian and Protestant; Baptist denominations combined to form largest group with over a quarter of the population as of 2014. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington includes most of Northern Virginia’s Catholic churches, while the Diocese of Richmond covers the rest. This general method of treating cities and counties on par with each other is unique to Virginia; only three other independent cities exist elsewhere in the United States, each in a different state. Within counties, there can also be incorporated towns, which do operate their own governments, and unincorporated communities, which do not. And min. temperatures in °CPrecipitation totals in mmVirginia has a humid subtropical climate that transitions to humid continental west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Seasonal extremes vary from average lows of 25 °F (−4 °C) in January to average highs of 86 °F (30 °C) in July.

Besides the general public schools in Virginia, there are Governor’s Schools and selective magnet schools. The Governor’s Schools are a collection of more than forty regional high schools and summer programs intended for gifted students. The Virginia Council for Private Education oversees the regulation of 483 state accredited private schools. In 2019, 91.5% of high school students graduated on-time after four years, an increase of two percent from 2013, and 89.3% of adults over sports recycler boulder the age 25 had their high school diploma. Virginia has one of the smaller racial gaps in graduation rates among U.S. states, with 89.7% of Black students graduating on time, compared to 94.7% of white students and 97.5% of Asian students. Despite ending school segregation in the 1960s, seven percent of Virginia’s public schools were rated as “intensely segregated” by The Civil Rights Project at UCLA in 2019, and the number has risen since 1989, when only three percent were.

The Virginia Capitol Police protect the legislature and executive department, and are the oldest police department in the United States, dating to the guards who protected the colonial leadership. The governor can also call upon the Virginia National Guard, which consists of approximately 7,200 army soldiers, 1,200 airmen, 300 Defense Force members, and 400 civilians. Weight is an issue for many Virginians, and 32.2% of adults and 14.9% of 10- to 17-year-olds are obese as of 2021. Smoking in bars and restaurants was banned in January 2010, and the percent of tobacco smokers in the state has declined from 19% in that year to 13.6% in 2021, but an additional 5.2% use e-cigarettes. Virginia does have above average percentage of residents who receive annual immunizations, ranking eleventh for yearly flu vaccinations.

Literature in Virginia often deals with the Commonwealth’s extensive and sometimes troubled past. The works of Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Glasgow often dealt with social inequalities and the role of women in her culture. Glasgow’s peer and close friend James Branch Cabell wrote extensively about the changing position of gentry in the Reconstruction era, and challenged its moral code with Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice. William Styron approached history in works such as The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice. Tom Wolfe has occasionally dealt with his southern heritage in bestsellers like I Am Charlotte Simmons. Mount Vernon native Matt Bondurant received critical acclaim for his historic novel The Wettest County in the World about moonshiners in Franklin County during prohibition.

Slavery first appears in Virginia statutes in 1661 and 1662, when a law made it hereditary based on the mother’s status. Tensions and the geographic differences between the working and ruling classes led to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, by which time current and former indentured servants made up as much as eighty percent of the population. The rebels, who burned Jamestown, were largely from the colony’s frontier, and opposed to the governor’s conciliatory policy towards native tribes. One result of the rebellion was the signing at Middle Plantation of the Treaty of 1677, which made the signatory tribes tributary states and was part of a pattern of appropriating tribal land by force and treaty. Southwest Virginia Community College is a two-year institution of higher education established as a part of a state-wide system of community colleges serving primarily the residents of the counties of Buchanan, Dickenson , Russell and Tazewell.

House of Representatives seats since 1993, and control of the majority has flipped four times since then, often as part of “wave elections”. In the 2010 mid-term elections, the first under President Obama, Republicans flipped the 2nd and 5th seats from the Democrats, who had flipped both in the previous election, as well as the 9th. In the 2018 mid-terms, the first under President Trump, Democrats took back the 2nd, as well as the 7th and 10th, giving them currently seven seats to the Republicans’ four. Based on data through 2018, the Pew Center on the States found Virginia’s government to be above average in running surpluses, and U.S. The legislature starts regular sessions on the second Wednesday of every year, which meet for up to 48 days in odd years and 60 days in even years to allow more time for the state budget.

State elections in Virginia occur in odd-numbered years, with executive department elections occurring in years following U.S. presidential elections and Senate elections occurring in the years prior to presidential elections, as both have four-year terms. House of Delegates elections take place concurrent with each of those elections as members have two-year terms. National politics often play a role in state election outcomes, and Virginians have elected governors of the party opposite the U.S. president in eleven of the last twelve contests, with only Terry McAuliffe beating the trend in 2013. McAuliffe, a Democrat, was elected during Barack Obama’s second presidential term. Republicans at that time held a supermajority of seats in the House of Delegates, which they had first gained in the 2011 state elections, and a one-vote majority the state senate, both of which they maintained in the 2015 elections. The 2011 and 2015 elections also had the lowest voter turnout in recent history, with just 28.6% and 29.1% of registered voters participating respectively.