HISTORY

The University of Olivet, the home of the Garfield Lake Review, has an incredible story that begins even before the founding of this great nation. Pilgrims that traveled across the ocean seeking religious freedom were the first Congregationalists, the founders of the earliest universities in the United States. These same Congregationalists also funded the defense in the court case of the Amistad, a slave trading ship, in which the slaves won their freedom. These revolutionary efforts would trace their way to Olivet, Michigan.

Naming Olivet College after the biblical Mount of Olives, Rev. John Shipherd founded the school in 1844 in a small area of South-Central Michigan. Because of the unorthodox views of offering anyone an education, the state of Michigan refused to grant Olivet a charter, so it opened as a private institute. art work, and music that began in 1971 as a project in a creative writing class. The people who originally started the program were Professor James Coleman, Brent Danielson, James Hudson, Andrew Johnson, Amy Leithauser, George Palmenter, and Norm Wheeler. From its inception, the policy for the Garfield Lake Review has been to accept submissions from students, staff, and alumni, with students serving as an Editorial Board. They will make the final selections for the magazine from the material submitted.