Please stop changing the establishment date. The About BU page clearly lists 1839 as the establishment date, which was different than the date it was chartered with the name Boston University.
For comparison, check the Harvard University wikipedia page, which uses 1636 as the establishment date even though it wasn't called "Harvard University" until 1780. previously, it was Harvard College. Name and organization changes are not unique to BU and are not a reason to edit the establishment date. BU uses 1839 as its establishment date and the same date should be used in a neutral article. The article explains what happened in 1839 and 1869, so your continual changes are unnecessary. --Jbrodkin (talk) 15:35, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Respectfully disagree on several counts. First, Boston University may trace its roots back to 1839 to a school in Vermont, but Boston University is a part of the city of Boston Massachusetts. Nowhere in the recorded history of Boston is there evidence that there was a school by the name of Boston University prior to 1869. Secondly, the Harvard situation is completely different. It was still Harvard whether it was a college or a university and its establishment date is not being challenged. I am challenging the historical accuracy of the 1839 establishment date for Boston University. There simply was no such place as Boston University in Boston prior to 1869. If you were to take the facts of the history of Boston University and present them to any high school history class in the United States, not one would come to the conclusion that BU was established in 1839. Any claim that BU was established in 1839 cannot be substantiated with documentation. Boston University's use of the 1839 date is neither neutral nor accurate. The establishment date for the Boston University Wikipedia article should be 1869, although I haven't yet figured out how to put this into the article within Wikipedia's guidelines. Boston University, as private institution, is free to make whatever claims it wishes on its own website, accurate or not. Theprofessor9 (talk) 22:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)