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June 14, 2007
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June 14, 2007 |
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Editorial The legacy of Antioch College It’s impossible to imagine Yellow Springs without Antioch College. Antioch always dreamed big dreams, and its presence seemed to make Yellow Springs dream big, too. In 1853 a sleepy little town found itself the new home of the country’s most famous educator, Horace Mann, who left his beloved East Coast to pursue his passion of teaching young people — men and women alike — to think critically, question the dogmas of the day, and care enough to try to change the world. Villagers’ own history of bold and innovative thinking is deeply wedded to Antioch. Much of what’s best about the village, our high points of expression and creativity — the Chautauquas of the early 1900s, the Shakespeare festival of the 1950s — took place at the college. Antioch students and faculty set examples of courage and progressive thinking on civil rights, feminism, the red scare of the 1950s and protests against the Vietnam war, to name only a few. Our most successful businesses, including YSI Incorporated, began in Antioch College basements as the brainstorms of students. It’s impossible to imagine Yellow Springs without Antioch College. We are stunned by the news that the Antioch University Board of Trustees will close the college in a year. As one faculty member said, while everyone knew the college struggled financially, no one thought it would actually close. Many, many questions remain unanswered. The trustees state that their intention is to reinvent the college and reopen it within five years. It’s not clear how they will raise the money to do so with a closed campus when they couldn’t do so with one that was open. Asked this week how, exactly, the trustees plan to reinvent the college, an administrator said they will improve the college’s facilities and provide state of the art equipment and buildings. That’s a troubling response. While the college could certainly stand some spiffing up, students never came to Antioch for the facilities. They came for its challenging, dedicated and talented faculty, who will now be lost. And they came to Antioch for its soul and heart, its vision and dreams. Those qualities are also what the college gave to our town. We can’t afford to lose them. We can’t afford to imagine ourselves without Antioch College.
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