Posted on 06/15/2007 10:38:57 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
According to a statement released on June 12, 2007 by the Antioch College Board of Trustees, the College in Yellow Springs, Ohio will suspend operations on July 1, 2008. The Trustees announced that the "College's resources are inadequate" to continue its operations in Yellow Springs.
The statement from the Trustees refers to the College's "low enrollment and lack of adequate funding." It refers to all of the cutbacks that the College has made, which have "eroded the confidence students and parents have in the College's academic program."
The statement mentions the long-term goal of reopening the campus at some point in the future. However, given the College's declining enrollment, decrepit facilities, and low endowment, one wonders how the College can resurrect itself, absent a sugar daddy like George Soros.
I grew up within ten miles of Antioch College. To step onto its campus was to experience something of a time warp. In the 1960s, it was 1950's beatnik. Since then, it was and always will be 1968. There was something about Antioch's campus that was like one of those colonial villages in Williamsburg where everyone dresses in colonial costumes. Antioch students certainly dressed their part with their studied shabbiness. The Bohemianism at Antioch was always a little too self-conscious and self-congratulatory, and the radicalism conventional and, dare I say, boring.
If you were a high school student with a strong left-wing political philosophy, and if you desired to spend four years at a college that will confirm all of your political prejudices and reward certain righteous attitudes, Antioch College was the place to go. The PC orthodoxies on campus were always stifling and predictable. There was no political, social, or economic issue where anyone could doubt where the Antioch students stood. One could almost mouth the clichés and slogans as they were being spouted.
"Boot camp for the revolution" was how one student described Antioch to me. I wonder how much of their assigned reading students were able to buy at "Big Bill's Revolutionary Book Store" that used to be located on Xenia Avenue?
I was once told by a student that they could get classroom credit for partaking in public political demonstrations. I remember one demonstration outside of the Federal Courthouse in Dayton, Ohio in 1978 after the Supreme Court issued University of California Regents v. Bakke. This is the case where the Court somewhat restricted racial preferences in public university admissions. The Antioch students were demanding unfettered racial preferences. That the U.S. District Court in Dayton had absolutely nothing to do with the case, and that no court of law should be ever influenced by public demonstrations, of course meant nothing to them. What are mere facts and separation of powers when there is moral and political exhibitionism to tend to.
Antioch always touted itself as "innovative," it never being clear to me at Antioch the distinction between innovative and trendy. Who can forget that most notorious innovation, Antioch's sexual harassment policy?
This policy was published in Antioch College's Student Survival Guide. There is something precious in that title, Survival Guide, as if Yellow Springs were Afghanistan or the darkest reaches of the Amazon. By way of a preface, those so-hip administrators advised students as follows:
"This spirit [behind Antioch's policy on sex] is about a fully affirmative YES. Not an ambiguous yes, or a ‘well-not-really-but-OK-I guess, yes,' certainly not a ‘silent-no,' ‘yes,' or an ‘ouch' or ‘yuck-but-I'm-afraid-to-hurt-your-feelings-yes.' This is about YES, UM HUM, ABSOLUTELY, YIPPEE YAHOO YES!" [Emphasis in the original.] No, dear readers, I do not have the talent to make this up. Did Mr. Rogers write Sex for Dummies for the Neighborhood? Is this a training manual for six year olds learning to play "doctor"?
Then, things get even more serious. Down from Mount Sinai with the tablets, Antioch College's administrators laid down the law:
"-All sexual contact and conduct between any two (or more!) people must be consensual;" [which is worse here, the "or more" or the "!"?]
"-- Consent must be obtained verbally before there is any sexual contact or conduct;
"-- If the level of sexual intimacy increases during an interaction (i.e. if two people move from kissing while fully clothed, which is one level, to undressing for direct physical contact, which is another level), the people involved need to express their clear verbal consent before moving to that new level;" And so on and on.
I am not sure which is more hilarious: imagining the discussion that led to this twaddle or imagining the actual implementation of this policy in the dormitory.
Antioch College: so hip, so innovative, so politically active, so relevant. This is yet another case where the American public has shown more sense than its supposedly intellectual superiors. Antioch College was selling, and the people (as in "Power to the People") were not buying. The packaging shouted "Relevance!", and the people, voting with their feet and pocket books, proclaimed Antioch's titanic irrelevance.
As that other, far more gratefully dead once put it, "What a long strange trip it's been."
Now I’m picturing a couple or threesome (or more!) making out in the dorm room, each of them holding and carefully consulting his/her/its copy of the Antioch rules for proper sexual consent.
I guess there just isn’t much of a market in the real world for professional victims anymore. And the market for them in the public sector has just gotten too competitive!
But...but...if they close, who is going to store the Holy Hand Grenade?
(Python fans will know what I mean)
bookmark
Maybe “Air America” can help to bail them ou...oh never mind.
Part of the article says that they are closing in part due to “inadequate funding”. Where exactly do they expect funding to come from if tuition and fees don’t cover their costs? Or are they peeved that they exist in the real world of budgets and matching income and expenses, and having to plan for their spending? Or do they really just expect a government bailout at some point?
—But...but...if they close, who is going to store the Holy Hand Grenade?—
Don’t worry, they’ll ship it to Antioch, california...
oh, wait, City Council will just pass another anti-ordnance ordinance!
Well, it’ll return to its land of origin: Antioch, Syria.
It will be stored there for 24 hours before being used to blow up another Lebanese politician.
I used to make a similar joke that Yellow Springs should have a sign at its border "You are now entering Yellow Springs. Please turn your calendar back 40 years." (The joke was originally just 20 years. I'll go off and feel old somewhere now.)
This is in my neck of the woods.
I thought as I heard this announcement, ‘If only they had produced good capitalist, then they could have been more sustainable.’
When my kids ask me what it was like growing up, I tell them to go to Yellow Springs.
—It will be stored there for 24 hours before being used to blow up another Lebanese politician.—
Alternatively, it may be used to bomb another Holy Shiite shrine.
There goes another temporary employment agency for a “rent-a-mob”.
..And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, “O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy.” And the Lord did grin and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu... [At this point, the friar is urged by Brother Maynard to “skip a bit, brother”]... And the Lord spake, saying, “First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.” Amen.
Lord, may they drop like flies.
Amen.
Yet another fine example of liberalism aborting its future.
Lots of sex, few marriages, very few babies. God is not mocked.
It would be a very hairy, smelly group of people, regardless of the gender(s) involved.
I was in Yellow Springs about 3 weeks ago. Damn, just... damn. These people were awful.
My friend told me I would not blend in well there, I had on a suit and my hair is very short. My friend was right.
Buh-Bye!
Rod Serling, of the Twilight Zone, went to this college.
Maybe some Freepers may want to buy a cheap campus and rename it Free Republic University...
What a surprise.
There's a great book, entitled Generation Ecch, which explores some of the insanity that overtook Antioch-and similar institutions-in the early to mid-90s during the crest of the political correctness movement on college campuses.
I believe it was one of the first to adopt speech codes and formalized rules against sexual harassment, which amounted to a prohibition of relations between members of the opposite sex.
Antioch down.
Next come the Reedies.
I just searched "reading during sex" on Google Images – for instructional purposes only – but there weren't any relevant images.
What about Tony Snow bobbleheads....are they still OK?
I’m glad Antioch is dying. But we need to drive a steak though it’s heart, put garlic on it, expose it to the sun, shoot it with a silver bullet, bury it under concrete, drop it into the Marianas Trench, or maybe send it into outer space, or maybe drop it into the sun...
I would love to see Cedarville University open a Yellow Springs campus. Or maybe Liberty University, or Bob Jones...
This was being circulated amongst law students earlier this year.
Most Antioch Alumni money went “Up in Smoke”.
I’m stunned about this. I thought there was an endless supply of federal aid to keep colleges open. I’ve never heard of a college going out of business. Yellow Springs is great aside from that. Young’s Dairy has the best ice cream I’ve ever had.
Reminds me of Iowa City, 1968-71 when I was there.
bump
That was freakin’ hilarious. How about Article 20???
I had a friend that got kicked out of Bob Jones because it was too liberal for her. Various generations of Jones got upset when she denounced their Freemasonry.
One of my highschool girl friends went there and that is how I know that tidbit.
No need to place an ad in Iowa City. A guy could score a lid between classes.
LOL!
Don't forget the part about cutting its head off and stuffing its mouth full of Holy wafers. These details count!
Lawrence, Kansas had the same supply and demand market plus it grew wild in much of the county. I knew a kid that actually was a havesting fool for bad Kansas hemp...circulted it as Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers Association
While you were at Iowa U., did you happen to know a Delta Gamma, one year behind you, named Abbi Hunt?
Maybe they just dont want to grasp the possibility that students need a college education that prepares them to be something besides a sociology or minority studies professor.
Yep, and look what happened to him..HE’S DEAD...
I’m just sayin......
I always liked KU. Lawrence had one of the best stereo shops on earth...
I want first pick at their library books if they sell them!
Wow! Bob Jones too liberal, hmmm? I’ve run into a few like that.
I usually come away with an odd feeling of conviction (that I am not “christian enough”) and dread (that someday I too will be walking around acting like I permanently have a corncob up my wazzoo).
The name is familiar but I can’t place it. My last year there, I lived at the old Nu Sigma Nu medical fraternity which was famous for body painting parties w/ the nurses sorority. My 5th year of the search for the elusive BA I was 1-A. I remember listening to the lottery for the kids being drafted. I was #128 and they took everyone up to #121.
“inadequate funding”
Therein lies a fundamental difference between left and right. Conservatives make money while liberals raise funds.
Private liberal arts colleges follow an outdated business model. Reasonably well prepared high school graduates (with the financial means) spend four years earning a liberal arts degree at a small college with a picturesque retreat-like campus. After graduation, they move to another college where they earn an MBA, law degree, medical degree, etc (something useful for the job market). If not, they get a job in daddy’s business or teach high school. Those who do well are expected to remember with great fondness and appreciation their years as undergrads at camp college and reward their alma mater with generous financial donations (and hopefully, their own children as well).
The problem is that the reasonably well prepared high school graduates these colleges depend upon are becoming scarce. Those who are college material find they could do just as well, if not better, at a state university for a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, the almuni these colleges turned out are liberals and, as such, are less likely to have children (or survivng children). Therefore the colleges lose out on legacy students. Lastly, it is difficult for a college to raise funds and obtain grants when it does not have anything worthwhile to offer society. Stanford and Berkley are very liberal, but they also provide society with well prepared engineers, scientists, businessmen, etc. What does Antioch provide that the local junior colleges does not?
Love Garden sounds or Kief’s?
I gotta hold of some "Nebraska No-High" once. Looked great, smelled wonderful, and you bong a pound of the stuff without getting a buzz.
Yeah - I recall 1968 vividly. To be specific, I recall a brutal lesson in economics that led me to suspect that the hippified socialism that was to be our Brave New World had a couple of flaws in application that weren't obvious in theory.
It was a box in the cafeteria of the Commons at a Large Western University, set into the palm of a 10-foot papier-mache hand. A sign exhorted those who had spare change to throw it in so that those who did not could partake of the culinary delights of that establishment.
Obviously the box was scooped clean on a regular basis despite certain members of the student government priming the pump (probably illegally). It is, in retrospect, simply amazing that anyone thought it would work in the first place or that anyone but a terminally naive 17-year-old would be stupid enough to donate (guilty as charged, m'lud - I still had bruises from falling off the turnip truck).
That sort of preference for a noble illusion is the death knell of institutions run by people as silly as their undergraduate inhabitants. The real reason those who experienced the 60's and 70's cling to that period is a fierce case of superannuated adolescence, a simple refusal to grow up, an insistence that "power to the people" meant "power to young people" which was nothing more than a touching faith in the triumph of ignorance. That may create terrific songs but it doesn't pay the rent.
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