RIP Antioch
So, Antioch closed today , and I’m not sure how to feel about it. Well it didn’t close “today”, it announced the formal decision to close its doors one year from now in July 2008. It’s one of those things, I guess, that strikes from time to time: a sense of loss of place, of a place you knew and loved, of a place that shaped you and someplace you loved as well. Pretty insignificant in the grand scheme, but very significant to you. I suddenly remember telling my friend Amy that I didn’t want to go to Antioch, that I wasn’t ready for college, and never would be. I’ve known for awhile that the college was failing, and even when I was a student we all knew it had seen its heyday in the 70’s, and declined from there. But still, in 1999 we had some amazing times I can’t even describe. My college career was short, and I don’t regret that, but I do feel sad that we (my friends and I) never got to be “the alumni who came back”, you know, the folks who come to visit only to find new people where they themselves once were. Coming around full circle, as it were. This all sort of feels like the Vogue closing, only marginally less emotionally intense. Because I’ve been away from Antioch so long, I suppose.
All right, enough. This post is inexcusably self-indulgent. I guess the larger point is that, whatever its faults, Antioch existed as a school of free thought and liberation in an educational atmosphere of stringency and hierarchy. Maybe later when this all makes more sense I’ll come up with these points more succinctly but for now this will have to do. It’s really cool that this school existed in the first place. May it re-open in 2012 (!!!) to a brighter future.
