http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2007/1558Columns
Bob Fitrakis
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity
June 26, 2007
You can't generally hold a writer responsible for a headline, usually written by an editor, but you can take issue with it. The headline "Antioch's sunk itself by refusing to evolve," in the June 17 Columbus Dispatch over a Mike Harden column, suggests that the new corporate college and university model is in some way a step forward for humanity.
Remember that the Antioch College motto, taken from the great educator Horace Mann, is: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."
How one talks about the death, or temporary closing, of the legendary Antioch College – without talking about the great victories that it has won for humanity, this nation, the state of Ohio, and even the city of Columbus – is puzzling.
Let's recall that history. The Christian Connection founded the college in 1852. It's a little hard to believe now, in the era of George W. Bush's warmongering, profit-loving, pro-corporate version of Jesus, but there was a time when the American Christian churches drew more from the Sermon on the Mount than Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.