R.I.P. Antioch College.

I'm saddened by this. Antioch was the first of many progressive liberal arts colleges that I fell in love with the idea of when I was in high school. To a fifteen-year-old who had never known anything but the regimented existence of a (very good) suburban public school, colleges without formal grades and with a population of artists and activists sounded amazing.

In the end, I never attended any of them. I ended up at an (also very good) state school of considerably more traditional sensibilities, although it did have lots of small seminars and a powerful emphasis on the liberal arts. I don't regret that choice. I got an excellent education there, and it was probably good for me to spend four years surrounded by people who were a great deal more conservative than I was. And we had a lovely co-op coffeehouse where I could hang out with fellow hippies. Still, I believe that there need to be more Antiochs in the world.