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br> -- Ken Shreve br> New Hampshire /p> p> ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR br> Re: Katharine Boswell's Antioch Agonistes : /p>

Katharine Boswell's misinformed shadenfreude over the apparent death of Antioch College bears such a shocking resemblance to George Will's missive on the topic that the gentlemen could certainly sue for plagiarism. Or would that be hero worship? The conservative response to Antioch has always been the same formula: self-designed majors lack standards; sexual offense should be an expectation of the college experience; self defining clubs on campus are liberal hypocrisy.

If Ms. Boswell had taken any time to research the college instead of just repeating what her betters have already said in wider circulation, she might have found that Antioch College has produced MacArthur Fellows, Fulbright Scholars, MDs, JDs and PhDs in numbers disproportionately high for a college of its size and endowment. I only bring up the credentials because such gross measures of success are easier to understand than a more refined measurement of the thousands of Antiochians who have gone on to toil in the thankless fields of primary and secondary education, social work, community activism, non-profit management, the arts, social entrepreneurship and, don't let me forget: legitimate non-corporate journalism (though we do have several CNN producers to our credit, but then I am sure Ms. Boswell is a FOX fan). Self-designed majors (which sadly are no longer part of the curriculum) allowed students to focus their studies and produce graduate level work.

To almost quote Don Rumsfeld: Democracy is messy. Antioch is based on a model of community government where students, faculty and staff have a say in virtually every aspect of campus life and the academic program. Antioch assumes that its students have the maturity that their majority status implies, unlike Ms. Boswell's alma mater Baylor. At Baylor the university administration, or rather the Baptist Convention circumscribes student speech, appearance and dress; homosexuality is considered sexual misconduct equal to incest and assault, critical thinking is only acceptable to the point that it does not challenge the supremacy and infallibility first of God and second the Baptist Convention.

p>As for Wordsworth, Antiochians might adopt, as motto if our struggle succeeds, or epitaph if it fails: "Neither evil tongues, rash judgements, nor/the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings/where no kindness is, nor all the dreary/intercours of daily life, shall e'er prevail/against us." br> --

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