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Friday, August 29, 2008
a video that will shock you!
Libraries are the repositories of the acquired knowledge of human civilization. In my view a library is a sacred place.
Someone sent me a video today that seems to make the case that there might be some who are charged with protecting these sacred repositories of knowledge who are not up to the task. You can draw your own conclusions.
This is a very short video that was apparently taped yesterday. Warning; if books are sacred to you then this film might be profoundly disturbing for you to view:
To watch it click here.
Here is some additional information that just came in from Judith Wolert-Maldonado:
“A simplified back-story to this incident (sorry, not short):
Over a year ago, Antioch University (AU) officials announce the closing of Antioch College (155-year-old Antioch College birthed Antioch University). Antioch College was the largest employer for the village of Yellow Springs.
Antioch College alumni (around the world), faculty, staff and Yellow Springs and Miami Valley residents oppose the closing and organize to keep the college open.
AU officials continuously issue promises to the community that their decision may be changed and engage in negotiations, then “conversations” with key members of the Antioch College Alumni Board and other negotiators on behalf of keeping the college open.
AU officials close the college anyway, in June 2008, having fired the last of the remaining faculty and staff members.
The Antioch College campus is shuttered by the AU officials, with the addition of security cameras placed on campus buildings to document any possible damage done to buildings, etc. It is officially illegal to “trespass” on the property owned now by Antioch UNIVERSITY (the property that belonged to Antioch COLLEGE for over 100 years).
Only faculty and staff were given official communications by AU officials, to empty out their offices before the June closing - the communication that was given to faculty was unexpected and gave little time for them to scramble to move out many years’ worth of their files, books and other important documents.
The book collection that is seen trashed in the dumpster (it was thrown out by Antioch UNIVERSITY, for the record), belonged to a student group, the Womyn’s Center, which was located in the Student Union building, which housed the other student group offices.
No alumni were given official communications by AU officials to empty out the books, files and other important documents from the various offices of the student groups. A few of the student groups referred to here are the Human Rights Group, the Queer Center, BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), Unidad (Latin American student group), the Environmental Group, the Alternative Library (collection of zines and sociopolitical and sociocultural literature collected and archived by students-luckily, this collection is safe) and of course, the Womyn’s Center.
It was reported that an Antioch College Alumni Board member did officially ask AU staff for permission to be granted to Antioch College community members to be given a short amount of time to inventory and salvage those and other campus resources. The University denied the request, after earlier having stated that they would only be removing such things as moldy dorm mattresses, broken bits of furniture, etc, never indicating that they would be also discarding book collections and files. This is why folks are upset.”
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