This is not my New College
I went to a fabulous, innovative, creative and very special college named "New College."
I wanted to go there so much that I even transferred to it from an Ivy League college.
My mother was very upset, but it was the right decision for me.
The culture and environment were purely academic.
It was almost right out of something that Plato would have shaped.
Different points of view and opinions were allowed to "roam free" and be discussed.
The alumni New College produced have contributed to our society in many ways that would not have been fostered by traditional, stodgy institutions.
I was fortunate to be there when it was a private school, and graduated in its last class as such in 1975.
I was involved with the school for years, and I supported it.
That's
why I cringe now whenever I pick up the local paper and see thearticles that get published.
I do not even read any of it.
Many of those writing today are not writing about my New College.
New College is still a college-level educational institution, but it has no connection to the school I went to.
It is now a pawn in other people's power plays – at the expense of any attempt to produce the caliber of alumni I know.
Many of those who write about New College today do not know what New College was so long ago – nor do they know what the school has meant to society.
That's why I wish they would change the name of New College, because that would be an appropriate thing to do.
Just start a new institution and call it what you may, and make it what you want.
But the current school is not "New College," and continuing to call it by that name is an insult to the alumni it produced in the past.
Jim Gutner, Sarasota
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: The New College I loved is gone. Please change the name. | Letter
