$100,000 for the Northfield campus is hard enough to swallow, but I’m even more troubled by the sale of the campus to entities and individuals with ties to Oral Roberts and Oral Roberts University. His was a version of theology and faith that couldn’t have differed more from DL’s. Roberts was notorious for deceitful, self-serving evangelism, for religious fear-mongering, and for building a personal fortune through his ultra-conservative values and sermonizing. I have a grim vision in my head of some Elmer Gantry-like preacher railing from the stage of the Auditorium while out there in radioland people are stuffing their hard-earned money into envelopes and sending them off to Hobby Lobby’s henchmen in hopes of buying their way into some Roberts-like version of heaven, while back at NMH “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” become the heart of the canon. I think DL is weeping, not smiling, in his grave, wondering how the NMH administration and trustees got so far off track. I feel as though my Northfield, the one I attended in the ’60s and the one I proudly committed my son to years later, has disappeared, Brigadoon-like. Shame on NMH.
Tags: Beth Palubinsky, N '65
i am sincerely hoping (and praying in my own personal way) that the sale of this campus to a right wing extremist religious organization will in no way change the diversity of the school’s student body nor the tolerance and understanding of different cultural traditions and religious values that I learned as a student at NMH
Asdie from the bizarre nature of this whole thing, how do you enforce the condition that the new owners will spend millions of dollars on fixing up the campus? What happens if they move in and do nothing? Can you sue someone and MAKE them do this?
I always hoped that UMass or some other local college would purchase that lovely campus and breath new life into it. I find the C.S. Lewis deal to be really odd. At the very least, I hope they don’t try to California-ize the campus.