New College Independent Alumni/ae Association

I feel that New College isn’t a place but rather was a time when people came together to attempt to make the world a better place. As it appears to no longer be serving this function, maybe New College can continue to create environments (through us) for contributions to the larger world. The present and future acts of those that made up the more substantial aspects of New College will determine NC’s legacy and whether it will have any lasting or sustainable humanitarian value in the consensus reality world.

There is a world beyond the cult of New College–in which we are all forced to exist, financially and socially. For those of us who found New College more than a mirage, a utopic fantasia of “good will and good works”—New College will continue to evolve and morph through us, through human effort, and the capacity to link in the larger world. The crumbling of the institution, is in fact, the crumbling of the illusion which by its nature disappeared and began to swallow up the more substantial aspect of the New College Community. Ahh. The problem with utopic worlds. The illusion and fantasy of what New College could be as opposed to what New College in fact was —broke down the infrastructure. As if a place of learning could simply exist in fantasy and imagination without any real world considerations such as the processes of managing, organizing, structuring–those processes that are necessary for survival.

Basically the New College (historic leadership) have laid claim to their fantasy while those of us forced out are now challenged to take what was a viable learning product and make our way in the world with the unique and radical learning processes that we were able to cultivate despite attempts to constantly cut the community off from legitimization through political, financial, and social institutions that would have assured New College’s longevity. And yes, now the leaders have laid claim to their half of New College, the underside of fantasy, the wasteland, the nothing. Any learning at this point is thin.

So I encourage you to start building the possibility of a conference–invite a larger audience—challenge the community to use the experience to learn, to think, to continue radical processes of reflection that goes way beyond the the domain of any single institution. As thinking is the domain of people. And this is what we desperately need right now. Thinking people….. beyond nationalism, beyond ism’s, beyond the New Collegisms. The we/them that collapses thought. In a sense at this point in time New College has become a we/them, a name, a memory, empty borders, fantasy. There are always spaces within collapse to move through, but sometimes they are narrow. Still it is encumbent on some of us to find those narrow spaces and move through them to secure the freedom of thinking of “people” on safer ground. A ground which safeguards and protects thoughts and minds rather than blowing them out and blowing them away.

—Anonymous

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