The long, terrible trek to selling The Hilltop has finally come to a close.
The pain now has a terminal ending point. The uncertainty is over.
There comes a degree of relief with this, but the sharp sting of pain is far more potent.
I don’t think any of us saw the campus being acquired by the US Department of Defense and becoming a military installation.
It doesn’t matter how much you support the troops; this is not a cause of celebration.
And this is not a patriotism thing.
It is a liberal arts thing.
The only sliver of optimism- and I mean ONLY – is that, supposedly, for the time being, at least, the campus architecture will remain largely intact. The buildings will stand.
We can all take solace in this and breath a big sigh of relief that The Hilltop won’t be gutted into an AI data center or a landfill.
But the consolation this provides is slim and not sustaining.
It almost feels heretical to have other boots, boots beating to a different drum, march in those hallowed buildings.
It almost feels like cheating, accompanied by the gross recognition of unnatural mutation, like seeing old high school turned into a Sam’s Club.
Even if you hated high school, there is still something wrong with the supplantation of a sacred site by something, anything.
The campus should been have passed on to an HBCU, like A&M or Miles. At least, in that reality, The Hilltop would have continued cultivating young minds in the spirit of academic inquiry, not assembling cadets for roll call.
There would have been a certain poetical finality to that.
But The BSC Board of Trustrees held out and got the fat offer they were waiting for, not the barebones, bootstrapped attempts tendered by A&M and Miles.
I never thought the buyer would be the U.S. Government.
There is something perverse about this. Like the Alabama government, when trying to buy The Hilltop in 2024 via A&M, it shows that our governments do not support private higher education anymore.
The liberal arts campuses that once shaped generations of world changers, like BSC, are now viewed only as real estate assets to be devoured once these schools financially fail, not sanctuaries to be preserved.
No bail outs for private colleges like BSC, no matter how much good they produce in their communities.
Uncle Sam or The State won’t help.
The government won’t lend. It won’t bail you out.
But it will buy your campus and convert it into a military installation.
Celebration? No.
This is the ultimate tragedy.
The Hilltop may continue to physically stand, but its noble, beautiful purpose of inspiring young hearts and minds is dead.
How terrible a fate to keep the body but lose the soul.
We knew we weren’t going to get any help from the backwoods Alabama State Government. Not much of a surprise there.
I guess one couldn’t expect much more from the Federal Government, especially these days in its vitriolic crusades against “liberal” education.
The liberal arts is dying. Perhaps it’s already dead.
Educational gems like BSC bite the dust every day in America.
We might be the last generation to experience the wonders these small liberal arts colleges offered.
Our campus survived the death of The College.
This is no cause for celebration.
