Antioch to suspend operations in 2008

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio, June 12 (UPI) -- Antioch College, the little liberal Ohio college that produced Coretta Scott King, said Tuesday it will suspend operations after the next academic year.

The 155-year-old private school said in a news release that its board of directors voted Saturday to suspend its undergraduate residential program in Yellow Springs July 1, 2008, with the intention of reopening in 2012 as a state-of-the-art campus. During that time, it will determine the long-term viability and direction of the college, whose enrollment has fallen from more than 2,000 in the 1960s when it was a bastion of liberal activism to just a few hundred this year.

Students can attend one more year on campus and then continue at other Antioch programs or transfer to other schools.

The school, whose first president was Horace Mann, has a rich history of encouraging its students to make a difference. It's motto is "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

Besides King, its note-worthy alumni include suffragist Olympia Brown, author Silvia Nasar, actor Cliff Robertson, writer-producer Rod Serling, U.S. poet laureate Mark Strand, and Nobel Peace Prize-winning East Timor President Jose Ramos Horta.