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A Scary Repurposing
Jun. 18th, 2009 11:23 amThe college I went to, Bradford College in Haverhill MA, closed its doors in 2000 and sat empty until 2007, when the campus was taken over by Zion Bible College. It's a Pentecostal training camp for missionaries and future clergy.
I glanced through their student handbook. The level of forced mind and body control is beyond the pale. There are all the usual dress and behavior codes you'd expect for a Pentecostal college, but in addition, it is forbidden to voice criticism of The Ministry and church matters, lights-out is enforced in the evening, and there are cash fines for everything from not making your bed to not wearing socks. It would take too long to describe it all, but you can read it yourself in the PDF: http://www.zbc.edu/documents/handbook.pdf
(Unsurprisingly, it's full of grammatical errors.)
There are no academic programs -- no math, no language study, no comparative literature. They are handing out bachelors degrees to people who can't do long division and think the universe is 6,000 years old.
I'm a little bit gobsmacked that this is operating here in Massachusetts. It belongs somewhere else, like on a dry lake bed compound in Texas or somewhere. All I can really say is; IF THEY ONLY KNEW what went on on that campus in decades gone by! :-) I imagine that most students from my era or later are not dead so we can't haunt it, but I hope we left some residual energy from our wild, happy, free-thinking days there.
I glanced through their student handbook. The level of forced mind and body control is beyond the pale. There are all the usual dress and behavior codes you'd expect for a Pentecostal college, but in addition, it is forbidden to voice criticism of The Ministry and church matters, lights-out is enforced in the evening, and there are cash fines for everything from not making your bed to not wearing socks. It would take too long to describe it all, but you can read it yourself in the PDF: http://www.zbc.edu/documents/handbook.pdf
(Unsurprisingly, it's full of grammatical errors.)
There are no academic programs -- no math, no language study, no comparative literature. They are handing out bachelors degrees to people who can't do long division and think the universe is 6,000 years old.
I'm a little bit gobsmacked that this is operating here in Massachusetts. It belongs somewhere else, like on a dry lake bed compound in Texas or somewhere. All I can really say is; IF THEY ONLY KNEW what went on on that campus in decades gone by! :-) I imagine that most students from my era or later are not dead so we can't haunt it, but I hope we left some residual energy from our wild, happy, free-thinking days there.