docgalenadams@gmail.com

are you from torrington ct lived on east main street if so get in touch with me bud.leave a post here and i will get back to you.

scott

Many memories of walking those steps to see my advisor Dr Jordahl on the third floor, visiting with Dr Jensen, and also I remember my chats with Dr. Mac, poet in residence.

To me, it seems like sacrilege to let such a wonderful historic building be demolished. Yes, it had problems, but that was because of years of neglect by the college (when a problem existed, a bandage was put over it instead of actually fixing the problem!)Just look at the “new” library; this summer it already had problems that needed fixing! At least the college fixed this one instead of putting a bandage on it.

To understand sacrilege, here is a short definition:

[Moderator's Note: This definition is taken from Wikipedia but was not cited by the comment author. The complete article may be found by clicking here.]

Sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object. In a less proper sense, any transgression against the virtue of religion would be a sacrilege. It can come in the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things. When the sacrilegious offense is verbal, it is called blasphemy. The term originates from the Latin sacer, sacred, and legere, to steal, as in Roman times it referred to the plundering of temples and graves. By the time of Cicero, sacrilege had adopted a more expansive meaning, including verbal offenses against religion and undignified treatment of sacred objects.

Most ancient religions have a concept analogous to sacrilege, often considered as a type of taboo. The basic idea is that sacred objects are not to be treated in the same way as other objects.

With the advent of Christianity as the official Roman religion, the Emperor Theodosius criminalized sacrilege in an even more expansive sense, including heresy and schism, and offenses against the emperor, including tax evasion.

By the Middle Ages, the concept of sacrilege was again restricted to physical acts against sacred objects, and this forms the basis of all later Catholic teaching on the subject.

In post-Reformation England, sacrilege was a criminal offense for centuries, though its statutory definition varied considerably. Most English dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries appealed to the primary sense of stealing objects from a church.

Most modern nations have abandoned laws against sacrilege out of respect for freedom of expression, save in cases where there is an injury to persons or property. In the United States, the Supreme Court case Burstyn v. Wilson (1952) struck down a statute against sacrilege, ruling that the term could not be narrowly defined in a way that would safeguard against the establishment of one church over another, and that such statutes infringed upon the free exercise of religion and freedom of expression.

Despite their decriminalization, sacrilegious acts are still often regarded with public opprobrium, even by non-adherents of the offended religion, especially when these acts are perceived as manifestations of hatred toward a particular sect or creed.

Will the replacement building last over 150 years? I hope so, but rather doubt it.

David Altopp
Class of 1966