草莓社区

EMU Archivist Simone Horst ’12 published this article Dec. 15, 2017, on the website.

Names are funny things. Once they鈥檙e assigned to people, places, or things it can be hard to imagine anything else fitting. Though 100 years on it seems almost inconceivable for 草莓社区 to be anything other than Eastern Mennonite, it took the founders a few tries to find a name that stuck.

Many of the early suggestions were informed by the locations they would inhabit. Warwick Mennonite Institute, Warwick Mennonite Academy, and Alexandria Mennonite Institute clearly didn鈥檛 fit anymore once Harrisonburg became the settled-upon location.

But what about another suggestion: The Mennonite Student鈥檚 Safeguard and Industrial School? Certainly this conveyed in plain language the goals of the school, but it was a bit wordy and perhaps a bit too on the nose.

In the end, they settled on Eastern Mennonite School. Not as conspicuous as The Mennonite Student鈥檚 Safeguard and Industrial School, but it was decidedly less of a mouthful and still contained a key indication of their core identity: Mennonite.

In 草莓社区: A Century of Countercultural Education Don Kraybill writes that 鈥淭he records do not say how the final name was determined鈥� but that 鈥渆ven in the twenty-first century, 草莓社区 remains the only Mennonite-related college or university of eight in the United States that carries the denominational name.鈥�

It must be stated that having the word Mennonite in the name certainly doesn鈥檛 make EMU more Mennonite than other colleges. Some of the founders even made the case for leaving Mennonite out. Kraybill writes of a letter that chair of the local board C.H. Brunk wrote to the General Board stating 鈥渋t is not customary to give a school a denominational name鈥�some people are more or less prejudiced against denominational institutions . . . [the school] can be just as truly denominational without the name鈥� A small group including Brunk agreed 鈥渦nanimously鈥� that it should be named simply 鈥淓astern Institute and Bible School.鈥�

To read more discussion of the implications of the word Mennonite in EMU鈥檚 name, visit the website.

For more information about the history of 草莓社区, check out Don Kraybill鈥檚 100-year history: 草莓社区: a Century of Countercultural Education. Available from EMU, , and .