Pictured left to right: Striplin Field, the BSC fountain clock, Yielding Chapel, Munger Hall, the majestic Edwards Bell Tower, College Theater, Norton Campus Center, the sorority townhomes, the ginkgo tree in fall, the "BSC" letters outside the Admissions Welcome Center, Meyer Planetarium, and the Rush Learning Center/N.E. Miles Library.
Our watchword isn’t ‘Forward until we close,’ or ‘Forward as long as we have a campus,’ or ‘Forward as long as it’s comfortable.’
It is ‘Forward Ever.’ Always.”
— Rev. Keith Thompson ‘83
Chair, BSC Board of Trustees
“Celebration and Farewell” Closing Ceremony: May 31, 2024
How do you honor a place that no longer exists on paper… but is ever-present in the person you’ve become?
When I look at the roads my life has taken—my faith, my family, my friendships, my very way of thinking—they all lead back to the Hilltop.
On its final day in May 2024, I drove to Birmingham to meet some of my best friends for dinner and the closing convocation. The evening was at once the most joyful of family reunions, and the most devastating of funerals.
My girlfriends teased me because I couldn't stop crying (they weren’t wrong). The elation of being back on the Hilltop for one day, while knowing I'd be waking up the next morning to a world without Birmingham-Southern in it, had me in an emotional chokehold.
They’d opened all the buildings that night, and for the last time I was in the only place I’ll ever live where everything I wanted and needed was within walking distance. Lecture halls and dorm rooms and hallways that have not been mine for two decades, but are still as familiar as my childhood bedroom.
For the last time, I was home again.
This Cityscape began in the quiet days after my alma mater Birmingham-Southern College closed, starting simply with the purple stained glass window of Yielding Chapel. I spent more time on this design than any I’ve created before, pouring over photos of campus architecture and going down rabbit holes about the history of BSC.
It became my attempt to hold onto something precious, a sort of lying-in-state by watercolor.
Every corner of that beautiful campus on Arkadelphia Road holds someone's story. This is my love letter to The Hilltop.
Forward, Ever. Always..
Christina Long, Class of 2002
