I arrived at Antioch at the age of twenty-five as a transfer student. I had been raised a working class kid in the shadow of Stanford University, and I was suspicious of institutions that I thought were elitist. I had been drawn to Antioch mostly by the co-op program. I had worked as a journalist and had taken media courses at community college, and the co-op program looked like an opportunity to get a degree and beef-up my resume. At the time, my ambition was to become a television camera operator, and I was not interested in politics. My first co-op, working with at-risk youth in inner city Philadelphia, radicalized me; nobody should live amidst the poverty and strife I witnessed. Back on campus, the vibrancy and, yes, contentiousness of my fellow classmates made engagement with campus politics unavoidable and often frustrating, but also deeply enriching. Due to the intellectual rigor of the faculty and curriculum, I became an academic, and now I try to win victories for humanity in the classroom.
Throughout my four years at Antioch, I worked closely with the Admissions office, in my roles as director of Admissions Phonathon, Tour Guide, Hall Advisor in a dorm with rooms for Prospective Students, and Taxi Driver (a capacity in which I met many prospective students). In my third year, when Linda Sikes went on maternity leave, I spent a quarter as Campus Visit Coordinator. I supervised tour guides, dorm hosts, and taxi drivers; I handled all the logistical arrangements for visiting prospective students, including making their appointments with co-op and academic advisors; and I co-coordinated a Campus Visit Weekend during which we hosted approximately 75 students. I was the person whom students and their parents met upon arrival on campus. I also was a reader of Special Review files, i.e. applications from prospective students who warranted special consideration due to some risk factor in their backgrounds (contrary to popular belief, Antioch did not admit everyone who applied). After graduation, I worked as an Alumni Admissions Associate, conducting interviews with prospective students, and representing Antioch at college fairs.
Prospective students with whom I met during those years were always very enthusiastic about Antioch; the potential stumbling block was almost always the parents. “Why should I spend tens of thousands of dollars to send my child to this campus (in light of the decaying facilities) for half a year, when I could spend about the same to send my youngster to Earlham or Oberlin?” they invariably wanted to know. My answer benefited from being true: The educational outcomes of an Antioch education are more robust. We send an unusually high percentage of our students to grad school, and we boast a disproportionately high number of MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipients among our alumni. Simply put, the educational model of classroom/campus/ co-op garners better results than our sister GLCA schools. While I was a student at Antioch, Loren Pope said as much in his book, ranking Antioch College as one of a handful of colleges that change lives (and please note that this was true well after the presumed “golden age” of Antioch in the 1950s and 60s). Patricia Linn’s study of Antioch graduates found the same thing: the experiences Antioch students have (on campus, on co-op, and in the classroom) are lasting ones that shape their values and the rest of their lives.
One co-op that changed my life was at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, in Atlanta. I was one of a baker’s dozen of Scholar Interns, college students who had come from all over the United States to study the history of the Civil Rights movement and the philosophy of nonviolence. What I learned about the latter included Dr. King’s conviction that ends do not justify means; it makes no sense to kill in the name of peace. Means need to be in keeping with desired ends.
So, that means that you can’t build an institution committed to justice and democratic principles through means that are unjust and anti-democratic. That suggests that the New Antioch should try to avoid wrongdoing now, if it wants to carry forward its traditions of justice and democracy into the future.
The Faculty
When I arrived at Antioch, I expected to learn skills that would help me achieve my (then modest) goals. One unexpected educational outcome was how participation in AdCil or ComCil subcommittees increased my sense of efficacy just as much as co-op did. This was accomplished by a flattening of the hierarchies usually found at colleges and universities. At most schools, faculty have little contact with students outside the classroom and office hours; the social worlds of the two groups have little overlap, and even if they discuss the same issues pertinent to campus life, they seldom do so in the same space, at the same time, with each other. That was not the case at Antioch, where the machinations of the Administration were mostly transparent, where everyone was invited to participate in Community Meeting, and where students sat on committees with faculty as equals. This last aspect of campus life was a very valuable learning experience, as the faculty and staff could model for students the arts of democracy.
While such behavior modeling was a service to the students, it may ultimately have proved a disservice to the faculty. Because of the level of informality at Antioch, it was easy to forget that (in some important ways) the faculty were not the equals of staff and students. It was easy to forget, as the current president and Board Pro Tem have forgotten, that the faculty are professionals with advanced degrees, who were hired after national searches and who underwent the same rigorous tenuring process as faculty at other institutions. In this light, the current fetishizing of national searches for scab faculty is peculiar, especially since it is a double standard: Was Matthew Derr the result of a national search? Was Tom Kirk? Was Kristen Pett? Mark Roosevelt was the result of a national search, but it was a flawed process that left him without competition as the only remaining candidate (where is the choice?). The only people currently associated with Antioch who are the product of national searches are the faculty who are being disparaged. This sort of Orwellian double-speak, this sort of hypocrisy, will not endear the new administration to the alumni.
I agree with Mark Roosevelt that it is possible for good people to have legitimate disagreements about policy decisions. But what is being overlooked by President Roosevelt and the Board Pro Tem is the degree of harm they are inflicting. The Antioch College faculty were unjustly deprived of their livelihood by Antioch University; their positions were terminated in a breach of their contracts, after they had earned tenure, and after they had sacrificed much (time, energy, income) to the institution. The new, “improved” Antioch College is perpetuating that injustice, and is continuing to deprive the faculty of their livelihood (which they had earned through the process of being tenured). This is nothing less than a form of human sacrifice (“For the institution to live, these people must be disposed of!”). If the New Antioch demands human sacrifice to live, then I will not be ashamed to let it die. If the New Antioch is a vampire, rising from the dead to feed on the blood of the living in order to sustain itself, then the moral course of action would be to drive a stake through its heart.
The Grandiosity Problem
Let’s be frank: as an institution, Antioch is pathologically grandiose. Perhaps grandiosity is a requirement for a little institution that aims to change the world; perhaps it is an occupational hazard of social reformers. But Antioch’s tendencies toward grandiosity have caused disasters. Grandiosity is what fueled the ambitions to bring Antioch to the masses in the 1970s; this created an unwieldy and ultimately unprofitable University structure that very nearly killed the College that birthed it. Grandiosity appears to have been either the motivation or appeal involved in the Renewal Plan of 2004, and the Trustees’ rejection of “incremental change” in favor of reclaiming Antioch’s reputation as an “innovator” was clearly an example of ambitions outstripping resources, as well as being an example of hubris.
I worry that the current fetishizing of national searches for faculty is the latest example of grandiosity. Maybe it is a marketing ploy: maybe faculty with Ivy League pedigrees is how the BPT intends to finesse accreditation in the face of a long-neglected physical plant and an untested curriculum (in light of the last accreditation review, these are real issues). The hiring of Mark Roosevelt, who looks so good on paper, suggests that the BPT is preoccupied with pedigree and status. The current brain trust’s failed efforts to mount a three-year curriculum seems like another grandiose effort to render Antioch newly innovative and distinctive. I worry that the BPT does not know the difference between a menu and a meal, and is aiming to be not a distinctive educational institution, but an elitist one.
Antioch already has a distinctive educational model that (unlike untested innovations) has incredibly robust outcomes according to all the independent, external measures available in academia (the National Survey of Student Engagement, accreditation reviews, matriculation of graduates to graduate schools, etc.). The Antioch model of education was working right up until closure (what wasn’t working was self-governance, since the University took away the College’s control over its own budget and destiny beginning in 2001; the College’s demise was the University’s fault, not the College’s. The lesson: let Antioch be Antioch). Antioch College was not brain-dead when the University pulled the plug; Antioch College was a living creature, physically weakened but with a healthy soul, when the University tried to strangle it to death. Why the BPT seems hell-bent on finishing the job makes no sense to me, unless they are motivated by grandiosity.
If the Antioch Model of education (classroom, co-op, community) is the brand that is being sold to attract students, then a brand-new faculty without any experience with that model is the best way for the New Antioch to shoot itself in the foot (or head). The model is truly distinctive in Higher Education. Generations of new faculty at Antioch have been hired in, and have learned the intricacies and nuances of the model from existing faculty. But the New Antioch has no existing faculty (or, at least, none whom it will recognize); neither does the New Antioch recognize the continuity of the Leg Code, Community Government, nor any of the other features that (beside the general educational model) make Antioch the unique and vibrant institution it has been (even when it had no money). By seeming to prefer, with every action, that the New Antioch be a blank slate, the Board Pro Tem risks erasing everything that Antioch has ever been; everything that has ever mattered to Antiochians. President Roosevelt, that is what many of my fellow alumni and I are upset about; if you think it isn’t a line in the sand, you are mistaken. If you think it is unruly alumni who have drawn it, you are mistaken.
(I can hardly wait for people to press the issue of the Sexual Offense Policy; won’t that be fun?).
Over the course of my long association with Antioch, there has been concern over the institution’s inability to enroll more than 600 students at a time, when 800 was deemed the magic number for financial viability and 1,000 an ideal enrollment target. The roving finger of blame has been pointed at practically every possible culprit: Admissions, Financial Aid, Co-Op, the Academic calendar, the curriculum, the allegedly toxic student culture, the physical plant, etc. I worry that the faculty are the scapegoat du jour. But the faculty were actually praised in North Central’s accreditation review, and it is the faculty who have experience with both the educational model and how to make Antioch work with chronically meager resources. The notion that Antioch College’s displaced faculty should now have to prove their dedication to the institution is insulting and ridiculous: what other faculty in American higher education has ever continued teaching classes after their campus has been closed? Equally important: what other faculty has inspired such loyalty from their students that they would continue to study under that faculty, despite accreditation having been lost? Nobody who’s been hired by the Board Pro Tem has earned the right to judge the loyalty of the Antioch College faculty.
It should be quite obvious to anyone who has been paying attention that the faculty of Antioch College are not now, and have never been, a detriment to the success of the educational program. What has been a problem, and what continues to be, is (1) an arrogant and autocratic style of management that belittles the contributions or expertise of anyone outside the favored circle of influence; (2) a corresponding lack of transparency and accountability in decision-making about the institution; and (3) the aforementioned proclivity toward grandiosity (which exacerbates and rationalizes the first two tendencies). History tells us that grandiosity at Antioch does not work: The University Expansion of the 70s did not work. The Renewal Plan did not work. There is no magic lamp we can rub that will instantaneously restore our beleaguered alma mater to its heyday (which itself was a product of historical circumstances, including postwar prosperity, Keynesian economic policy, and demographic good fortune). Rolling the Antioch boulder uphill will take time, effort, money, and lots of goodwill and energy from lots of people. The antidote for grandiosity is humility. Let us be proud of our educational model and traditions, but let us admit that we are not going to be able to compete with other GLCA schools like Oberlin and Earlham in terms of amenities (at least, not right away). Let us use what tools we already have at our disposal in order to succeed: Antioch’s remaining faculty, Antioch’s remaining students, Antioch’s robust educational model, Antioch’s proud and effective traditions of self-governance, and (the most important change since 2007) Antioch’s newly mobilized, motivated, skilled, action-oriented alumni. For a struggling institution to squander any of those resources would be foolish indeed.
I can hear doubt slithering around in your head like a snake: if the old Antioch was sufficient, why didn’t it draw more students? In the service of Occam’s Razor, I offer the following explanation: Antioch priced itself out of its market. Despite the robust outcomes of our educational model, it is simply grandiose to ask students’ parents to pony up $33, 000 annually (or $132,000 for four years; $165,000 for five years) in order to attend a school with such few amenities, a crumbling physical plant, and (in the last decade) such a small faculty.[1] Wealthy families can afford to send their children to larger, wealthier, better-equipped schools, and there is no reason to expect them not to do so (except for our institutional grandiosity). Come to Reunion, and see who is there: none of my Antioch friends and very few of my classmates came from wealthy families, or even families I would describe as upper middle class. Antioch Works; the kids who are most interested in attending Antioch are the kids like me, who wanted to graduate with a degree and a resume. During my years at Antioch, tuition increased $1,000 per year; I’ve known people who loved Antioch, but who left because they couldn’t afford it. I know that tuition was discounted for most students, but this, too, presents a problem. If other schools discount their tuition, Antioch’s tuition discount does not represent a competitive advantage in the marketplace. If tuition is raised too high, and Antioch Tuition Grant eats up too much of the College’s financial resources, then increases in tuition become counter-productive, and Admissions becomes a game of diminishing returns (it costs more money to admit fewer students). I believe this is what happened to our beloved college. The last accreditation review expressed concerns about expenses involving Antioch Tuition Grant, so I am not alone in my worries.
Whether or not you agree with me, consider this: last week, I had dinner with two friends who teach at another small, private liberal arts college in Ohio with a fine faculty and good reputation. They told me that enrollment at their school was down, even though their institution had relaxed its standards for admission and was recruiting a number of students who were less prepared for college than the faculty would like (which, of course, results in retention problems). Last semester, the state school at which I teach had its second largest entering class ever; our tuition is tens of thousands of dollars lower than the school where my friends teach. In a weak economy, people tend to go back to school. But clearly, it is not only the reputation or the faculty of a school that matters to prospective students; tuition costs matter. I attended Antioch mostly because I was interested in the Co-op program, but I was only able to attend Antioch because the college gave me a ton of financial aid. How many more students like me could have attended Antioch along with me, if tuition was lower, and Antioch Tuition Grant dollars could have gone farther and helped more students?
For Antioch to thrive, it needs the following: (1) faculty who understand the educational model, who know how to make due with few resources, and who have demonstrated commitment to the institution and its students; (2) processes of self-governance (AdCil, CG, etc.) that alumni will recognize as being true to Antiochian values; (3) a student body willing to suffer a lack of amenities in exchange for a real challenge; (4) accreditation; (5) affordable tuition; (6) improvements to the condition of the physical plant; and (7) a larger endowment. Circumstances that will kill Antioch include (1) a faculty who are unfamiliar with the Antioch educational model; (2) opaque and autocratic models of decision-making that violate the Antioch ethos, denigrate members of the community, and alienate alumni; (3) a student body that doesn’t know what it’s getting itself into (consider the attrition rate during the first year of implementation for the Renewal Plan curriculum); (4) a curriculum that is too vague to be accredited, or too lacking in disciplinary focus to be attractive to prospective students (who want to major in something); (5) tuition beyond the reach of students (or, in the short term, an entering class that constitutes too small a sample to convince the accrediting agency of educational outcomes); (6) failure to improve the physical plant, including not providing housing for students and a place for them to eat; and (7) failure to increase the endowment. So far, it seems to me that the BPT is driving the college over a cliff. Alumni are standing by to help revive the college, if you would let them, and if you can keep from pissing us off.
Saving Antioch
Perhaps he was misquoted, but I was told that Mark Roosevelt has said that the issue before us is not about “restoring the old Antioch.” If he wasn’t misquoted, I wonder who gave him that impression. Certainly, in 2007, the Antioch alumni were mobilized to prevent the closure of Antioch College, and to guarantee the uninterrupted operation of the College, as it was then, with its faculty and students. When we failed to prevent the University from closing the College, the alumni voted to support the faculty and students in the educational enterprise that was Nonstop. That support was terminated arbitrarily, in a process that is still not clear to most alumni, and that has been alleged to have been based on questionable data.[2] When Lee Morgan and Matthew Derr disappeared behind closed doors to negotiate for Independence, many of the alumni who had been deeply involved in efforts to save the College protested the lack of transparency. We were told to keep our eyes on the prize and be patient, while campus buildings suffered water damage from completely avoidable neglect. We were told the doors would be flung open to our participation once Independence for the college had been won; instead, at the last Alumni Reunion, Matt Derr asked us to back away and keep our hands off the college (but still give money), while Eleanor Holmes Norton told us that it was okay to let parts of our college die.
All of my anger about Antioch is fueled by my love for Antioch. I owe Antioch a lot; much of who I am today, and what I am doing with my life, I owe to the influence of people and experiences from that time. I have greatly exceeded the modest ambitions I had when I enrolled at Antioch; I am a value-added person because of my education at Antioch College.
Once upon a time, I dreamed that I might someday become faculty at Antioch College, but not anymore. Why would I want to become faculty at an institution that has shown such contempt for faculty? Why would any academic want to teach at an institution that so blatantly disregards the guidelines of our professional organization, the American Association of University Professors? Now that the faculty of my own institution have voted to unionize, how could I in good conscience ever join the faculty of Antioch College, or otherwise support an Antioch College that employs scab academic labor?
Last fall, I was informed that the Nominating Committee of the Alumni Board had invited me to stand for election to that Board. As much as I love Antioch, I had to decline. How could I, in good conscience, lend my name to an enterprise that calls itself Antioch, but that betrays Antiochian values (like justice, fairness, openness, and democratic decision making) so baldly?
One hears vague reports that major donors are against hiring any of the former faculty of the College. Who are these people? Do they even really exist, or are they a convenient fiction? Have they ever meet the faculty, and looked them in the eye? Who are these cowards, hiding behind their checkbooks? If they have a rationale for their position, let them enter into reasoned, public debate on the issue.
One hears, time and again, that the New Antioch is a non-successor institution. That translates as “We don’t have to keep the old faculty.” Well, fine. But maybe you should keep at least some of the old faculty. If you are a non-successor institution, give up Antioch’s endowment, give up its history, give up its alumni, and stop asking me for money and support (ask your anonymous major donors instead). I signed on to Save Antioch. If the New Antioch is a non-successor institution that does not retain any of the former faculty, or students, or the Leg Code, or AdCil, or CG, or the groundbreaking Sexual Offense Policy, then what is left of Antioch for me to save? Why should I give a damn what happens to you, especially if you insist on mistreating people I love? I still believe Horace Mann’s injunction about winning victories for humanity. Now, non-successor institution, do something to convince me that supporting you would be a victory for humanity, and not an insult to it. Show me that you know the difference between moral reasoning and instrumental reasoning.
Sincerely,
Dan C. Shoemaker, Ph.D.
Antioch College Class of 1992
[1] I’ve been told by a participant that an AdCil subcommittee during the Jurasik Administration identified the small size of the faculty and the inability of students to study with multiple faculty in some majors as the leading factor in student attrition at that time. However, I have been unable to find corroborating documentation.
[2] Of course, this is hearsay, and I am sorry not to be able to provide documentation. But this matter was voted on by the CRF, and people who were there can correct me or comment on it. I am satisfied to merely raise the issue for further discussion.