Author: ACAN

Antioch College Faculty response to Antioch University’s motion to dismiss

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IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS OF GREENE COUNTY, OHIO

PETER TOWNSEND, et al.
Plaintiffs,
v.
ANTIOCH UNIVERSITY,
Defendant.

Case No. 2008 CV 0300
Judge Wolaver

PLAINTIFFS’ MEMORANDUM IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO DISMISS PLAINTIFF’S FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT

I. INTRODUCTION
The Court should deny Defendant Antioch University’s Motion to Dismiss because Plaintiffs, the tenured faculty members of Antioch College (the “College Faculty”), are not seeking specific performance of the provisions of a personal services contract and they are not asking the Court to step into Defendant’s shoes and make decisions regarding the operation of the College. Rather, the College Faculty seeks specific performance of Defendant’s contractual obligation to implement less drastic measures than closing the College in order to alleviate the College’s financial problems. Specifically, Section IV A 56 of the College’s Faculty Personnel Policies and Procedures (“the Contract”) permits Defendant to declare financial exigency and close the College only when “an imminent financial crisis exists which threatens the survival of the College and cannot be alleviated by less drastic means.” (emphasis added).

Contrary to Defendant’s assertions, the College Faculty is not seeking an order requiring Defendant to continue employing them as faculty members. In fact, the College Faculty recognizes that in order to keep the College open, less drastic means may include a reduction in faculty. Nor is the College Faculty asking the Court to step into Defendant’s shoes and make decisions regarding the direction and supervision of the College. Rather, the College Faculty seeks an order requiring Defendant to adhere to its contractual obligations to implement less drastic means that closing the College, such as accepting a $14,500,000 proposal from the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (“the AC3”), which has a plan to keep Antioch College open and operating.
II. LAW AND ARGUMENT
A. Standard of Review

A motion to dismiss under Rules12(b)(1) and (6) should not be granted unless it appears beyond a doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim that would entitle him to relief. State ex rel. Delmonte v. Village of Woodmere, 2004 Ohio App. LEXIS 2086, at *5 (Cuyahoga County May 6, 2004). All well-pleaded allegations must be taken as true and be construed most favorably toward the non-movant. Id. A court should not grant a motion to dismiss based on disbelief of a complaint’s factual allegations. Nat’l Check Bureau v. Buerger, 2006 Ohio App. LEXIS 6576, at *5-6 (Lorain County Dec. 18, 2006). In fact, in ruling on a motion to dismiss, “the trial court should not dismiss the complaint because it doubts the plaintiff will win on the merits. . . . Whether the plaintiff can prevail is a matter properly determined by the proof and not the pleadings. . . . Therefore, the ruling must test only the sufficiency of the complaint.” Id.; see also Houck v. Ridgecrest Memory Gardens, Inc., 2004 Ohio App. LEXIS 4562, at *5-6 (Knox County Sept. 15, 2004); see also Zeigler v. Bove, 1998 Ohio App. LEXIS 6473, at *3-4 (Richland County Dec. 23, 1998).
Thus, while Defendant’s motion to dismiss is rife with unsupported factual statements and allegations, the Court is limited to considering only the sufficiency of the allegations contained in the College Faculty’s complaint. Defendant may not rely on allegations or evidence outside of the complaint. Zeigler, 1998 Ohio App. LEXIS 6473 at *3. A court is without authority to dismiss a complaint unless it can be demonstrated beyond a doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts that would entitle it to relief. Houck, 2004 Ohio App. LEXIS 4562 at *5-6.
B. The Remedy of Specific Performance Is Appropriate and Available to the College Faculty as a Matter of Law Because Legal Remedies Are Inadequate to Remedy Defendant’s Contractual Breaches.

Specific performance of contracts is a matter resting in the discretion of the trial court and is “controlled by principles of equity, on full consideration of the circumstances of each particular case.” Sandusky Props. v. Aveni, 15 Ohio St. 3d 273, 274 (1984) (quoting Spengler v. Sonnenberg, 88 Ohio St. 192, 203 (1913)); see also Holstein v. Crescent Cmtys., Inc., 2003 Ohio App. LEXIS 4298, at *7-8 (Franklin County Sept. 9, 2003) (specific performance is a principle of equity and is controlled by considerations of justice and fair dealing). “[I]t is the duty of a court deciding whether to grant equitable relief such as specific performance ‘to adapt its practice and course of proceeding as far as possible to the existing state of society . . . and not, from too strict an adherence to forms and rules established under very difficult circumstances, decline to administer justice, and to enforce rights for which there is no other remedy.’” State ex rel. Wright v. Weyandt, 50 Ohio St. 2d 194, 198 (1977).
Courts grant specific performance of a contract when legal remedies are inadequate. See, e.g., Gleason v. Gleason, 64 Ohio App. 3d 667, 672 (Scioto County 1991). Damages are inadequate if:
the subject matter of the contract is of such special nature or of such a peculiar value that damages would not be a just and reasonable substitute for or representative of that subject matter in the hands of the party entitled to its benefit, or where, because of some special and practical features or incidents of the contract inhering in the subject matter, in its terms, or in the relation of the parties, it is impossible to arrive at a legal measure of damages at all, or at least with any degree of certainty, so that no real compensation can be obtained by means of an action at law, in other words, where damages are impracticable.

84 Oh. Jur. Specific Performance § 8 (LexisNexis 2007).
For example, in Sashti, Inc. v. Glunt Indus., Inc., 140 F. Supp. 2d 813, 814-815 (N.D. Ohio 2001), the plaintiff sued the defendant, alleging breach of contract and seeking specific performance of a contract to supply automated heavy machinery. The defendant moved to dismiss the plaintiff’s specific performance claim for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Id. at 815. The court determined that the factual allegations contained in the plaintiff’s complaint were sufficient to establish a claim for specific performance because the plaintiff sufficiently demonstrated that legal remedies were inadequate. Id. at 817. Specifically, the plaintiff indicated that the goods which were the subject of the contract between itself and the defendant were of a special design, that no other vendor would be able to provide suitable substitute goods, and that the damages it suffered were unique and would be difficult to determine with reasonable particularity because the plaintiff would likely incur continuing damage to its ability to conduct future business as a result of the defendant’s breach. Id.
As in Sashti, legal remedies are currently inadequate to compensate the College Faculty if the College closes. Antioch College, founded in 1852, is the flagship institution of the six campus Antioch University system. (Amended Compl. at ¶¶ 1-4.) The College has been a leader in higher education in Ohio and its continued existence is vitally important to not only its faculty, but also to the students, alumni, and the Yellow Springs community. (Id.) In fact, the AC3 is ready, willing, and able to continue operating the College with a tenured faculty and has committed $14,500,000 towards that effort. (Id. at ¶¶ 18-22.) An order requiring Defendant to perform its contractual obligations to implement less drastic means to alleviate the College’s financial problems is, therefore, the only remedy for Defendant’s contractual breach.
C. The College Faculty Is Seeking the Specific Performance of a Contractual Obligation and Is Not Asking the Court to Step into Defendant’s Shoes and Decide How Best to Operate the College.

Contrary to Defendant’s assertions otherwise, the College Faculty is not asking the Court to step into Defendant’s shoes and supervise the operation of the College. Rather, the College Faculty is merely seeking the specific performance of a contract into which Defendant freely entered, the terms of which require Defendant to take less drastic means to alleviate the College’s financial problems.
In fact, this case is no different from the multitude of cases in which Ohio courts have ordered corporations to specifically perform contracts that the Board of Directors have entered into on behalf of the corporation. See Oglebay Norton Co. v. Armco, Inc., 52 Ohio St. 3d 232 (1990) (ordering specific performance of a long-term shipping contract obligating the defendant corporation to maintain adequate shipping capacity and to negotiate with the plaintiff company during each annual shipping season through the year 2010); Nelson v. Suburban Nursing & Mobile Homes, Inc., 1993 Ohio App. LEXIS 4323 (Montgomery County Sept. 2, 1993) (ordering specific performance of a sales contract obligating the defendant corporation to sell beds to the plaintiff); Mr. Mark Corp. v. Rush, Inc., 11 Ohio App. 3d 167 (Cuyahoga County 1983) (ordering specific performance of a Purchase Agreement obligating the defendant corporation to sell its restaurant to the plaintiff). Nowhere in these cases is it suggested that an order requiring the corporation to specifically perform its contractual obligations constitutes a usurpation of the corporation’s board of directors’ decision making abilities regarding how the corporation should be run. Rather, the courts have simply obligated the corporations to adhere to the contracts to which they are parties.
Nonetheless, it is true that in determining whether Defendant breached the Contract, the Court must inevitably address the issue of what actually constitutes less drastic means for alleviating the College’s financial problems. This issue, however, is a factual dispute and is not a judicial usurpation of Defendant’s duties to supervise the operation of the College.
D. The College Faculty Is Not Seeking Specific Performance of a Contract for Personal Services.

As noted in Defendant’s motion, courts do not typically grant specific performance of the provisions of a contract for personal services. Holstein, 2003 Ohio App. LEXIS 4298 at *8; see also 84 Oh. Jur. Specific Performance § 73. The College Faculty is not, however, requesting specific performance of a personal services contract because the College Faculty is not seeking continued employment at the College. Rather, as set forth in their first amended complaint, the College Faculty seeks a permanent injunction “requiring Defendant University to specifically perform the Faculty Personnel Policies and Procedures by implementing the least drastic means required to alleviate the financial problems at Antioch College.” (Amended Compl. ¶ 10.) (emphasis added.)
The cases cited by Defendant for the proposition that the remedy of specific performance is not available to enforce the provisions of a continuing employment contract between a private college and a member of its faculty are distinguishable based on the form of relief requested in those cases. Specifically, in each of the cases, the plaintiff(s) sought an order requiring the defendant to continue employing the plaintiff(s). See Masetta v. Nat’l Bronze & Aluminum Foundry Co., 159 Ohio St. 306, 310 (1953) (seeking an order directing defendant to re-employ plaintiffs) ; Sokolowsky v. Antioch College, 1975 Ohio App. LEXIS 5951, at *1 (Greene County June 1, 1975) (plaintiffs sought permanent injunction requiring college to retain them as tenured faculty members); Felch v. Findlay College, 119 Ohio App. 357, 357-358 (Hancock County 1963) (plaintiff sought order continuing his employment as a college faculty member).
Here, unlike the plaintiff(s) in Masetta, Sokolowsky, and Felch, the College Faculty is not asking the Court to order Defendant to continue employing them as faculty members. Rather, the College Faculty seeks an order requiring Defendant to adhere to its contractual obligation to implement less drastic means than closing the College. (Amended Compl. ¶ 10.) Indeed, the College Faculty recognizes that the less drastic measures sought may include a reduction in faculty.
The College Faculty is also not seeking the Court’s continued oversight in monitoring the Defendant’s implementation of less drastic means or to step into Defendant’s shoes and decide how the College is best operated. Rather, as in Sashti, a legal remedy is currently unavailable to the College Faculty, and as such, an order requiring Defendant to specifically perform its contractual obligations to seek alternative means to alleviate the College’s financial problems, rather than resorting to the most drastic means of closing the College, is necessary and appropriate. Therefore, because the College Faculty is not seeking specific performance of the provisions of a personal services contract, the Court should deny Defendant’s motion to dismiss.
E. The First Amended Complaint Is Not Based “Solely On Events That Post Date The Declaration Of Financial Exigency.”

Contrary to Defendant’s claims, Plaintiff’s claims are not based on less drastic means that did not even arise until after the declaration of financial exigency. Instead, the offers of financial support received by Defendant after the declaration of financial exigency evidence why the Defendant’s breach in failing to explore less drastic means in conjunction with the faculty was so egregious. By contrast, there is no evidence that Defendant even tried to explore these possibilities or that they could not have been identified before June 7, 2007. Indeed, Defendant’s conduct in repeatedly spurning these opportunities over the last eleven months – including first accepting and then rejecting a proposal to donate $14,500,000 to Defendant – evidence Defendant’s determination to close the College regardless of financial considerations. Thus, Defendant’s argument tries to confuse the evidence that will be offered to support the College Faculty’s claims – much of which did arise after the declaration of financial exigency – with the claim that less drastic means existed on June 7, 2007 but were ignored by the Defendant in breach of its obligations under the College Faculty’s Contract.
III. CONCLUSION
In sum, this case is a standard breach of contract case. The College Faculty has properly alleged all of the elements necessary to sustain a breach of contract action against Defendant. A contract exists between Defendant and the College Faculty obligating Defendant, when declaring financial exigency at the College, to do so only when an imminent financial crisis exists that cannot be alleviated by less drastic means. Defendant has breached the Contract by taking steps to close the College when other, less drastic means exist, such as accepting the $14,500,000 proposal from the AC3, additional alumni fundraising efforts, and/or cost cutting. As a result of Defendant’s breach, the College Faculty has been damaged in a way that cannot be remedied by traditional damages and has thus requested the Court to issue a permanent injunction ordering Defendant to adhere to its contractual obligations by exploring and implementing the least drastic means available to remedy the financial problems. Contrary to Defendant’s assertions otherwise, it is entirely the province of the Court to interpret contracts when a dispute arises and to enforce contracts in the event of a breach. The Court should, therefore, deny Defendant’s motion to dismiss because the Court has jurisdiction over this action and the College Faculty has properly alleged a claim against Defendant for breach of contract.

Respectfully submitted,

__________________________
W. Evan Price II (0056134)
Michael R. Goodstein (0080476)
Sabrina Haurin (0079321)
Bailey Cavalieri LLC
One Columbus
10 West Broad Street, 21st Floor
Columbus, Ohio 43215-3422
Telephone: (614) 221-3155
Telefax: (614) 221-0479
evan.price@baileycavalieri.com
michael.goodstein@baileycavalieri.com
sabrina.haurin@baileycavalieri.com
Attorneys for Plaintiffs

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I certify that Plaintiff’s foregoing Memorandum in Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint was served on Defendant by sending a copy of it to Defendant’s attorneys, Kathleen M. Trafford and Kendall S. Verrett, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP, 41 South High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, and David A. Weaver and William R. Groves, Martin Browne Hull & Harper P.L.L., One South Limestone Street, Suite 800, Springfield, Ohio 45501, by first class United States mail, postage prepaid, this ___ day of May, 2008.

__________________________
W. Evan Price II (0056134)

#557364v1
11413-03779

University Trustees Reject AC3 Offer

by Diane Chiddister for the Yellow Springs News, May 11, 2008

In what appears to be the final act of the long, complex and heartwrenching saga around efforts to save Antioch College, the Antioch University Board of Trustees on Thursday, May 8, rejected the offer of the Antioch College Continuation Corporation, or AC3, of almost $16 million to keep the college open. In a press statement the board reaffirmed its decision to suspend operations at the college. Jump to the article.

NONSTOP ANTIOCH MOVING FORWARD IN THE WAKE OF FAILED NEGOTIATIONS TO SAVE ANTIOCH COLLEGE

**Faculty and College Revival Fund Taking Immediate Steps to Keep the Spirit of Antioch College Alive and Fight Runaway University Board of Trustees**

Yellow Springs, Ohio, May 9, 2008 –Alumni,faculty and staff renewed their commitment to fight to save Antioch College, the 154 year old liberal arts institution known for its groundbreaking educational innovations, in the wake of the announcement today that final talks between the Antioch University Board of Trustees and the Antioch College Continuation Corporation had failed. “We are outraged at the Board’s decision to suspend College operations rather than accept an extremely generous offer that would have kept the College open and put the entire University on a sound financial footing,” said Ellen Borgersen, Acting President of the College Revival Fund, Inc. “Nonstop Antioch will keep up the fight by supporting the dedicated faculty and staff who have committed to keeping the spirit of Antioch College alive here in Yellow Springs, and pursuing legal action against a runaway Board of Trustees that has abandoned its institutional mission and breached its fiduciary duties in many ways.”

Nonstop Antioch is supported by the Antioch College Alumni Association and the College Revival Fund (CRF), a 501(c)(3) established in 2007 that has raised over $19 million in cash and pledges to save the College. The CRF has committed $1 million of its current cash holdings to Nonstop Antioch, and resolved to raise the additional funding necessary to keep it going through the 2008-09 academic year and beyond.

A number of Antioch College faculty and staff, whose contracts with Antioch University end on June 30, have been hard at work planning curriculum, preparing a budget, and establishing governance structures based upon Antioch’s core values of shared governance, community activism, and experiential learning. They have named an Executive Collective – Susan Eklund-Leen (administrative coordinator), Hassan Rahmanian (educational offerings coordinator), and Chris Hill (external relations coordinator).

In addition, the CRF is pursuing legal efforts to keep Antioch College open and to prevent the University Trustees from doing further damage to the historic institution. These efforts include supporting the pending lawsuit brought by members of the tenured faculty, which seeks to enforce their contractual right to require the University to consider less drastic alternatives than closing the College, and to enjoin the University from liquidating or misappropriating any College assets; potential claims by students, donors and other stakeholders; and a variety of claims based on the Trustees’ breaches of their fiduciary duties of care, proper accounting, and loyalty.

“This Board must be held accountable for its actions,” Borgersen said. “They cannot be permitted to walk away from the catastrophe they created without a public accounting. We have every confidence that the courts will provide a remedy for the Board of Trustees’ egregious misconduct.”

Since the Board of Trustees announced the suspension of Antioch College operations in June of 2007, alumni across the country have rallied to their alma mater’s defense. Alumni chapters have grown worldwide.

The Alumni Board and College Revival Fund are continuing with their fundraising and planning efforts. For additional information, visit antiochians.org.

ANTIOCH UNIVERSITY REJECTS FINAL OFFER; FINAL ALUMNI BID MET ALL EXPRESSED DEMANDS–ADDITIONAL SIX MILLION OFFERED

ANTIOCH COLLEGE CONTINUATION CORPORATION

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Lyn Chamberlin

Yellow Springs, Ohio—May 9, 2008  —  The Antioch University Board of Trustees today rejected an offer by a group of major donors and educational leaders to contribute nearly $16 million to keep the doors of Antioch College open.

The Antioch College Continuation Corporation, which was formed by prominent alumni to save the 150-year-old campus, had offered the contributions in return for ten seats on the University board. The current trustees have collectively given less than $25,000 in the current fiscal year.

The ACCC has been engaged in talks with Antioch University over the past five months to reach an agreement over the fate of the college, which is scheduled to close on June 30. The offer by the group would have enabled the College to continue operating until the details of a separation from the University could be finalized.

“It almost defies belief that the trustees could reject this extraordinarily generous offer by a group of major donors,” said Eric Bates, co-chair of the ACCC. “We were not only prepared to make an immediate contribution of $9.5 million for Antioch College, we offered to make an additional contribution of $6 million for the direct benefit of the University’s five other campuses. This was a win-win opportunity for the entire University, and the trustees squandered it.”

In addition to its $6 million contribution to the University, the ACCC offered a host of guarantees to protect the other campuses. The key commitments of the proposal included:

* Ensuring that the eventual separation of Antioch College would be done in a manner that protects the University’s accreditation and    financial security;
* Ending the annual subsidies each campus currently pays to the College;
* Guaranteeing that funds from other campuses would not be used to offset any operating expense or deficits incurred by the College;
* Implementing an existing plan to create separate governing boards for each of the campuses;
* Creating a new board committee to directly address the needs of each campus;
* Initiating an ambitious fundraising campaign to raise an additional $100 million for the College and assist the other Antioch campuses in their fundraising efforts.

“We are deeply disappointed that the trustees did not take advantage of this historic opportunity,” said Lee Morgan, a director of the ACCC whose grandfather, Arthur Morgan, presided over Antioch’s acclaimed rebirth in the 1920s. “Under this agreement, the University would have gained a number of experienced trustees who bring tremendous resources – not just finances, but expertise and energy – on behalf of the entire University.”

To encourage the trustees to accept the ACCC’s offer, Morgan had volunteered to work half-time – for no charge – to raise money for the College beginning in June. In addition, Frances Degen Horowitz, co-chair of the ACCC and president emerita of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, had offered to volunteer full-time during the summer to serve as chief transition officer while the College got back on its feet.

“This is a sad day not only for Antioch, but for everyone who cares about progressive education in this country,” said Horowitz. “This was a remarkably generous and well-intentioned offer by an experienced and supportive group of alumni, seven of whom are former University trustees. Our proposal was not only a brilliant solution to save Antioch College – it would also have provided Antioch University with critical resources and expertise. We are all at a loss to understand why the University board rejected a plan that would have served both the College and the University so well.”

At one point toward the end of negotiations, the University suddenly offered to accept the ACCC’s earlier offer to pay $12.2 million to immediately separate the College from the University. “This was virtually the same plan the University had rejected only a month earlier, and almost identical to the offer they refused to even consider back in February,” Bates noted. “Now, all of their earlier objections had magically vanished. Out of the blue, they were prepared to accept all of our terms, without any of the conditions on securing payments or retaining ownership of WYSO that they had previously insisted were deal breakers. They were also willing to delegate full authority to a completely autonomous College board of trustees that would operate under the University’s accreditation – a position that they themselves had previously said flat-out was legally impossible when we first sat down with them back in November.”

Bates said the sudden reversal revealed that the University had not been negotiating in good faith. “It is telling that they offered to accept this plan only after it was clear to everyone that it was too late for such an arrangement to succeed,” he said. “And it would still have required us to negotiate the myriad details of final separation with no guarantee that we would reach an agreement.”

“It was truly shocking and sad to realize that our earlier offer, which could have saved the College months ago, was rejected because of the University lacked the leadership it needed to see it through this crisis,” said Horowitz, who has more than four decades of successful experience as an administrator in higher education. “Throughout months of negotiations, the leaders of the University and the Board to Trustees repeatedly stood in the way of opportunities that would have prevented the demise of the College while also safeguarding the fortunes of the rest of the University campuses.”

President of the Alumni Board, Nancy Crow, Speaks at Commencement 2008

Antioch College Commencement
April 26, 2008

Welcome to the Antioch College Alumni Association
By Nancy Crow, Antioch College, class of 1970, President
Antioch College Alumni Association

Welcome, amazing 2008 graduates, to your Alumni Association.  Will the other Alumni Board members present please stand?  As I speak, they will distribute a small gift from the Alumni Board to you, our newest members.

Every era of alumni, it seems, goes through cataclysmic events on this beloved campus, on this revered mound. We have all weathered controversy and struggles; yours have been unprecedented and epic. I stand before you to let you know that your fellow alumni honor and respect everything that you’ve gone through in your Antioch career. Your brave hearts, activism, and community organizing and participation have been shining examples in these uncertain times. You remind us what it is to be an Antiochian.

Without a doubt the highlight of my nearly eight years of service on the Alumni Board has been meeting remarkable alumni from many decades, including many of you.  And what future alumni leaders we have in this class alone! Just to give a few examples: Ruthie Scarpino, will be teaching English in Malaysia on a Fulbright scholarship. Zachary Gallant, currently in the third round in the selection process for a Fulbright award for research in Croatia—we’re pulling for you, Zachary! .Elizabeth Dobson won the Jeannie Pierce Award for excellence in Digital Photography by the National Society of Photographic Education. Ryan Boasi won the Patterson College Chemistry Award from the American Chemical Society. Justine Winnie and Jacob Stockwell both won the Abrams Prize; they were selected by the Antioch College Chatterjee Committee. Julie Phillips and Kelly O’Keefe presented their research with social psychology professor Chris Smith at two national conferences.  Julie Phillips and Mary Hill co-authored original research that was presented last year at the American Psychological Association annual convention.  Also graduating today are community leader Chelsea Martens and community reporter Kim-Jenna Jurriaans.

Again—these are only a few of an exceptional class. We look forward to your shaping the future of Antioch, the future of the alumni association, and the state of the world at large.

You join over 17,000 passionate and spirited people worldwide with the common bond of an Antioch experience. All of us here know the “big names”—Coretta Scott King, Rod Serling, Stephen Jay Gould, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Nobel prize winner Mario Capecci, to name a few. I want to take a couple of moments to point out other Antiochians through the years—your fellow alumni winning victories for humanity.

Marcia Dugan ’53 came to Antioch after graduating from high school in Cuba. Her career has encompassed 25 years of college administration, public relations, and fundraising, most notably for Keuka College and the Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf. When faced with hearing loss, she did what Antiochians throughout the years have done—she reached out to help and organize the community. She published books on living with hearing loss. She has been a leader on numerous boards, including Self Help for Hard of Hearing People, the Keuka College Board of Trustees, the International Federation of Hard of Hearing People, and, most important of all, the Antioch College Alumni Board.

Karen Mulhauser ’65, whom many of you know as the director of the Washington, D.C. area co-op community, was one of my predecessors as president of the Alumni Association.  She served as executive director of The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League and grew the membership from 8,000 to 135,000. She then directed Citizens Against Nuclear War and the Center for Education on Nuclear War. Like many Antiochians, she is currently winning victories on two fronts: she is simultaneously working on the Obama for President campaign, as well as working closely with the Antioch College Continuation Corporation.

Chester G. Atkins ’70 became the youngest State Representative ever elected in Massachusetts while he was still a student at Antioch College. That’s quite the co-op. He served in the Massachusetts Senate from 1972-1984.  In 1984, he was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he served on the House Appropriations Committee. Since leaving Congress, Atkins has become involved as an election observer for newly elected governments around the globe.

Eric Gupton ’84 was a founding member of the performance art troupe Pomo Afro Homos. Their shows such as “Fierce Love: Stories from Black Gay Life,” and “Dark Fruit” decried both racism and homophobia. He was also an activist in the fight against AIDS, working countless hours with organizations that raised money for research and brought comfort and hope to those with the disease. Gupton passed away in 2003, but true Antiochians don’t pass away—they just move on to another co-op.

Elizabeth Sullivan ’93 and Gabriel Metcalf ’93 founded the non-profit City CarShare in the San Francisco Bay area. The program aims to change Americans’ relationships with the automobile through a web-based car-share system. This program was modeled after successful projects in Europe. City CarShare has won awards from the California State Assembly, the US Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, and has also won the prestigious Stockholm Prize.

Antioch alumni honors and successes ring down through the years. Even though decades pass, and every era is convinced theirs is “the golden age of Antioch”—yes, even you will, five or ten years down the road—we share a language that binds us forever together.

As Antioch College alumni, you will be inexplicably drawn to acronyms. Take this sentence: “So after attending Community Meeting with the AB and the ACCC, I decided to go to CG and talk about reviving CSB—maybe putting together a proposal for a FWSP position, if the CM thinks it’s OK.” For Antiochians, this makes perfect sense. For everyone else, we are speaking in tongues.

Antioch College alumni also have shared vocabulary. We all know what you mean when you refer to “that co-op in the sky,” “community shared space,” “Div,” and “starting a stack.”

You will greet triumphs in your lives with the thought: “I’m winning my victory for humanity!”

You will be shocked when you have a permanent address for more than a year. Some of you will feel the urge to move the furniture around every semester in lieu of a co-op.

You will wince whenever you hear the word “toxic.”

Speaking for my fellow alumni, we will rejoice in your triumphs. We will brainstorm with you about solutions, and probably endlessly nitpick your ideas. (Don’t take it personally, we do it to everyone.) We will be shoulder-to-shoulder with you as we rebuild Antioch College   We will always share your love of this school, this campus, this education, this faculty, this staff— this community. We are tied to Antioch College by more than just a diploma, we are bound to it by love. Our dreams of the future of America and the world at large are bound to our dreams for this small liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, dedicated to shared governance, experiential learning, social justice and community.

No matter when we graduated, no matter what we majored in, no matter where we come from or where we’re going, Antioch College alumni know that it’s up to us to shape the world to come. We also know that we have the tools to do so—because Antioch was here for us. We go out into the beyond, outside of Yellow Springs, to work for a better future for all of us because that’s what’s right. It’s what’s just. It’s what Antiochians do.

In closing, I have one last thing that all Antiochians share. Please stand if you are willing and able.  Thank you. At Antioch College graduation in 1858, founder Horace Mann said the words that stand as our motto and our worldview. You know the words.  I am going to recite them to you now—feel free to say them with me.

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity!”

Jean Gregorek – Antioch College Commencement 2008 – Faculty Speaker

Antioch College Faculty member Jean Gregorek, was invited to speak by the graduating class of 2008. Jean gave this wonderful speech gave this speech at the Commencement ceremonies on April 26, 2008 in Kelly Hall in the Main Building (Antioch Hall) of Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio

Special thanks for Steve Bognar for providing this video for distribution to the Antioch community.

The text of this speech is included below:

.

Commencement Thoughts April 2008

Jean Gregorek
Associate Professor of Literature, Antioch College

I’m very happy to be here to represent the faculty of Antioch College. It’s been an excruciatingly difficult year. Soon after we received the shocking news last June that the Board of Trustees of Antioch University had decided to suspend the educational program of the College, faculty, staff, and alumni began to organize. We have fought to convince the Board to reverse their decision, to establish the existence of other viable options, and, if no reversal is possible, to separate the College from the University governance structure. Our hope has been, and remains, that this plucky little institution can be picked up, dusted off, maybe given a bit of physical therapy, and put back on its feet. There have been many setbacks, and this year we have lived with the constant anxiety of the threat of imminent termination in what was designated as a dying institution. Yet despite the grimness of our situation, we have never felt alone. It has been our good fortune to have many wonderful partners and allies in this struggle. Indeed, the greatest rewards of this otherwise awful year have come from collaborating with our talented, energetic alumni, and our friends and neighbors in the Yellow Springs community. We have discovered how many lovely people care deeply about this historic institution and its success. If the fate of the College depends upon the resourcefulness and ingenuity of Antiochians and their friends, then we are truly in good hands.

So I would like to take a minute to recognize and say a heartfelt thanks to some of those who have given amazing amounts of time and dedication and in many cases, money, to the cause of Antioch College.

–The brave and resolute Antioch Continuation Corporation (ACCC)
–The hundreds of fabulous, infinitely creative alumni of Antioch College, determined not to give up no matter what— including the Alumni Board and the College Revival Fund, alumni chapters across the country, and the amazing techies who’ve set up websites and wikis, Antiochians.org. and the Antioch College Action Network

–Those renegade investigative journalists at The Antioch Papers
–The American Association of University Professors
–The loyal members of U.E. Local 767—supportive partners in struggle, many of whom have worked at the college for 15 or 20 or 30 years
–The non-union administrative staff who continue to be a joy to work with on a daily basis and who have done so much to keep up our morale
–The heroic faculty and staff of the Olive Kettering Library whose professionalism and dedication have managed keeping the library open and operating in extremely straitened circumstances
–This year’s amazing Antioch College Community Government—truly an example of grace and resilience under pressure
–Hundreds of concerned citizens of the Village of Yellow Springs who have donated their time to organizing, fundraising, publicizing our cause, letter-writing, petition circulating, sign-painting, demonstrating, planning for future directions of the College and so much more. This protracted struggle has forged much closer bonds between the community of Yellow Springs and the community of Antioch College, and we look forward to building upon these partnerships in the coming years.

–And last but not least, those we are honoring today—the students of Antioch College. You can drive us crazy—you can be incredibly aggravating–but you can also be incredibly inspiring. You kept us going. You kept your sense of humor. You kept on believing in the quality of an Antioch education. You gave me, for one, a reason to get up in the morning when things looked bleakest. Teaching this year was a genuine pleasure, and I would like to offer a special ‘thank you’ to the students in my classes for that. I know I speak for all of us when I say that the faculty has really appreciated the Antioch student body during this difficult time.

So why did we—all of these people–choose to challenge the Board of Trustees’ seemingly final, inalterable decision? Why, instead of packing up our books and papers like reasonable academics, and not looking back, did we decide this was a fight worth committing to? What exactly is at stake here? What’s so important about Antioch College?

I only have a few minutes, so I’ll try to be as direct as possible.

The Village of Yellow Springs has long sought to preserve green belts and green spaces against suburban sprawl. We know that parks and wild spaces, whether maintained privately or publicly, are absolutely vital ecologically. They are important for aesthetic reasons as well, sources of a variety of pleasures and a necessary sense of stability, continuity, and rootedness. However, parks serve no direct economic function—they often generate no revenue whatsoever and the land on which they sit would usually be worth more if it were parceled up and ‘developed.’ Such developments serve the financial interests of a few well-placed individuals at the expense of sustaining public or communal space. A loss of access to the landscape affects the well-being of an entire community. If one lives in a world of strip malls and parking lots one can eventually forget that green spaces were ever there, that they were so beautiful and so important for feeding the body and the soul. Sadly, one can become adapted to an environment of billboards, and not even consciously miss the view of the woods and fields any more.

Liberal arts colleges, I propose, can be thought of in much the same way as parks and wild places. These educational ‘green spaces’ enable a kind of ‘greening’ of the mind. Like literal green spaces, they are not profit-producing business enterprises but make vital–although hard to quantify–contributions to American life and communities nonetheless. Here are institutions which set aside four years for non-instrumentalized lines of inquiry—for silence, reflection, musings, experiment, practice, the gaining of knowledge, the trying out of ideas and art forms, the bumping up against Otherness and Other points of view, and always, for Questioning.

But, as in the parallel case of literal green spaces, one can all too easily become accustomed to the disappearance of liberal arts colleges. This loss of educational ‘green space’ is being justified by claims of the inherent inefficiency or impracticality of all that time, all those resources given over to disruptive questioning and purposeless meditations on the nature of truth, beauty, justice and self-discovery. We can no longer afford such luxuries, our opponents say. Thus educational green spaces are being paved over in the name of a lamentable but supposedly inevitable ‘progress.’

Yet the ethos we promote at Antioch College and colleges like it is far from purposeless. Aside from the (I would argue) considerable value of disinterested inquiry per se, we also serve a larger purpose—we foster the ideal of stepping up and doing things because they need doing, not because someone will necessarily pay you to do them (although if they do, all the better—I’m certainly not against this!). The ‘green spaces’ of the liberal arts encourage the idea of that each individual should spend his or her brief time on this planet meaningfully and responsibly. The world will almost never think that it needs a new song, a new play, a new theorem, a new analysis, a new philosophy—but that doesn’t mean that this need is not in fact desperate. As the theorist of revolution Franz Fanon (then age 25) commented wryly in his introduction to Black Skin, White Masks, perhaps the most influential book to date on the social and psychological disorders produced in both white and black people as a result of anti-black racism: “Why write this book? No one has asked me for it. Especially those to whom it is directed.”

But the world did need that book.
And the world needs your books, your songs, your ideas.

This ethos of doing what needs to be done goes by many names: learning, curiosity, discovery, invention, scholarship, scientific findings, art, cultural production, volunteerism, giving back, community service, public spiritedness, contributing to the common good, and more. What this array of activities have in common is that their significance and worth cannot be measured in monetary terms. Often their impact is hard to discern in the short term. Often they are not registered as immediately useful or commodifiable and are therefore not seen by our society as deserving of monetary compensation. I might suggest that we refer to these various non-instrumentalized activities and enterprises as ‘work,’ as in life-work, mission, calling, or using one’s unique talents or genius. We could also designate them, if we were feeling grandiose, as ways to win victories for humanity.

I have to admit that I love our motto (but then, I am a Victorianist by training). I love its loftiness and confidence, its nineteenth-century assumptions that a better world is indeed possible, that we can agree on what a victory for all humankind would be, that we will recognize these victories when we encounter them. (Of course, victories for humanity in 1850 unfortunately included the forced assimilation of indigenous peoples in the name of Civilization…oops…) Nevertheless, despite the oversights in our history, the larger goal remains admirable. I love being part of an educational institution that dares to have a motto like “be ashamed to die until you have won a victory for humanity.” A place with such aspirations is worth saving for its motto alone.

I know I don’t have to convince this audience that the world needs Antioch, and more places like Antioch. The problem, of course, is that most of the world does not know it needs us. Our true value has perhaps become harder, given the cluttered landscape, for others to see. But it’s clear that Antioch has been one of the most fruitful and fertile green spaces of American higher education for the past 156 years—a place where students are encouraged to learn their true work. A place where flickers of dissent, of questioning, of commitment to democracy and justice, and what this year has abundantly proved, of hope, have endured. Perhaps our greatest accomplishment lies in the fact that hope persists in being kindled and rekindled here, even during the stormiest and most uncertain of times.

In the prescient words of Horace Mann, “Education is our political safety. Outside of this ark, all is deluge.” The following poem is about this idea, and about places like Antioch. At least I’m claiming it is. I love this short poem for its list of underacknowledged, seemingly superfluous, but in fact absolutely essential, values and habits of mind. The poem suggests that it is these often overlooked qualities and values that most need treasuring and preserving. I would argue that it is these overlooked qualities and values that help us characterize what education really means. So I’ll leave you with this poem, by the reclusive Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, the 1996 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Into the Ark
(translated from the Polish)

An endless rain is just beginning.
Into the ark, for where else can you go,
you poems for a single voice,
private exultations,
unnecessary talents,
surplus curiosity,
short-range sorrows and fears,
eagerness to see things from all six sides.

Rivers are swelling and bursting their banks.
Into the ark, all you chiaroscuros and half-tones,
you details, ornaments, and whims,
silly exceptions,
forgotten signs, countless shades of the color gray,
play for play’s sake,
and tears of mirth.

As far as the eye can see, there’s water and hazy horizon.
Into the ark, plans for a distant future,
joy in difference,
admiration for the better man,
choice not narrowed down to one of two,
outworn scruples,
time to think it over,
and the belief that all this
will still come in handy someday.

For the sake of the children
that we still are,
fairy tales have happy endings.
That’s the only finale that will do here, too.
The rain will stop,
the waves will subside,
the clouds will part
in the cleared-up sky,
and they’ll be once more
what clouds overhead ought to be:
lofty and rather lighthearted
in their likeness to things
drying in the sun—
isles of bliss,
lambs,
cauliflowers.