Summer Alumni Festival & Nonstop/Alumni Board Proposal

Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute hosted the Summer Alumni Festival from June 18th to the 21st in Yellow Springs. The Festival brought more than 75 Antioch College alumni for three days of programming celebrating the accomplishments of Nonstop over the past year. The festival coincided with the June Alumni Board meeting, and at that meeting, the Alumni Board/Nonstop task force presented its proposal to the Alumni Board. The proposal can be downloaded from the Nonstop website here.

Nonstop’s Summer Alumni Festival featured an academic mini-conference addressing academic freedom and labor issues, film screenings, performances, seminars and presentations by alumni, Nonstop and other faculty, a community work project, and more. Bob Devine ’68 taught what was to be the last session of his beloved class Media and Social Change, as he retired on June 30th. Bob looked back on the 20 years that he has been teaching the class to “explore the paradigm shift in social change media during those years — from content distribution to interaction and the building of relationships”. Bob used the class as a way to explore and understand the ways we have communicated and organized in our efforts to save Antioch College.

As part of the academic mini-conference, filmmaker James Motluk came from Canada to present his film Whose University Is It?, a chronicle of the failed struggle against corporatization at Trent University in Ontario. Professor Alison Hearn from The University of Western Ontario took part in discussing the film and also participated in one of the panel discussions that were part of the conference. The panels explored issues of academic freedom and labor and featured faculty from Nonstop and elsewhere, and were moderated by AAUP President and Antioch Alum Cary Nelson ’67. Scott Warren, former Antioch Professor of Philosophy and Politics and Nonstop faculty member, contributed his expertise in Critical Theory and radical philosophy and politics to offer a contextualization of the Liberal Arts as a means of reclaiming emancipatory knowledge. By charging Antioch and other Liberal Arts institutions to “generate knowledge that can liberate us from various forms of domination and confinement”, Scott’s talk offered valuable food for thought as we reflect on the past year of Nonstop and look forward to building an independent college. Video of all of this programming as well as performances by Nonstop and former Antioch Professors Jill Becker (Dance) and Louise Smith (Theater) can be viewed on Nonstop’s website.

Since March of this year, a task force made up of members of Nonstop and the Alumni Board has been developing a proposal for consideration by the Board Pro Tempore outlining projects that could maintain the momentum built by Nonstop over the past year involving curricular research; the rebuilding of the Co-op program; sustaining a regional cultural and intellectual presence through events and conferences; and entrepreneurial projects that can be integrated with sustainability/greening plans and development of improved information and media services shared by the village and the campus. The proposal was presented to the community at SAF and to the Alumni Board last weekend. Nonstop also reported on plans to move forward to establish not-for-profit status.

For more information, including video documentation of the mini-conference, arts presentations, overview of the task force proposal and more, please visit the SAF archive.

Alumni Festival Work Projects: Distributing CFL’s and Alt Library Cataloging

The work projects for this weekend’s Summer Alumni Festival will be to hand out CFL bulbs to homes throughout Yellow Springs and to catalog the Alt Library collection.

Compact Florescent Bulbs are more energy efficient than incandescents. The Village of Yellow Springs purchased the light bulbs, and alumni will go door to door to distribute them. This project will promote greater energy efficiency, help support Yellow Springs in their efforts to become a greener village, and help to sustain the important connection that Nonstop has made with the village over the past year. It will be a pleasant and relaxing way to spend some time strolling through beautiful Yellow Springs, chatting with our neighbors!

Alumni will also work on cataloging the Alt Library collection. Sara Eklund Payne, a recently-retired professional librarian will be guiding the effort. The Alt Library will join the Womyn’s Center and the TWA/BAMN collections which have already been barcoded and cataloged, so your contribution this weekend will allow the entire library to be accessible online. The Alt Library was created and maintained by students and Community Government workers over nearly two decades.

The work project hours are: Thursday, June 18th, from 2PM to 5PM, Friday, June 19th, from 2PM to 5PM, and Saturday, June 20th, from 9AM to 11AM. Alumni should meet at Nonstop’s space in the Millworks building at 305 N. Walnut Street in Yellow Springs.

Nonstop Alumni Festival to Feature Academic Freedom/Labor Mini-Conference

Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute will host an Academic Labor/Freedom Mini-Conference this Saturday, June 20th, as part of the Nonstop Summer Alumni Festival. The mini-conference will feature panel presentations by Nonstop and other faculty, moderated by AAUP President and Antioch alum Cary Nelson ’67, and a film screening and discussion.

This semester, Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute had the opportunity to give presentations at the Reworking the University conference at the University of Minnesota. The response from Nonstop’s fellow presenters was enthusiastic and supportive, so much so that some of the conference organizers and presenters from Minneapolis will come to Yellow Springs and participate in this weekend’s mini-conference.

From 12:30PM to 2PM on Saturday, come to a screening and discussion of “Whose University Is It?”, a film about the struggle against corporatization at Trent University in Ontario, with filmmaker James Motluk and academic labor organizer Alison Hearn. At 2:30PM to 6PM, there will be a Panel on Academic Labor/Freedom with Prof. Scott Warren, Prof. Jean Gregorek, Alison Hearn, and others, moderated by AAUP President Cary Nelson ’67.

For those Antioch alumni and other supporters who can’t make it to the Alumni Festival, programming from the entire weekend will be streamed live on the Nonstop homepage along with live chatting capability, so alumni everywhere can connect.

This event will take place at Nonstop’s space in the Millworks building, at 305 N. Walnut Street in Yellow Springs.

Bob Devine will Teach Last Class of Media & Social Change at Alumni Festival

Archived Video of Media and Social Change from live web-broadcast, June 19, 2009

Media and Social Change – Part 1 of 2

Media and Social Change – Part 2 of 2

Pre-event Announcement:
This Friday, June 19th, Bob Devine ‘68 will teach a session of his Media & Social Change class as part of the Nonstop Institute’s Summer Alumni Festival. This class has been a favorite of many Antioch students over the 20 years that Bob has been teaching it. Bob is retiring at the end of this semester and this session will be his last class – it is not to be missed!

Media & Social Change played a vital role in Antioch’s communications curriculum. In this last session of the class, Bob will look back to the 20 years that he has been teaching the class and “explore the paradigm shift in social change media during those years — from content distribution to interaction and the building of relationships — with some comments on the communications and organization relative to the saving of the College.” From documentary films of the 60’s and 70’s, to public access, to social networking media, Bob will discuss how we use media to shape the world around us and how it shapes us.

Alumni and friends who cannot make it to the Summer Alumni Festival this weekend will be able to watch a live video feed of Bob’s class and other programming on www.nonstopinstitute.org. A chat window will be in place to allow viewers to talk about the programming.

Bob Devine has thirty years of teaching in the general field of Communications, fifteen years in CEO and leadership roles in non-profit organizations, and credits on several dozen documentary film and video productions. His teaching fields include communications theory, social theory, film history, cultural studies, community media and the use of democratic and participatory media for social change. Other areas of teaching interest include African-American film, Labor and film, and the First Amendment.

Bob Devine will teach the class from 12:30AM to 2PM on Friday, June 19th at Nonstop’s space in the Millworks building, at 305 N. Walnut Street in Yellow Springs.

Antioch Campus Listed on the 2009 List of Ohio’s Most Endangered Historic Sites

Released by The Ohio Preservation Alliance — read the press release here.

Springfield, Ohio (June 1, 2009) – Preservation Ohio has announced the 2009 List of Ohio’s Most Endangered Historic Sites. This important list highlights important pieces of Ohio history that face an uncertain future, and which deserve the attention of all Ohioans as remnants of the past that merit preservation.

Each year, Ohio’s statewide preservation organization searches for houses, commercial buildings, governmental structures, bridges, historic roadways, landscapes, downtowns, neighborhoods and other important pieces of Ohio history that face a potentially risky future. The list serves to highlight those properties which are both historically significant and endangered — whether it be by threats of demolition, long-term disinvestment or neglect, insensitive governmental action, uncertainty or indifference.

Nominations for this important list have come from individuals, preservation organizations, downtown and neighborhood revitalization organizations, historical societies, historic road associations, local governments and other entities. In each case, the property is reviewed for both its value to local, regional, state or federal history, and the nature of the threat involved. Special attention is paid to those sites facing a threat which typifies one facing many of Ohio’s historic resources. Properties remain on the list each year until such time as the threat is lessened.

Designation is similar to that given for the country’s most endangered historic sites by the National Trust for Historic Preservation — the primary benefit of the list being public attention and focus. The list has received substantial media attention, including coverage in all of Ohio’s major newspapers, as well as in magazines, lifestyle publications and local media.

Information about the Ohio’s Most Endangered Historic Sites program can be found on our website, located at: www.preservationohio.org. Beginning on June 2, a link to each listed property will be activated each day, with photos, videos and more to be included.

Antioch’s listing:

Antioch College Historic District (Various stages beginning in 1854) – Yellow Springs, Greene County – A landmark of national educational history, the original campus has been closed for over a year with concerns over the future of its historic buildings, and awaits hopeful re-opening. This is the first year for Antioch College on the list.

View the entire list here.

Nonstop is the spirit of Antioch

By Joe Blundo, Columbus Dispatch — read the original editorial here.

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio — Two students and an underpaid philosophy professor sit at a kitchen table, studying existentialism and keeping the spirit of Antioch College alive.

“We’re the cockroaches after the nuclear war,” says the professor, Scott Warren.

He might have been understating the persistence of Antiochians.

When its parent institution closed the ailing college last year, alumni and faculty members raised $1.4 million, created office space in an old factory and established the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute (nonstopinstitute.org).

True to its name, the institute has endured, despite precarious circumstances. When the spring term ends in May, it will have completed a school year of classes in churches, borrowed rooms and homes in this village about 60 miles southwest of Columbus.

Nonstop even has a library, stocked in part with books rescued from a Dumpster after the college closed.

Warren is earning far less than his Antioch salary, he said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun.”

Critics called Antioch a poorly maintained, academically lax institution with a contentious culture intolerant of anyone whose views weren’t far to the left. Enrollment, more than 2,000 at its peak, had slipped to about 200.

But when former media-arts professor Chris Hill speaks of the “DNA of Antioch,” she’s talking about something else: For much of its 155-year history, Antioch was known for freedom of thought, progressive social policies, inclusive governance and adventurous students who alternated semesters in the classroom with semesters of travel and work.

Nonstop was created to preserve that unique DNA, she said. It has 27 college-age students and 38 nontraditional students, many of them Yellow Springs residents. The school is unaccredited, so the courses may or may not transfer.

Classes meet in places such as the Dharma Center, a Buddhist meditation house — where, on a recent weekday, Warren was teaching “Black Existentialism” to Lincoln Alpern and Jessie Clark.

Alpern, 21, of Peekskill, N.Y., enrolled at Antioch and stayed on at Nonstop.

“It’s just possible I could get as rich a learning experience and social experience at another institution somewhere, but the chances of my being able to figure out which one are vanishingly small.”

Clark, 21, of Milwaukee and also a former Antioch student, said that, as a member of the institute’s executive council, she helps run the school. Few colleges, she added, provide such opportunity.

Both admit to missing campus life.

Uncertainty is the watchword at Nonstop these days. Antioch alumni are negotiating to take over the college from its parent, the Antioch University system, and reopen it. Nonstop must raise enough money to continue until that day arrives — if it arrives.

Jean Gregorek, a former Antioch associate professor of literature who teaches at Nonstop, acknowledges that the situation might rightly be termed bleak.

“On the other hand, it’s been looking bleak for two years. Part of me thinks you just have to keep fighting.”

Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist.

jblundo@dispatch.com