Category: news

Alumni Seek Answers Regarding Financial Condition of Antioch College

Online Information Session Provides an Opportunity

Members of the Antioch College Alumni Association welcome the opportunity to pose questions to Art Zucker, Chair of the University Board of Trustees and Toni Murdock, Chancellor of the University in an online dialog scheduled for Thursday, August 16 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Our alumni are strongly encouraged to visit the Antioch College website at www.antioch-college.edu to post questions in advance.

The Alumni Association, representing over 17,000 Antioch College alumni, rejects the decision made in June by the University Board of Trustees to suspend operations and has been instructed to negotiate a path that will avoid closure. It is also acknowledged that the Alumni Association must take up the lead to raise the funds necessary to strengthen Antioch College to ensure that it is strong and ready to welcome generations of new students.

“Important questions need to be answered in this session. It is our hope that the University Board of Trustees will take this opportunity to disclose, in a fully transparent fashion, the financial circumstances which led them to justify such a drastic action.” -said Nancy Crow, ’70, President of the Antioch College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association will be prepared with a response for the media immediately following the online session.

Antioch College Revival Fund

Established in June 2007 by the Alumni Board of Antioch College in response to an attempt by the University Board of Trustees to suspend operations of the 150 year-old historic college, the College Revival Fund, Inc. is an Ohio non-profit corporation established solely for the benefit of Antioch College to ensure its continued operation. Alumni have raised $625,000 in cash and pledges to date for the College Revival Fund that is under the full control of the Antioch College Alumni Association. In addition, there are expressions of interest in contributing to a revived, self-governed Antioch College that are in excess of $2 million.

Antioch College

Founded in 1852, Antioch College is a private undergraduate liberal arts college located in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Antioch College is a leader in American higher education and has been recognized for many generations for academic rigor, innovation and social justice. The College was among the first to offer women and men an equal academic curriculum, offer faculty equal compensation regardless of gender, among the first to offer African-American students access to a college education, and among the first non-sectarian colleges in the United States. The College counts many noteworthy alumni in all fields.

Ad-Hoc Group Hosts Local Viewing of Antioch University’s Web-based Financial Presentation

Contact: Yellow Springs Residents in Support of the Antioch College Revival Resolution
Contact Person: Judith Wolert-Maldonado, Antioch College alumna
Telephone Number: (937) 767-0118
Email Address: juju70@msn.com
Web site affiliation: www.antiochians.org (Antioch College alumni are responsible for the website’s content)

AD-HOC GROUP HOSTS LOCAL VIEWING OF ANTIOCH UNIVERSITY’S WEB-BASED FINANCIAL PRESENTATION

Yellow Springs, Ohio, August 14, 2007 — The Yellow Springs Residents in Support of the Antioch College Revival Resolution will host a public viewing of a web-based financial presentation by Antioch University Chancellor Toni Murdock and Board of Trustees Chair Art Zucker at Epic Bookshop, 118 Dayton Street, Yellow Springs, Ohio, on Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 8:00PM EDT.

The ad-hoc group plans to facilitate a brief discussion after the web-based presentation. The meeting time will also be a chance for citizens who want to keep Antioch College open, to re-connect and prepare for next week’s August 25th special meeting of the Antioch University Board of Trustees in Cincinnati. Many out-of-town visitors are expected to come into southwestern Ohio for the August 25th meeting. The ad-hoc group is looking for local residents who can provide rides to and from the airport, host the Antioch College alumni visitors in their homes and assist in car pool rides to the August 25th, Cincinnati meeting.
Coffee, tea and smoothie drinks will be available for purchase at the bookshop during the webcast meeting.

TWO IMPORTANT LINKS TO PREPARE FOR THE WEBCAST:

To register for the webcast go to:
http://www.antioch-college.edu/collegenews/askaquestion.html

To ask questions to Chancellor Murdock and Board Chair Art Zucker prior to or during the webcast go to:
http://www.antioch-college.edu/collegenews/askaquestion.html#question

For additional information Contact: Judith Wolert-Maldonado, (937) 767-0118, juju70@msn.com

Letters to the Editor of the Dayton Daily News, from Yellow Springs Residents

Saturday, August 04, 2007, YOUR LETTERS, Dayton Daily News

Will Wrong about Antioch’s Demise

Re George Will’s July 15 column, “News of Antioch’s impending closure is heartening”: Will suggested, as did Michael Goldfarb before him, that what did Antioch in was its radical brand of liberalism. Unlike alumnus Goldfarb, however, Will finds the closing “heartening.” As a faculty member of the College and a native of Yellow Springs, I have a different view.

Antioch has always been known to be liberal. As the alumni board notes on its Web site, antiochians.org, “Antioch was indeed among the first nonsectarian colleges, among the first to offer equal compensation and opportunity to male and female faculty, among the first to offer an equal curriculum to women and blacks.”

Now, internships and service learning are commonplace at most universities, as is greater representation of minorities, women, gays and lesbians. In fact, what Antioch suffers from most is that it is no longer unique.

Higher education is a very liberal business. As a 2005 Washington Post article reported, a survey of university faculty found that “72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative.” Therefore, if the combination of undergraduate ignorance and liberalism were truly fatal, the majority of universities would now be dead.

Antioch’s problems are more mundane, such as a lack of strong leadership, poor governance, and distrust from potential funders. The university has only one board of trustees, which is charged with the oversight of six
separate campuses in five different locations across the country. If there is one fundamental lesson to be learned, it is that any governmental structure too far removed from the lives of the people it serves may fail to understand their needs, much less fulfill them.

— Jocelyn Hardman, Yellow Springs

There’s More to Antioch Story

The July 27 story about Steve Lawry resigning from Antioch College (“Antioch College president resigns, effective Dec. 31”) featured a mugshot that looked like it was lifted from a police blotter. What’s next, grainy black-and-white, off-focus shots like those used in contemporary political ads designed to discredit opponents?

Antioch College’s press release mirrored one from Antioch University, a purely administrative structure invented in the 1970s. Year after year, that top-heavy structure with its imperial CEOs and its distant governing board plundered Antioch College’s treasure. So last month in Seattle, Antioch University’s 2007 board announced the inevitable end of that long process —i.e., “suspending” the historic liberal-arts college and, of course, inheriting its estate. Small wonder that Lawry was willing to leave early.

Antioch University’s press releases spin such announcements to sound very matter-of-fact — no arguments, case closed. They also try to make Antioch University sound like a real university, and they portray Antioch as a
highly problematic program no longer worth supporting. But if reporters investigated the history of this trend with faculty, staff, alumni and villagers in Yellow Springs, they might have a more accurate story to tell.

— Thomas Haugsby, Yellow Springs

Mr. Haugsby is an Antioch College professor and director of cooperative
education.

Former Trustees Reply to Art Zucker, Chair, Antioch University Board of Trustees

by Barbara Winslow, Former Trustee, Current Antioch College Alumni Board Member. August 10, 2007

Dear Trustees,

Thank you for Board Chair Art Zucker’s prompt reply to our letter of July
28.

We greatly appreciate the Board of Trustees’ commitment to resolving Antioch’s structural and governance issues. As Art mentioned, the suggestions in our letter are in agreement with the substance of the governing structure that has been previously proposed. In fact, during our time on the Board these issues were discussed repeatedly. These are not new ideas, but they are certainly ideas whose time has come.

You mentioned that it is heartening when former Trustees demonstrate their commitment to Antioch. You’ll be excited to hear that since sending our letter to you, a number of former trustees have asked to become signatories to the letter, so that twenty former Trustees are now asking that you act on our proposal at the August meeting. As you can see by their names below, these committed Trustees include the past five Board Chairs as well as three Vice Chairs.

Among us, we have a total of 165 years of experience in service to Antioch as Trustees. We are intimately familiar with Antioch College¹s challenges as well as its strengths. We all feel strongly that the first and immediate step on the road to rebirth must be the creation of a separate Board of Trustees for Antioch University/Yellow Springs, with the power to hire and fire the College President and administer the College, and with responsibility for both Antioch College and McGregor, as detailed in our previous letter.

We cannot emphasize strongly enough how taking this step at your August meeting will send a strong signal to all Antioch College alumni, major donors, and others who care deeply about the College, that the current Trustees are serious in their intentions. We believe that such a strong and immediate signal is essential to building the trust necessary for there to be any hope of raising the considerable amount of money that will be needed to re-open the College.

We are delighted by your invitation to work with you toward the goal of re-opening a stronger Antioch College. Given your positive response to our suggestions, we would like to begin that partnership by including a subset of the signatories below as participants at your August Board meeting.

While we understand that you are inviting various stakeholders to speak with you on Saturday to represent their constituencies, we must observe that we are not stakeholders, but statespeople. We are all former Antioch University trustees, including the last five Board Chairs. We share with you the unique experience of having functioned as guardians of the whole University. We respectfully request that you include us in at least part of your closed session on Sunday.

We realize this is an unusual request, but Antioch is in unusual circumstances. We ask that you broaden the brain trust leading the rebirth the College by including another 165 years of Antioch Trustee knowledge, experience and wisdom. (Since this was originally drafted, 4 trustees, Spock, Granai, Ayoub and Richards signed on with 30 combined years of service)

We understand the pressure you are under, and your fiduciary responsibility to insure the long-term fiscal sustainability of all units of Antioch University. We believe we can assist the Board in regaining the trust of the alumni, major donors and other stakeholders so that everyone who loves Antioch College can begin moving in the same direction, towards rebirth. We are sure that our expertise and our commitment to this mission will make us invaluable contributors and help effect a positive and united outcome.

We know that you are as committed as we are to Antioch College rising like a phoenix from the ashes, reborn, healthy, and once again educating students to win victories for humanity. We look forward to working with you to light the way forward.

Sincerely,
Dan Kaplan*-11 years of service
Laura Markham -2
Barbara Winslow**-12
and
Eric Bates 4
Tamara Guzik Bliss 2
Susan Boren 13**
Leressa Crockett – 12
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein-11
Zelda Gamson**-9
Alan Gartner 3
Jewel Graham – 3
Meg Hansson – 6
Frances Degen Horowitz- 6
Bob Krinsky*-20
Pegene McPhaden – 9
Karen Mulhauser- 14
Larry Pearl* – 5
Jordan Tamagni -2
Hardy Trolander* -6
Malte vonMatthiessen*-15
Ed Richards – 10
Ed Granai – 10
Judith Spock – 12
Vic Ayoub – 2

* Former chair
**Former vice chair
(Each name is followed by the years of service as an Antioch Trustee.)

Barbara Winslow

Who’s Afraid of Antioch College…and Why Are They Trying to Shut It Down?

by Revolution Newspaper ( revolution.sfbureau [at] gmail.com ) Thursday Aug 9th, 2007 9:13 PM

The move to close Antioch is part of the assault on the rebellious legacy of the 1960s—and part of attempts to shut down critical thinking and dissent on campuses today.

In late June, Antioch College’s Board of Trustees announced their decision to close the college in 2008. Antioch is well known—and, in the halls of power, hated—for a progressive, open-minded approach to education. Its academic program combines classroom learning with work experience and community involvement. Founded by progressive Christians as a secular college in 1852 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch from the beginning sought
to include Black people and women among students and faculty. A saying by founder Horace Mann became the school’s watchword: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” [Read More]

Antioch College Alumni Association Proposal for Governance and Fundraising to the University Board of Trustees

August 8, 2007

Antioch College Alumni Association

A Proposal for Governance and Fundraising
to the University Board of Trustees

2007 – 2008
I. Introduction

This proposal was written by a group of alumni on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Antioch College Alumni Association to be presented to the University Board of Trustees in advance of its emergency meeting to be held in Cincinnati, Ohio on August 25-26, 2007. This document represents the alumni commitment to secure the future of Antioch College as an undergraduate, residential, liberal arts college, on its historic campus in Yellow Springs.

This is a good faith effort to save Antioch College. We call upon the University Board of Trustees and all those who care about the College and its unique place in American higher education to assist us with the efforts outlined in this proposal. Remembering the legacy inherited from Horace Mann, Arthur Morgan, and countless others, we assert that Antioch College, having faced financial adversity many times throughout its history, will again thrive.

II. Mission Statement

To rebuild Antioch College as a financially stable and vibrant liberal arts college providing a model education based on its traditional values of academic rigor, celebration of diversity, community governance, cooperative education, free and open inquiry, intellectual freedom, and mutual respect.

III. The Shared Challenge

The Board of Directors of the Antioch College Alumni Association can lead a broad based effort to raise sufficient financial support to ensure the future health of College. This financial support is only available to an Antioch College with independent administrative leadership in charge of its own future and with its own Board of Trustees. The current model of governance has not served the needs of the students and faculty of Antioch College or the University.

IV. Priority Goals

The goals, objectives, and implementation steps below comprise our approach to moving the process of saving Antioch College along quickly in order to avoid prolonging the effects of the proposed closure. These priority goals establish our firm commitment to independent governance for Antioch College and our full acknowledgment that the alumni must take principal responsibility for raising the funds necessary to secure the future of the College.

1. To re-establish Antioch College as the autonomous institution it was for more than 130 years.

Objectives:

A. To transfer governance of the College from the University Board of Trustees to the Board of Directors of the Antioch College Alumni Association on July 1, 2008.

Implementation steps:

1. As instructed by the Antioch College alumni at Reunion and as defined in the unanimously accepted Revival Resolution, our elected Alumni Association Board of Directors is charged with negotiating the transfer of governance with the University Board of Trustees.

B. To secure the assets of Antioch College and separate them from those of the University.

Implementation steps:

1. Obtain an independent and complete audit of the restricted and quasi-endowment, and document any and all restrictions attached to those funds for the use of Antioch College.

2. Identify and negotiate the transfer of all assets historically and programmatically associated with Antioch College on its campus in Yellow Springs, Ohio, including, but not limited to: its historic name and reputation, restricted and quasi-endowment, campus land, campus facilities, auxiliary programs, Glen Helen, WYSO, teaching faculty, staff; and, where deemed appropriate, the assets of all Antioch University campuses where the establishment of those programs and the development of those facilities was achieved with the financial support and direction of Antioch College leadership.

3. Obtain an independent and complete audited financial statement for Antioch College including any and all liabilities that are directly associated with the administration and operation of the College.

C. To establish a temporary Governance and Administrative Transfer Council (GATcil) to negotiate the process with the University Board of Trustees over the next ten months led by the President of the Alumni Association Board of Directors.

Implementation steps:

1. The elected Alumni Board of Directors will determine the size and composition for GATcil and the scope of its duties related to negotiating and preparing for the transfer, including the appointment of the new Antioch College Board of Trustees for July 1, 2008 and the search for a College president to be appointed on the same date.

D. To clarify and define any future relationship of Antioch College with the University, and specifically with University programs in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Implementation steps:

1. GATcil will negotiate with the University Board of Trustees and the Chancellor of the University, the future of the programs in Yellow Springs. In particular, great effort will be exerted to respect and meet the needs of students, staff, and faculty in all programs.

2. Continue current fundraising efforts while planning for the launch of a comprehensive and sophisticated five-year fundraising program emphasizing capital, annual, and planned giving.

Objectives:

A. To develop fundraising goals based on our aspirations for the future of Antioch College, not simply the present emergency born of the plan for suspension of operation.

Based on study of a cohort of 10 liberal arts colleges of similar stature and with which Antioch College traditionally has shared applications for admission, the Alumni Association projects the need to secure an endowment of $100 million by FY13 to be competitive for students and faculty. However, these projections need to be informed by a transparent and thorough audit and review of the current state of institutional finances.

Implementation steps:

1. The Alumni Association Board of Directors will select a small group of experienced alumni fundraisers to conduct a feasibility study and a specific fundraising plan to be presented at the October meeting of the University Board of Trustees.

2. Alumni Association Board of Directors will investigate the potential value of retaining professional fundraising counsel.

3. Upon successful completion of governance negotiations, fully integrate College fundraising staff and resources with the Alumni Association’s College Revival Fund.

B. Ensure that the current funds raised for the College Revival Fund earn income.

Implementation steps:

1. Form an investment committee of the Alumni Association composed of experienced finance talent who can provide oversight of current funds raised.

V. Other Goals Related to the Transition

During our planning process and in our conversations with supportive alumni and other stakeholders, additional overarching goals emerged for the immediate future.

These goals are:

• To end the continuing damage to the historic and valuable reputation of Antioch College by quickly resolving the issues of governance in order to ensure the uninterrupted continuation of Antioch College as in institution of higher education with a tenured faculty.

• To request that the University Board of Trustees instruct the Chancellor of the University to cancel the plan to establish a “Design and Development Commission” and to cease any present or ongoing efforts to develop or liquidate assets.

• To quickly undertake a concerted effort to repair the damage done to the reputation of Antioch College by developing a comprehensive public relations response to the recent events, presumably by engaging a professional communications firm.

• To undertake a marketplace study in preparation for launching a new and comprehensive enrollment planning model for Antioch College, presumably by engaging a professional admission recruitment marketing firm.

VI. Vision of Antioch College

Having avoided any suspension of operations and having retained its students and fine faculty, Antioch College celebrates the 160th year since its founding in 1852. It is a stable and financially healthy residential liberal arts college ably led and with an enrollment of 800 students and a small but, dramatically increased endowment of $100 million or $125,000 per FTE. The physical plant of the College has been greatly improved through a combination of fundraising and fiscally responsible planning.

The Antioch College curriculum, led by a tenured faculty, provides a rigorous academic program of study in the context of important real-world issues and it exposes students to a variety of transformative processes for positive change. The curriculum is delivered through the three cornerstones of an Antioch College education: academics, co-op, and community.

Antioch College attracts a diverse student body and maintains a civil environment with respectful debate in which students learn how to engage and make meaningful change in the world. An Antioch College that embodies the historic mission of Horace Mann in educating students to win victories for humanity is truly a reality once again.

VII. Business Plan

Under development as of 08/08/07.