Save Antioch College

The last time I stood with you in a tent at Reunion, in 2007, we came together not only to reminisce and catch up with old friends, but also to construct the Resolution that has inspired us and informed our actions over the past year since the University  boldly announced that it was suspending operations at Antioch College. The College Revival movement lived up to its name that night as we gathered under that tent, testifying to our Antioch experiences, to our beloved community, sharing stories that were so inspiring that we raised $400,000 in about two hours to support the uninterrupted continuation of the College we love and value so much. Your actions, ideas, fundraising, tenacity and passion are a constant inspiration, and I thank each and every one of you.

It was a bittersweet year; students wrote senior papers, went on co-op, worked in the Glen and garnered Fulbrights, while facing the spectre that this year could be our College’s swan song.  Now, the landscape has completely changed yet again. As you probably know, I was in Keene, New Hampshire two weekends ago at the first Board of Trustees meeting since the talks broke off between the University Board and the Antioch College Continuation Corporation. Alumni, students and staff also attended the meeting.

At that meeting, the University Trustees and administration, Chancellor, Vice Chancellors, and the Presidents of the other campuses affirmed their commitment to a healthy and independent Antioch College and acknowledged that could not happen without the College’s alumni.  The Trustees unanimously passed a Resolution calling for the Alumni Association to create the process, plans and resources to secure Antioch College’s independence from Antioch University, with its own board of trustees. The resolution also calls for the alumni to craft a plan for the transfer of assets from the University and a timetable for implementing that plan. Immediately, my multiple phones started ringing off the hook. Shortly thereafter, my email inbox completely filled up. Everyone wanted to know: what’s the next step? What are we doing? Here’s my idea, can we act on it? Here’s my plan, can we adopt it? Can we believe this? SHOULD we believe this?

I don’t have all the answers. I understand the skepticism many of you may have. This has been an exhausting year, filled with ups and downs, and more twists and turns than a midnight walk through the Glen. We thought that by now the College would well on the road to recovery, or at least in re-hab. But we’re on Antioch time…and it will take more time, more work, more invention and reinvention, working together in community, to revive Antioch College.

Even though I appreciate your skepticism, I remain optimistic. We have achieved so much, so quickly. Alumni have become re-engaged as never before. Donations and pledges arrive daily at the College Revival Fund.  The future of Antioch College is in our hands.  Working together with the incredible faculty, dedicated staff, eager Trustees and the supportive Yellow Springs community, the alumni community has demonstrated its commitment to Antioch College.  Together we will ensure that the next generation of leaders will graduate from Antioch.

It is once again time for fortitude and oceans of caffeine. It is time to complete the movement we launched under the tent at last year’s Reunion—the task of securing Antioch College’s independence as a liberal arts, residential college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with a tenured faculty and vigorous curriculum, based on our values of shared governance, experiential learning, and community.

That’s great, you’re saying. But what are we DOING?

Here’s what’s going on right now: The Alumni Board is crafting a letter of intent with the Board of Trustees for the transfer of the historical assets of Antioch College to an independent College Board of Trustees. This letter will embody the principles of the Resolution passed unanimously by the alumni at last year’s Reunion. Once this letter is approved, it will be posted on antiochians.org and put out on the lists, so keep your laptops handy.

Once a letter of intent has been signed, the next step is to put in place a Board of Trustees for an independent Antioch College.  The Alumni Board’s Governance Committee has been developing qualifications for board members and identifying candidates for the past year.  The new Board will take responsbility for initiating a national search for a new College president and oversee the renovation of the College buildings and curriculum.   Also, after the letter of intent is accepted by the University Board, the incredible staff of the College Revival Fund—Risa Grimes, Aimee Mayurama, Fred Kraus, Wendy Ernst, Chelsea Martens, Robin Heise, Eric Miller, Cheri Robbins, and Stephen Duffy—will be going into full-on fundraising mode.

As the President of the Antioch College Alumni Association, I sit on the University Board of Trustees.  I know that the Trustees want us to succeed.

Make no mistake about it–no matter what happens, we are going forward.  You will have the opportunity this weekend to connect with faculty, to strategize in breakout groups, to attend Community Meeting, as well as to have fun, connect with your classmates and, of course, hop til you drop at Div dance. I can’t believe I’m saying this to Antiochians, but please remember to have fun this weekend.

I’m now going to turn over the floor to Ellen Borgersen, Vice-President of the Alumni Board and Acting President of the College Revival Fund. She’ll talk about Nonstop Antioch, her work with the faculty and staff and how it will fold into the revival of Antioch College. After her talk, we will be available for a question and answer session. I look forward to your questions and suggestions.

Nancy Crow

Alumni Board President

The 2007 Reunion resolution called upon the Alumni Board to negotiate with the University for an independent College, and that’s been Plan A ever since.   Who knew? – here it is, still alive, a year later.

Alums have been asking all year, “but what if we can’t close a deal with the University?  What’s your Plan B?”   We’ve been working on Plan B since last fall, but it is in the nature of Plans B that they remain in the background, until the time comes to bring them to the foreground – which would be now.

The most obvious Plan B in a situation like this is litigation.  At Reunion 2007 there was a break-out group on legal strategies, and many alums wanted to sue the University right away – but most of the lawyers did not.  Lawyers know better than anyone that litigation is always a last resort:  it is costly, nasty, and anything but short.  However you calculate the costs of this past year of negotiations that have yet to bear fruit, one thing we gained is this:  no one will ever be able to say we didn’t do everything possible, and more, to avoid litigating.

One lawsuit was filed suit last August.  Members of te faculty sued the University for breach of its contractual obligations, which are spelled out in detail in the Faculty Policy and Procedures Manual, to consult with the faculty before declaring “financial exigency,” and to pursue “less drastic alternatives” to closing the College and dismissing tenured faculty.  That suit was voluntarily dismissed in October as a gesture of good will to move the negotiations forward, with the proviso that it could be re-filed at any time – which it has been, but I’ll come back to that in a minute….

At about the same time, a team of lawyer-alums began investigating other potential claims against the University.  One alum persuaded her very fancy Wall Street firm, Debevoise + Plimpton, to take the Alum Ass’n on as a pro bono client.  As of a few weeks ago, the time-value of their efforts alone was $350,000, and the work goes on.  My firm, Morrison & Foerster, has made it’s 800 conference line available for easily 10 hours of calls per week, for telephonic Alumni Board meetings, committee meetings, and conferences – this has invaluable in keeping us connected.  Others alum lawyers donated their time as individuals, including identifying, interviewing and retaining paid counsel.  And the work goes on.

The big-ticket item in complex litigation is factual investigation .   If you have spent any time at all on theantiochpapers.org, you know that we have a rockem, sockem investigative team.  They have put in hundreds of hours analyzing docs and meeting with lawyers to bring them up to speed.   Their latest effort was an intensive one, and for they first time they asked us for payment, still donating half their time.  We paid them a pittance – little more than token recognition of a contribution worth thousands and thousands of dollars.  We are thrilled to have them on our team.

So what has all of this effort produced?  There are six kinds of claims that we are supporting.  The central action is a “derivative” suit on behalf the Antioch University Corporation itself, for injuries inflicted on it by its Administration and Board, such as damage to Antioch’s reputation, its ability to recruit qualified students, faculty, and administrators, and the destruction of the U’s most valuable asset – Antioch College – by forcing it into closure.   The people with standing to bring this action are sitting Trustees.  And if the Trustees say no to the offer from the Alumni Ass’n that they have solicited – if they say no again, we will be looking to some of those Trustees to start this action.

Other lawsuits in preparation are claims by donors who contributed to the Antioch College, to either the Annual Fund or the Capital Campaign, at a time when University personnel knew that the College would be closed and failed to disclose that fact to donors; claims by students who were   promised, and awarded scholarships for a four-year Antioch education; and claims on behalf of donors of restricted funds that may have been misappropriated.

In addition, one of our alum lawyers – who does not practice in Ohio – unearthed an arcane Ohio statute …   5 of citizens of Green County may petition the the Attorney General to investigate breaches of fiduciary duty by the University Trustees, including their duties of care, proper accounting, and loyalty.

Our retained counsel have done their duty, and warned that these claims will be difficult to prevail on.  Trustees enjoy a presumption that they have acted in good faith; they are entitled to exercise business judgment, and they are entitled to make mistakes.  We will have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that they breached their fiduciary duties to the University – not just  the College.  Disclaimer – I am not licensed to practice in Ohio, I am not allowed to practice law for anyone other than my firm’s clients, and I am not acting as a lawyer in this case.  I am a coordinator and a potential plaintiff.  But I did teach civil procedure for 11 years, and my own personal view is that these claims will survive motions to dismiss on the pleadings.  Which means that we will get discovery.  And we may well discover other potential claims when we do.

The faculty lawsuit has already cleared that hurdle, and discovery is underway.  It’s basically a breach of contract claim.  The faculty’s contract – pol and proc manual – sets out very specific things Trustees were required to do before declaring financial exigency.  And they did none of them.  The contract also states that they may terminate tenured faculty only if the financial emergency “cannot be alleviated by less drastic means.”  Speaking as a lay person, it seems to me that the Trustees have been presented with three of four very viable alternatives to terminating our faculty and closing the College.

The other thing to say about litigation is that well over 90% of civil lawsuits settle.  So, in my personal opinion, we will get our College back.  The University now agrees with us that an independent College is in the best interests of both the College, and we will achieve that goal – it’s a question of how long it will take, and how much money will be diverted from the task of bringing Antioch College back to life as a thriving, residential undergraduate institution, restored to its proper place in the pantheon of American higher education, and graduating generations of students dedicated to winning victories for humanity.

And that’s where Nonstop comes in.  Nonstop Antioch is the political movement.  First Amendment.   The educational enterprise is not called Nonstop Antioch , b/c the university owns the trademark to use that name   has been named The Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute.

I’ve been privileged to spend much of this academic year on campus, and it has been a roller coaster.  There have been some very low moments.  The lowest was probably in January.   That was when the University administration announced, in the middle of a meeting at which the AC3’s initial proposal was to be presented to the Board, that the College would close on June 30 even if negotiations with the AC3 were successful.  It was a very, very dark moment on this campus.  The administration considered itself ethically obligated to kill off any ray of hope – which they called “false hope” – and for a short while it did.

But then people started realizing we’d hit bottom.  They’d done the worst thing they could do.  And that meant we were free.  The realization that a faculty and community that has been living under what Hassan Nejad calls “colonial occupation” for years – the realization that the faculty is now free to create the curriculum that they think Antioch College should be offering — has unleashed an enormous sense of liberation and creative energy.  You’ll be hearing more about that from the faculty.

Ellen Borgersen
Alumni Board Vice-President, CRF Acting President