Antioch College Revival Resolution

Antioch College Revival Resolution
June 24, 2007

Whereas, Over 500 Antioch College Alumni attended the 2007 Antioch College Reunion representing the classes of 1938 through 2007, and

Whereas, the Antioch College Alumni met in community sessions with College faculty, staff, current students, administrators, McGregor students, members of the Board of Trustees and representatives of Yellow Springs to discuss alternatives to the closing of Antioch College in June 2008, and

Whereas, the Antioch College Alumni organized working groups to monitor and manage communications with the full Alumni and external stakeholders, fund raising, governance and negotiations with the Board of Trustees, and

Whereas, The Antioch College Alumni Association has established an independent College Revival Fund and we, the Antioch College Alumni, donated over $400,000 in less than 12 hours and raised over $15,000 from a live and silent auction as a signal of our commitment and resolve to keep Antioch College open, and

Whereas, the Antioch College Alumni call upon the legacy of Horace Mann, Arthur Morgan and the thousands of Antiochians who have passed through this institution of higher education, known today as one of the colleges that produces leaders and innovators who change the world, and

Whereas, the Antioch College Alumni believe that Antioch College is worth fighting for and deserves every effort of its alumni and friends to rebuild the institution, making it whole and vibrant and able to provide a liberal arts education based in the values of community governance, cooperative education, challenging academic course work, mutual respect, intellectual freedom, free and open inquiry and celebration of diversity, and

Whereas, the Antioch College Alumni will be ashamed to let Antioch College die;

Therefore, be it Resolved that:

1.    The Antioch College Alumni are committed to the uninterrupted continuation of Antioch College as an institution of higher education with a tenured faculty.
2.    The Antioch College Alumni instructs our elected Antioch College Alumni Association Board of Directors to negotiate with the Antioch University Board of Trustees and the President of Antioch College the following:

a.    The establishment of an autonomous Board of Trustees for Antioch College.
b.    The protection of the assets of Antioch College for use by Antioch College including its faculty, staff, Glen Helen, endowment, Antioch Education Abroad Program, Library and its holdings, physical plant and land.
c.    The exploration of a merger of Antioch College and Antioch University McGregor into one entity to provide a stream of earned revenue to support an undergraduate program.

3.    The Antioch College Alumni in attendance call upon all Antioch College alumni, faculty, staff, students, parents, members of the Yellow Springs Community, colleagues in higher education including members of the faculty and student bodies of McGregor School and other units of Antioch University and other interested parties to stand with us to raise the necessary funds and call to action all necessary support to continue the full operations of Antioch College.

Approved by a majority vote of the Antioch College Alumni at the Reunion Brunch on June 24, 2007

Approved by a unanimous vote of the Antioch College Alumni Association Board of Directors at its special meeting at noon on June 24, 2007

Respectfully submitted by:
Catherine Jordan, ’72
Member
Antioch College Alumni Association Board of Directors

Action Items from today’s Community Meeting

ACTION ITEMS FROM COMMUNITY MEETING
June 23, 2007
This document is the result of a community process facilitated by Antioch College Community Government, past and present.  The role of Community Government is and has been to facilitate communication and collaborative decision-making with staff, students, faculty, and alumni to make Antioch College reflective of its community.
Today, Antioch College students, alumni, faculty and members of the Yellow Springs community came together to form plans to rescue Antioch College from immediate suspension of operations. This is a working document, and does not represent foreclosure on further discussion, generation of options, or action.
We would like to add that it was our education at Antioch College and our experience with shared governance that made this process possible.
As community members, we invoke the spirit of Horace Mann when we say, “Be ashamed to let it die!”

FINANCE
Overall goal: Create a work group of alumni board with Antioch College development office members.

Fundraising internally with alumni
1. Everyone should write a check NOW to the College Revival Fund (CRF)
2. Call all your friends and family NOW and ask them to write a check to the College Revival Fund
3. Create email mailing list with info and a way to pledge money to distribute a packet including a pledge card, case statement, statement from CRF, and goal of fundraising campaign, 1-2 articles about college revival
4. Create volunteer committee for phoning and mailing alums

Trustworthy utilization of money
1. Create a sustainable business model
2. Let donors earmark money for specific purposes
3. Clarify if the money is going to the operating budget or to the endowment
4. If donors feel uncomfortable giving cash at this time they should consider pledges
5. Clarify the relationship to the University
6. Transparent accounting

External Fundraising
1. Conference call within 1 week of interested participants
2. Development of email list
3. Mapping of history and relationships
4. Low-hanging fruit strategy

GOVERNANCE AND LEGAL

Participatory Government and Representation

1. The erosion of shared governance has set the stage for our current situation.
2. Suspension of Antioch College operations would compromise the powerful tradition of participatory governance for which the college and community are so well known.
3. Any action to maintain operations and revitalize the college must actively include the broader Antioch Community (students, staff, faculty and alumni) and its structure of shared governance:  Community Government, Comcil, Adcil, Faculty Senate, Union, etc.
4. The revitalization of Antioch College rests on an affirmation and strengthening of our culture and practice of direct participation in decision-making processes.

Legal Action that can or should be taken
1. Identify Antiochians willing to be part of a legal team and/or willing to provide pro-bono legal support
2. Define the specifics of college autonomy; what would be relationship and oversight between proposed board of governors and college trustees?
3. Pursue proposed merger with McGregor so that local adult education would benefit the College
4. Investigate conditions of subsidy from Antioch University: how much?  How long? Conditions of subsidies?
5. Legal action is not being taken for compensation, but with the purpose of keeping Antioch College open.

Legal University Relationship to college
Mission: we need to maintain the heart and values of Antioch College which has as its locus and can only have its locus on the campus here in Yellow Springs.
1. Must create an autonomous board with the understanding that the relationship to the university remains to be defined
2. Invite a current board member to participate on the new board
3. Campus needs to be a combination of the college and McGregor with the idea that all are members of the community and we are defined as a single entity
4. Create an Antioch college with a McGregor school as an adult education wing of the college
5. Define current situation as a reduced level of operation, and the level increases as funding increases
6. Maintain physical plant and declare moratorium on property development and speculation

COMMUNITY CULTURE AND  COMMUNICATIONS

Communicating effectively with each other
1. Antiochians.org is live – develop as central communications portal for Antiochians
2. Create communications task force to coordinate and advise community members in performing essential communications functions to support the College revival effort
3. Establish local or regional alumni chapters where there are none and strengthening those that already exist
4. Establish a conduit for communications from Campus
5. Process/Edit/Disseminate information to/from Antiochians and other groups

History
1. Create narrative history of how Antioch got into position its in now
2. Attach narrative to web site where people have access to history with FAQ and possible wiki
3. Creation of writers group for people who are interested in helping college and whose primary skills are in writing

Supporting Yellow Springs, faculty, and students
1. Write letter the editor of YS News
2. Hold town meeting within 2 weeks
3. Hold next meeting of this group on Wednesday June 27, 2007 at 7pm at Coretta Scott King Center
4. Put pressure on the University to hold itself accountable to the village of YS and its economic stability
5. Create positive community spirit to spread via signage, slogans, a web site, and more community held events
6. (Long-term) involve YS residents in campus activities and open campus facilities (art building gym, theater, library, King Center, photo house) to the greater YS community
7. Hold a welcome-back festival for returning students in the fall of ‘07

Communicating Effectively with Media
1. Create a value statement
a. dynamic slogan
b. media talking points
c. framing the message
2. Producing media
a. website
b. video/photo documentation of this process
c. visual media
3. General PR strategy
a. create press release
b. Nominate spokespeople
c. disseminate to local and national news outlets

— Community Government on behalf of the Antioch College community

Update on Alumni Reunion

Hey all,

Chad Johnston here. I’m going to give a brief update on what’s been going on here at the 600+ person reunion. The common theme is: Be ashamed to let it die!

The alumni board is committed to the College having its own board…details forthcoming.

The alumni board has created the Revival Fund, administered by the Alumni Association. Give some and then give more! Please make you check payable to “College Revival Fund” and deposit in any branch of US Bank to account #: 130 110 698 524.  You can also send your check to:

Rick Daily, Treasurer

Antioch College Alumni Association

Antioch College Alumni Office

795 Livermore Street

Yellow Springs, OH 45387

Antioch Community Government had an immensely productive community meeting today…probably the most effective meeting I have ever seen on campus. We broke up into work groups to discuss and action item the following issues:
Governance
Communication
Fundraising/Finance
The work that came out of these groups were amazing. This is Antioch College at it’s best.

Stay tuned for videos of events, announcements on the next steps, and the action plan from the Community as facilitated by Community Government. We’re in the library now hammering it out…this is very cool and we will prevail!

Thank you all…and seriously, if you ever thought that there was a time to give, now is it…

Sincerely,

Chad Johnston

Faculty Statement

June 19, 2007Statement

The faculty of Antioch College wish to share their perspective on the
closing of the College. I am an Emerita faculty member speaking at
their request because current faculty are in a position of great
vulnerability at this time, no longer protected by tenure. The
narrative supplied by the Board of Trustees contains important
omissions, questionable assumptions and misrepresentations.

We are providing an alternative to that narrative because our dignity
as faculty is at stake as is the preservation of tenure as a principle
and as a promise, and Antioch’s current and historic definition is
hanging in the balance. The College’s considerable assets are at risk
and our sense of justice is offended as decades long practices of
governance and decision making have been ignored.

Antioch College has been in financial crisis since its inception.
Ironically, several years ago the Board imposed a drastic curricular
revision, the Renewal Plan, on the College at a point when the
enrollment had actually been increasing. The College articulated some
of the many challenges it faced in its Strategic Plan of 1997 but the
overall shape of the curriculum was not the central problem, nor was
it perceived as a problem by the NCA in a recent accreditation
review.

The Board’s imposed Renewal Plan was disastrous in terms of admissions
and retention. The student body plunged from 650 to 300 in two years
despite faculty’s considerable efforts to make the Plan work. The
Board mandated the change with great speed scarcely giving time for
the faculty to develop courses and consider the profound implications
of the changes, much less market them. At that time they promised 5
years of financial support to see the College through the Plan’s
implementation.

In brief, the Board risked the College’s well-being with the
imposition of an ill-considered Plan, failed to provide promised
support, and then closed the College. To make matters worse the
Renewal Plan and the College’s deepest financial difficulties
overlapped with the Board’s authorization of a new building for
Antioch McGregor, a branch of Antioch University which had previously
shared a campus with the College in Yellow Springs. At the time of
its greatest need the College’s borrowing capacity was seriously
constrained and it was the College’s assets that provided much of the
collateral for the extensive borrowing necessary to develop the new
McGregor building. How is it that given their role in creating the
College’s grave difficulties the Board did not take responsibility to
raise additional funds, consider the College President’s plan to merge
the College and McGregor, or consider liquidating part of the
College’s endowment?

We must ask who benefits from this? What is Antioch University
without the College? The College is the only one of the University’s
branches with tenured faculty, a unionized staff and self governance.
What of Antioch’s identity do they care about preserving? If they
can’t raise funds now, how can they start from scratch four years from
now with abandoned buildings and an entirely new faculty and student
body to recruit? What will become of the abandoned employers in the
Cooperative Education program, Antioch’s mark of distinction ? How
financially healthy are the other campuses of Antioch University – has
the College become a convenient scapegoat? Again we need to ask who
benefits from this? In fact, the University stands to receive all the
College’s assets – the Glen (a 900 acre nature preserve), the library,
the endowment, the buildings, the land, the legacy of Antioch.

Can the Board and University administration which conducted their
review of the College’s recent situation in secrecy, in violation of
our governance policies, without consulting faculty and staff who
stand to lose their livelihoods and professions, be trusted with the
College’s current assets, its legacy and its future? We might further
ask what is the Board’s responsibility to the town of Yellow Springs?
The loss of income to a small town where Antioch is one of the major
employers, the disappearance of an intellectual and cultural center,
the abandonment of land and buildings are all terrible blows.

The faculty will be exploring legal action to stop the College’s
closing and preserve tenure and the college’s assets. We seek the
support of alumni in this endeavor.

Dimi Reber

Seeking Legal Aid

Hey all,

This is Chad Johnston, graduate ’01, Community Manager 01-02.  The faculty are in a seriously tumultuous  situation right now.  Their jobs are on the line, they can be fired at will, and are devastated that they have spent the last two years implementing a new curriculum with the promise of being funding for five years, only to find they no longer have a job.  The alum and alumni board need to step up to the plate and put a stop to this thing; we need to seek legal action for an injunction or to hold the Board of Trustees legally accountable for the commitments they made to the institution.

There is precedent out there of alumni boards suing institutions for mis-management, and though I don’t know if we want to go that far at this moment, we do need to slow this decision and process down.  If you are, or know a lawyer who would be willing to discuss this issue, please contact me ASAP.  There are some fishy things going on with the Board of Trustees, and we have a right to protect the college.  If the Board won’t do it, we should.

Chad A. Johnston ’01

johnston (at) thepeopleschannel (dot) org