Tag: Alumni_Board

ANTIOCH UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES UNANIMOUSLY CALL FOR PROCESS TO CREATE INDEPENDENT AND SEPARATE ANTIOCH COLLEGE

— News Stuns Alumni, Faculty, and Staff In Depth, Breadth and Timing —

 

Keene, NH, June 7, 2008-Today, in a surprise announcement, the Antioch University Board of Trustees unanimously passed a resolution calling for the Alumni Association to create the process to secure Antioch College’s independence from Antioch University, with its own board of trustees. Additionally, the resolution calls for the Alumni Board to craft a business plan for the transfer of assets from the University.

“The Antioch College Alumni Association stands ready to continue Antioch College as a residential, undergraduate four-year liberal arts program with shared governance and a tenured faculty,” said Nancy Crow, President of the Alumni Board. “We thank the University Board of Trustees for making the decision to turn the process over to the elected representatives of the College alumni. By doing so, they have ended ten months of anguish.”

Matthew Derr, a member of the Executive Committee of the Alumni Board, said, “As Antioch College moves forward with plans for its independent future, we acknowledge the accomplishments of the University campuses and their programs. We hope that they will continue to flourish as they follow their own paths.”

When asked how this resolution differs from previous agreements, Crow replied: “This is startlingly different. This is a resolution supporting complete independence from the University. Additionally, the Board of Trustees is asking the alumni to create the process, not to work within a prescribed process.”

She continued, “I know I echo the feelings of many alumni when I say how grateful we are for the courage demonstrated by the Board of Trustees by this decision. We look forward to ensuring our process moves forward swiftly.”

This resolution comes two weeks before alumni around the world are to come to Yellow Springs for the College Reunion, June 20 – 22. Crow said, “We need alumni to come to campus to help the Alumni Association Board craft the plans needed to create a well-funded, vigorous and vital Antioch College for the next 155 years-at least!”

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!”

Alumni Call for Trustees to Meet with ACCC

For Immediate Release

CONTACT: press

March 31, 2008- In a meeting on March 30, 2008, the Antioch College Alumni Association Board of Directors unanimously passed a resolution calling for the University Board of Trustees to meet face-to-face with the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC) as soon as possible.

Nancy Crow, President of the Antioch College Alumni Board, said today in a statement: “We strongly urge the University Board of Trustees to sit down with the ACCC and have a meeting with all possible speed.”

She continued, “The continued operations of Antioch College are vital to the nation and to the world. We ask that the two Boards come together to consider all possible options.”

Recently, the ACCC and the University Board of Trustees broke off negotiations concerning the transfer of the College to the ACCC, an independent non-profit corporation controlled by nine distinguished College alumni.

Since the University Board of Trustees announced the suspension of operations in June 2007, Antioch College alumni across the country have rallied to their alma mater’s defense. Alumni chapters have grown worldwide. The Alumni Board is continuing with its fundraising and planning efforts. For additional information on the Antioch College Alumni Association and the College Revival Fund, visit the Antioch College Alumni Association web site, antiochians.org.

ANTIOCH UNIVERSITY REJECTS ANTIOCH CONTINUATION CORPORATION BID TO SAVE HISTORIC COLLEGE

Good Faith Offers Would Have Permitted College to Continue

 

Yellow Springs, Ohio, March 28, 2008 – Antioch University has rejected a significant and viable offer by a group of major donors and educational leaders that would have enabled Antioch College to continue operating, the group announced today.

According to leaders of the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC), negotiations to establish independence for the College broke off today after the University rejected the ACCC’s best and final offer. The University has announced plans to close the historic school in June, given its failure to boost enrollment and its inability to raise sufficient financial support from alumni disillusioned with the University’s mismanagement of the College.

“We are deeply disappointed that the University did not take this incredible opportunity to preserve Antioch College, which has long been one of the nation’s most unique and important institutions of higher education,” said Frances Degen Horowitz, co-chair of the ACCC and president emerita of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “Our offer would have enabled Antioch College to thrive and grow, while simultaneously infusing the rest of the University with millions of dollars in cash.”

The ACCC, which has been negotiating for nearly four months to acquire the College’s assets, offered to reimburse the University what it called a “very substantial consideration” to take charge of the campus by June 30. Working closely with alumni leaders, the group had already raised $18 million to operate the College in the short term, and was preparing to launch a major fundraising drive to secure a total of $100 million to reinvigorate the school. In addition, the group had consulted with some of the nation’s leading experts in turnaround management to prepare a detailed five-year plan to increase enrollment and staffing.

“This is a sad day not only for Antioch, but for all those who care about progressive education in this country,” said Eric Bates, co-chair of the ACCC, who participated in the negotiations. “Presented with an opportunity to both fulfill its fiduciary responsibility and preserve the College’s historic mission, Antioch University chose instead to pursue a path that raises serious questions about its educational values and financial competence.”

The ACCC also noted that Horowitz, who has more than 40 years of experience as a leader in higher education, was prepared to take up residence at the College and make herself available full-time, without compensation, to serve as Chief Transitional Officer during the summer while the group recruited and appointed an interim administration for the coming year.

During negotiations, the ACCC worked diligently to forge an agreement that would serve the best interests of both the College and the University. In an alternative plan presented to the University Board of Trustees, the ACCC offered to contribute $10 million directly to the University in return for ten seats on the nineteen-member University board.

“This arrangement would have eliminated the immediate need for a costly and complex transfer of the College’s assets,” Bates observed. “In addition to ensuring continuous and uninterrupted operation of the College, it would have created a truly philanthropic board for the University – one that would have immediately contributed significantly more than the current trustees have reportedly given this past year.”

The new trustees nominated by the ACCC, Bates added, would have represented the interests of the entire University. “Six of the nine directors of our group are former trustees of the University,” Bates noted. “We appreciate the unique contribution that all of the Antioch University campuses make to higher education and we understand their diverse needs. We know from first-hand experience what is needed to revive the College and realize the full potential of the University’s other campuses.”

The University never formally responded to the ACCC’s proposal to reform the board of trustees. Nevertheless, the group said, it remains hopeful that the trustees will take up the proposal and adopt it while there is still time.

“The University can still recover from its disastrous and misguided decision to close the College,” said Lee Morgan, a director of the ACCC, whose family has been actively involved with Antioch for nine decades. “By adding new leadership and major donors to its own board, it can repair the serious and lasting damage it has caused to its own reputation and restore the confidence and support of alumni that is essential to any effort to revitalize the College. We hope that the trustees will act quickly to take advantage of this simple and effective solution to the crisis facing the University, before it is too late.”

For additional information on the Antioch College Alumni Association and the Antioch College Continuation Corporation: antiochians.org.

ANTIOCH COLLEGE ALUMNI COMMIT TO “NON-STOP ANTIOCH”

— United Alumni Vow College Will Remain Open —

For Immediate Release

CONTACT: 443-864-0514 • press

March 2, 2008– The Boards of the Antioch College Alumni Association and the College Revival Fund (CRF), Inc., met this weekend and resolved to keep the legendary Antioch College alive and open in Yellow Springs, Ohio for the next academic year and beyond. In response to the Antioch University Board of Trustees’ unilateral announcement that the College would be closed on June 30, 2008, alumni met with students, staff, faculty and townspeople to plan for “non-stop Antioch.” Alumni Board President Nancy Crow said, “We will not let it die.”

Ellen Borgersen, Vice-President of both the Association and the CRF, told students in an on-campus meeting that the alumni are ” ready to say that Antioch College will be open in Yellow Springs next year, no matter how the on-going negotiations between the University Trustees and the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC) turn out. We have willing and eager faculty, a dedicated student body and. The CRF has committed at least $1 million to unconditionally support them.”

Negotiations between the ACCC and the University Trustees continue, Borgersen said, “and we are hopeful that they will succeed. If they do, we’ll be ready to run the College on this campus without interruption. If they don’t, we’ll find someplace else in Yellow Springs to operate, and we’ll to fight to reclaim the campus and the College’s other assets from a University administration that seems bent on destroying everything Antioch has ever stood for.”

“But it’s time to stop pretending that the University is negotiating in good faith with the ACCC,” she added. “The University is clearly trying to force people to abandon hope and leave, knowing that it will be impossible to bring the College back once that happens. This is not only bad faith, it is untenable, and Antioch alumni will not stand for this deceptive behavior.”

The Alumni Board also directed its Legal Committee to “explore all legal avenues to protect the name, assets and reputation of Antioch College,” and resolved to “support, financially and otherwise” any legal actions that might be brought by faculty, students, staff, donors, and others with an interest in the survival of the College. The faculty already filed a lawsuit against the University and the Board of Trustees. It was withdrawn without prejudice last October, which means that it can be re-filed at any time.

“The alumni are working to continue Antioch College,” says Alumni Board President Nancy Crow. “The alumni are resourceful, passionate, energetic, and most importantly, persistent. Antioch College provides a unique and important education for America’s future leaders. Its survival is important not just for the Antioch and Yellow Springs communities, but for everyone who values liberal arts education and the critical role it plays in producing engaged citizens and vibrant democracies.”

Vice-President Ellen Borgersen adds, “The University Board of Trustees and the University Chancellor Toni Murdock should know that we are not going away. Non-Stop Antioch means Antioch College for our time, and Antioch College for all time.”

Since the University Board of Trustees announced the suspension of operations in June 2007, alumni across the country have rallied to their alma mater’s defense. Alumni chapters have grown worldwide. The Alumni Board is continuing with its fundraising and planning efforts. For additional information on the Antioch College Alumni Association and the College Revival Fund, visit the Antioch College Alumni Association web site, antiochians.org.

ANTIOCH COLLEGE ALUMNI BOARD VOWS TO CONTINUE FIGHT TO KEEP COLLEGE OPEN

ANTIOCH COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

For Immediate Release

CONTACT: 443-864-0514 • press

ANTIOCH COLLEGE ALUMNI BOARD VOWS TO CONTINUE FIGHT TO KEEP COLLEGE OPEN

–Meeting February 29th — March 2nd to Consider Next Steps–


Yellow Springs, Ohio, February 26, 2008– Just a few days after the Antioch University Board of Trustees unilaterally announced the closure of Antioch College for the 2008-2009 academic year, the Antioch College Alumni Board announced a renewed commitment to its ongoing and unprecedented efforts to keep the College open.

“The Board of Trustees’ announcement, released as the Antioch College Continuation Corporation was in the midst of good-faith negotiations with that Board, was ill-timed,” said Alumni Board President Nancy Crow.

Alumni Board Vice-President Ellen Borgersen added, “The announcement appears designed to break the resolve of the many dedicated alumni who support an open, independent Antioch College.”

She went on to say, “This strategy has completely backfired. We will not let it die.”

When asked about next steps, Borgersen said, “The Alumni Board is considering a number of options, including legal remedies and direct action. We welcome alumni input as we move forward.”

The Alumni Board is scheduled to meet this weekend, February 29-March 2, at the College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The agenda includes an open discussion of strategy, where alumni will continue the discussion of direct action and communication strategies, and will determine immediate next steps to be taken by the 17,000-member Alumni Association. All alumni are invited to attend these meetings. A final schedule and link to a live stream of audio from the meetings will be made available on the Alumni Board’s web site, www.antiochians.org.

Crow continued, “The University has made it clear that it does not intend to operate the College after June 30, 2008. The alumni are here, with an abundance of energy, vision, talent, and commitments of at least $18 million that will be available to an open and independent Antioch College. We fully intend to pick up the pieces, engage thousands of alumni, and shape the next 155 years of Antioch College.”

Since the University Board of Trustees announced the suspension of operations in June 2007, alumni across the country have rallied to their alma mater’s defense. Alumni chapters have grown worldwide. The Alumni Board is continuing with its fundraising and planning efforts. For additional information on the Antioch College Alumni Association and its College Revival Fund, visit the Antioch College Alumni Association web site, www.antiochians.org.