From the Print – Page 2 – Save Antioch College

Music for music’s sake: Piano Fest to continue

Pianist Sam Reich will perform Bach’s technically challenging “Goldberg Variations.” (Photo by Matt Minde)

The second concert of the Yellow Springs Piano Fest will be held Sunday, July 24, 7 p.m., in the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College.

Cellist Polly Case-Lohrer and pianist Karen Gardner will present Vivaldi, Schumann and Mendelssohn pieces.

Pianist Sam Reich will perform J.S. Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” a piece considered so difficult it is rarely heard performed live.

Donations are encouraged to help repair the Steinway piano in the Foundry Theater, which was damaged by flooding.

Read the original article on the Yellow Springs Piano Fest.

Antioch College receives accreditation

Antioch College President Tom Manley got the word around 1 p.m. this past Monday. An email showed up in his inbox from the Higher Learning Commission, or HLC. It contained the biggest of big news.

After an arduous, five-year process, Antioch College had received accreditation.

For Manley and other senior administrators at the college, a “touchdown dance” commenced, he said on Tuesday.

The news was not entirely unexpected, according to Manley and Provost Lori Collins-Hall, formerly vice president of academic affairs. In June 2014, after three years of required steps including an extended “self-study,” the HLC granted the college candidacy for accreditation on a two-year “fast track,” rather than the standard four years. Antioch had pressed for the shorter timeline, and HLC had agreed to grant the college the accelerated track. A site visit by an HLC team last November seemed to be a success, college leaders said at the time, and subsequent communications with HLC officials seemed to suggest that accreditation was on a good course.

“We had the sense that we’d done everything we could,” Collins-Hall said. “But it’s never done until it’s done,” she added.

Now it’s done.

This is the “best news we could have gotten,” said Manley. It’s not just that the college was granted accreditation on a two-year track, he said. Accreditation from the HLC is not a onetime event, but rather a status that must be maintained in an ongoing way, with defined time frames for renewal. Going forward, the HLC has granted Antioch a “standard” or 10-year accreditation track, Manley said, meaning that the college is slated to reapply for accreditation in 10 years, with a check-in during 2019–20.

“This is the best possible result,” Manley said. “Not only did we get over the finish line, but we did it in a powerful way.”

Immediate impact

For the class of 2016, accreditation will have an immediate impact. The college’s accreditation date will be aligned with that class’s graduation date, meaning June’s graduates will hold degrees from an accredited Antioch. This is not the case for the class of 2015, however.

“It can’t be done for the class of 2015,” Manley said. But he and Collins-Hall downplayed concerns that the earlier class — often referred to as “the pioneers” — will face skepticism from prospective employers or graduate schools. “No one will really care about [the unaccredited degrees] any longer” in light of the positive accreditation decision, Manley said.

Antioch College as a whole will benefit in many ways, some immediate, some with a longer timeline.

Fundraising is one key way, said college leaders. With its new accredited status, Antioch will be able to seek funding from a full array of foundations, as well as funding from federal government programs, such as Title IV financial aid, only available to accredited institutions. And though the college has benefited hugely from alumni spirit and support, said Manley, many alumni have told the college they’re “waiting for accreditation” before they commit to financial support.

Student recruitment efforts will also get a boost, said Collins-Hall. “Students and their parents are in tune to issues of standards and accountability,” she explained. Not only will the college be able to offer students a degree from an accredited institution, but accreditation “clearly demonstrates the college’s high standard of rigor,” which remains on par with what Antioch has always been, she said. The college will also be able to recruit international students, a door that was closed when the college lacked accreditation.

Many of these benefits will require time and strategy to communicate to the college’s constituencies, as well as time and hard work to come to fruition.

“These are multi-year, ongoing challenges — but now we have a fantastic story to tell,” Manley said.

Change and continuity

Asked if the newly accredited Antioch was the same or different from the “old” Antioch that existed prior to the college’s 2008 closing, Manley emphasized both change and continuity.

“It moves on, but it’s the same river,” he said. Progressive values and academic rigor remain areas of continuity, as does a commitment to experimentation and meaningful real-world experiences for students. But Antioch’s closing gave it a rare opportunity to reinvent the college, and “help reimagine what college can be,” he said.

Manley noted that HLC accreditation required that Antioch enter into the process as a “novice institution,” offering proof of its present-day excellence “not drawn from the history of the institution.” Yet at the same time, HLC President Barbara Gellman-Danley acknowledged the college’s history in her recent determination letter.

“Let me commend you for the passion of your alumni, the Yellow Springs community, board and institutional leadership, students and other stakehoders. Your efforts clearly reflect Horace Mann’s greatest quote, and you have indeed won ‘some victory’ today,” she wrote.

End of a long road

Accreditation is the end of a long road that began in 2009, when the college reopened as an independent institution. College leaders began working toward accreditation immediately upon that reopening, building toward an initial submission, in 2011, of the first round of materials to the HLC.

That organization is the regional accrediting body for institutions of higher education in the central U.S.; accreditation is considered essential for legitimizing a college or university’s programs. Criteria for accreditation include an institution’s finances, structure, board and governance, curriculum and curriculum delivery, student success, shared governance and, on top of all that, proof that the institution is “engaging in continuous improvement,” said Collins-Hall.

Antioch’s first submission of initial materials was rejected, and the college reapplied in 2012. At that point, the process seemed to get on track. The HLC approved the next step, a 14-month self-study that began in 2012. That led to a site visit in November 2013, followed by the HLC’s momentous decision, in June 2014, to approve the college as fast-track candidate for -accreditation. More self-study and another site visit ensued.

Then-President Mark Roosevelt, celebrating that earlier milestone, described accreditation as the “whole shebang.”

And so it is, current college leaders said.

Associate Director of Communications Kateri Kosta said on Tuesday that the college community would be informed by phone and email later that day. A campus celebration (not geared to the public) is planned for next Tuesday, July 19. A banner will be hung on the horseshoe side of Main Building, Kosta said.

It will read, “New and better ways of living and learning since 1850.”

Herndon Gallery exhibit urges encounters with nature

Antioch College is welcoming international environmental artist Shinji Turner-Yamamoto to campus this summer as an artist-in-residence who will play a major role in a collaborative, interdisciplinary exploration of our relationship with and in nature.

The multifaceted residency will begin with an immersive solo exhibition at Herndon Gallery that opens next Thursday, July 7, with a reception from 7–9 p.m. at the gallery and an artist talk at 7:30 p.m.

Titled “De Rerum Natura: On the Nature of Things,” the exhibition features a site-specific installation created in the gallery in the past week, recent works created during a residency in Ireland, and two sound pieces that came out of time spent exploring the geography and geology of the Pacific Northwest, among other works.

Turner-Yamamoto, who was born in Osaka, Japan, and studied at Kyoto State University before attending the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, Italy, said he carries the label of “environmental” artist somewhat uncomfortably. While his materials, subjects and themes are tied to the natural world, his work is more aligned to traditional art-making than the often “conceptual” nature of contemporary environmental artists. A viewer doesn’t have to know the idea behind a piece, or the materials and process used, to respond to it.

At the same time, Turner-Yamamoto’s materials and processes are vital to the environmental and spiritual integrity of his work. He uses elemental materials to create his canvases and installations, not only painting with bronze, mica, fossil dust, ash, rainwater and other natural resources, but also integrating the effects of wind, water, fire and gravity.

In his artist statement, he writes that he works “with identifiable imagery to encourage humanity to encounter the essential in nature and time.” His use of historic and natural elements is meant to further encourage meditation and reflection on our environment.

His layering of natural elements on canvases and other surfaces creates a sedimentary, geologic effect, noted Jennifer Wenker, Herndon Gallery’s creative director. “His work is very spare, very minimal and reflective,” she said.

Wenker said that she is thrilled to have Turner-Yamamoto working in the gallery, and the exhibition will offer many points of exploration, discovery and reflection for viewers.

Turner-Yamamoto said that a rainbow-related theme has emerged from the new exhibition, tying the works together in an unanticipated way. While the pigments and tones are mostly earthen and muted, the natural principles of rainbows — prisms of light and water — resonate deeply for Turner-Yamamoto. Even the sound pieces that will fill the gallery space have a rainbow component.

“I was recording the sound of waterfalls in the (Pacific) Northwest, glacial waterfalls. It was beyond this valley,” he recalled. “You could see the river, and in front of you, this waterfall. I noticed a rainbow — from nothing. Then I started hearing a musical chord. I thought it was an acoustic hallucination, and then I realized there was a strong wind going through. The wind and waterfall were a prism, like a soundwave rainbow.”

After the exhibition opens, Turner-Yamamoto will continue working on campus in collaboration with Antioch’s ecology, anthropology, ecopsychology, fine arts and global seminar faculty and students throughout the summer term. He also will be connecting with Glen Helen and resident geologist Pete Townsend.

Currently based in Cincinnati, where his work is well-known and lauded, he said he expects to be on campus about three days a week at first, and then likely “all the time” as the work develops. He’ll have a studio in the Antioch Art Building, which until now has not been in use since the college’s closing. He said he’ll begin by meeting and talking with people, and by exploring the geologic nature of the surrounding natural areas. He said he is intriqued and looking forward to learning more about ecopsychology, a field he said is new to him.

The culmination of the summer residency will be an installation in the Art Building that will be part of the artist’s ongoing Global Tree Project, a major series that has earned him widespread international recognition.

The purpose of the Global Tree Project is to explore “a poetic reunion with nature, making visible bonds and similarities between plant life and humanity, emphasizing ecological wisdom and the interconnectedness of all life,” according to Turner-Yamamoto’s written description.

He published a book in 2012 that documents the realization of 11 site-specific installments he has completed around the world as part of the series.

“It’s huge that he wants to do one here,” Gallery Director Wenker said. One of the themes of the series is “the unending quality of things,” Wenker said. “Nothing is ever gone. Water in particular.”

Water will be the particular focus this summer for Antioch’s Global Seminar students, she noted. The effects of fracking and mountain top removal, and contamination of our water resources will be a part of the discussions, she said.

Turner-Yamamoto said he is hoping to be able to use water from the Yellow Spring in the local project, which he said will come together as the summer passes.

“Here I may not use a tree,” he said. The completion of the project will be unveiled in the fall.

Goal of concerts is to restore Antioch College grand piano

Locally based pianist Sam Reich had an idea, and now he’s seeing where it leads.

The idea: Raise enough money to rehabilitate the grand piano at Antioch College’s Foundry Theater.

“It’s an amazing instrument,” he said of the 9-foot Steinway that suffered water damage during the three years Antioch College was closed. “It’s the finest instrument in Yellow Springs.”

And while the piano is playable, it is not at top form, befitting an $80,000-plus instrument, he said.

He said a piano technician who’s examined the Steinway says the piano needs new bass strings and its action needs to be replaced. The bill could be between $5,000 and $10,000, but an estimate for the work has not yet been set.

Antioch College’s Steinway Concert Grand

“The things that need to be fixed are expensive,” Reich said.“A Steinway piano’s action is hand-made. They’re kind of works of art in terms of craftsmanship. They’re made with lots of care. It’s a better idea to fix one than replacing it with a new instrument, but it’s not an easy thing.”

And while the need is there, Antioch College leaders, seven years after re-opening have enough on their minds with raising funds and attracting new students, Reich believes, so that repairing the piano might not be high on the list of priorities.

So Reich hopes the community might help raise the required funds.

Reich, who has a master’s in piano performance from the Eastman School of Music, is well known in town for hosting recitals in which he gives the proceeds to local organizations and nonprofits. The YS Senior Center and the Interfaith Hospitality Network have been past recipients.

In thinking about raising money for the Foundry piano, the idea for a Yellow Springs Piano Fest was born. He tested the waters in May with a three-day series of recitals featuring professional classical pianists — friends of his who agreed to come to town to play. Reich said he wanted to see if there was interest among villagers in attending such concerts before he started the fundraising effort. The turnout was good enough to continue, he said.

The next concert in what Reich envisions as a year-long series of performances will be Sunday, July 24, at 7 p.m, at the Herndon Gallery on the Antioch campus. The first half of the program will feature cellist (and Yellow Springs native) Polly Case-Lohrer and pianist Karen Gardner playing duo selections by Vivaldi, Schumann and Mendelssohn, and the second half of the program will feature Reich performing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Admission is free, but donations are encouraged, as it is a fundraiser, with $10 being a suggested amount.

The concert will be a homecoming for Case-Lohrer, who was born in Yellow Springs and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Indiana University. She now lives in Germany, where she teaches cello and performs with chamber music ensembles.

Gardner, who lives in town, studied piano at Indiana University and has taught piano privately and served as pianist at several churches.

Reich’s performance of the Goldberg Variations represents the second year of his survey of Bach’s music. He said the Goldberg Variations, considered a monument of 18th century music, is rarely performed because of the “difficulty of the work, musically and physically.”

In addition to preparing for the concert, Reich is working out details about where the money that’s raised will go and how it will be managed.

“I don’t want people writing checks to me,” he said.

Other Piano Fest performances will be in December and conclude next May. Reich said that another goal of the fest to create community between the village and Antioch College.

“A lot of people have been talking about trying to create a new performance space (in town). But we already have the assets that we need,” he said. “I think the Foundry Theater is a great space, and the piano is the best in Yellow Springs. So this (rehabilitating the Steinway) is trying to find a solution.”

Addressing LGBTQ health

A longtime area HIV/AIDS resource is expanding its mission to serve the full spectrum of health needs in the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) community. Equitas Health, formerly AIDS Resource Center Ohio, announced its name change and broadened focus in early April. Since then, the not-for-profit organization has been holding “community conversations” across the state to raise awareness around its new mission and services. On Wednesday, May 18, Equitas Health representatives are coming to the Little Art Theatre. The event, which starts at 6 p.m., will also address the health needs and challenges in the LGBTQ community.

“We’re an emerging population,” said President and CEO Bill Hardy, who will be speaking at the event. “Folks are stepping forward, self-identifying as LGBTQ.” With the legalization of same-sex marriage, the community now includes many more families. But the health care system is not keeping pace, he added.

“Only a minority of medical schools address LGBTQ issues,” he said. And those that do may simply offer a “two-hour lecture on HIV/AIDS” — far from adequate coverage of the health needs of the diverse LGBTQ population.

According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report, the LGBTQ community, while sharing many of the health concerns of the general population, experiences worse physical health due to unique challenges and barriers. These include discrimination and stigma, cost and workplace barriers, incompetent care and, in some cases, outright denial of care. The report also suggests that HIV/AIDS, mental health, substance abuse and relationship violence are issues of concern.

Hardy explained that Equitas Health’s new mission aims to fill those needs and gaps. The organization, founded in 1984, now has 13 offices in 10 locations around Ohio, including medical centers in Dayton and Columbus. The Dayton medical center, which also includes a full-service pharmacy, has been providing broad-based health care services to its HIV positive clients — beyond the crucial services of viral suppression and related case management — for two-and-a-half years.

Its “comprehensive, patient-centered approach” is working, said Hardy. “We’re achieving tremendous medical outcomes.” Viral suppression rates are at 80 percent among the organization’s patient population (compared to 30 percent nationwide), and research shows that people with HIV who are virally suppressed live close to normal lifespans, he said.

And so, with its name change, Equitas Health is now opening its doors to people who aren’t HIV positive. Its focus is on those who identify as LGBTQ (subsets of this community remain at risk for HIV infection), though anyone seeking a medical home could choose to be a patient.

AIDS still has a stigma, said Hardy, so the name change was necessary. “Taking AIDS off the front door allows us to cast a wider net,” he said.

Equitas Health will continue to offer HIV prevention, treatment and other services to HIV positive people within the broader context of comprehensive health care, an approach that has been shown to yield the best outcomes. But for those who are not HIV positive, the organization can provide all the medical, mental health, behavioral, pharmacy and other services people might need. And it does so, said Hardy, in a safe and accepting environment that’s free of stigma.

The need for such an environment — LGBTQ advocates refer to it as “culturally competent” care — is clear, said Amber Best, Equitas Health’s director of development, another speaker at next Wednesday’s event. In conjunction with Equitas Health’s rebranding, the organization launched HealthOutLoud, a series of unscripted videos from actual clients who reflect on their experiences, often shaming, with previous health care providers.

In one video, a young man named Zach relates how, upon telling his health care provider he was gay, he was automatically assigned HIV positive status. It was “the worst experience of my life in a health care setting,” he says on the video. In another video, a young woman, Amanda, describes her reluctance to follow up on abnormal test results after her health care provider called her lifestyle “inappropriate.” Her hesitation stretched to eight years, at which point she was diagnosed with a major tumor.

“As the patient testimonials show, not all providers are open,” Best said. “When people experience travesties like these, how do you make it right?”

Equitas Health hopes to make it right in part by raising awareness around its services. Hence the upcoming event in Yellow Springs, which local resident Julee Terilli helped organize and underwrite. Equitas Health’s message is a natural fit for Yellow Springs, she said. “This is an open, loving, accepting community.”

Other community collaborators include the Little Art, which is donating the space, Antioch College and the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce.

Terilli added, “It’s just so important that people feel they have a loving health care home. I really want to help make people aware — there’s this resource for getting care.”

Brian Housh, who handles publicity for the Little Art, agreed. “Equitas Health resonates with our community, with being welcoming and treating people respectfully.” He’s personally been a supporter of AIDS Resource Center, and appreciates the organization’s expanded focus.

“As the [HealthOutLoud] vignettes show, there’s a need for this,” he said.

Best said the organization has some longtime supporters from Yellow Springs, and also already serves local residents. And Hardy pointed out that any college town needs to know that the “under 24 demographic” is especially at risk for new HIV infections, even as infections are declining overall.

But HIV, as critical as it remains, is no longer Equitas Health’s sole focus. Respectful, competent care for all members of the LGBTQ community, and anyone else seeking a medical home, is the health care provider’s new mission.

“We’re expanding our health care footprint,” said Hardy. “We’re so excited.”

A Yellow Springs roundtable on refugee crisis

Syrians. Afghans. Somalians. Columbians. Kosovars. Iraqis.

More than 60 million people around the world are refugees and migrants, according to recent UN figures, and over half of them are children. Not since World War II have this many people been displaced from their homes.

What can a village of 3,500 do?

That’s one question motivating the upcoming roundtable event, “An Uncertain Welcome: Displacement, Migration and Refugees,” which will be held Thursday and Friday, April 14 and 15, at Antioch College’s South Gym. Organized by the college and Community Solutions, the event is free and open to all villagers interested in understanding refugee issues in greater depth.

The refugee crisis “definitely marks what’s going on in our world — it’s a feature of our time,” said Rick Kraince, associate professor of cooperative education at Antioch College and a co-organizer of the event.

“Destabilization of the Middle East and north Africa by the Western powers, with our government at the forefront” has been a huge driver of displacement, he said, together with U.S. policies in Central America that go back decades. Climate change is another driver. The Syrian war has its roots in the “worst drought of 900 years,” said Susan Jennings, executive director of Community Solutions, citing new research linking climate change, conflict and migration in the Middle East.

“Uncertain Welcome” will explore many of these issues, opening with a keynote on Thursday evening, 7–9 p.m., by Ethiopian human rights scholar Semahagn Gashu Abebe, who will address food security issues and the forces affecting displacement and migration. The event continues on Friday, 8:30 a.m.–5 p.m., with roundtable discussions focused on the causes of displacement, the forces shaping our perceptions of the crisis and the support systems currently in place, as well as the urgent question of what individuals and communities can do to help.

But another impetus for the gathering, according to the organizers, is to counter negative and demonizing rhetoric about refugees.

“Where we are in our national discussion is disturbing,” said Kraince. “Presidential candidates are competing to outdo each other to be unwelcoming to refugees,” he added, citing rhetoric by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Kraince believes that civil society — the sector of society that includes nonprofits, educational institutions and faith groups — has a special responsibility to respond to such rhetoric, and to foster an atmosphere of tolerance and welcome. Jennings agreed.

“Community Solutions and Antioch College and village leaders have all been very distressed by the rhetoric around refugees,” she said. “It’s so important that good people speak up. Even though we’re a small community, our voices are important.”

Indeed, villagers have already spoken up — and signaled their willingness to help. In December, Village Council unanimously passed a resolution of support for any local efforts to relocate Syrian refugees to Yellow Springs. That action followed Governor Kasich’s statement in November that he opposed the entry of Syrian refugees into the U.S. and Ohio. And in February, Rev. Aaron Saari, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, organized a meeting to brainstorm ways to aid Syrian refugees, including exploring steps to bring refugee families to the village.

Around 40 villagers turned out for that meeting, said Saari recently. But as eager as people are to open their homes to refugees, the resettlement process is long and complex. Catholic Social Services of the Miami Valley is the primary coordinator for refugee resettlement in our region, Saari said, and according to that agency, Syrian refugees are not currently being placed in the Dayton area. Resettlement, when it happens, could take five or more years, he added, and requires that a community build out the necessary supports for refugee families — affordable housing, medical and social services, job training and language classes.

“It’s a tremendous investment of time, talent and treasure,” said Saari, who will be speaking about a possible Yellow Springs refugee initiative at the upcoming roundtable. The April event will be followed by another meeting in May, Saari said, to determine what form of commitment to the Syrian refugee crisis villagers are willing and able to make.

Yellow Springs has a history of welcoming refugees, according to Scott Sanders, Antioch College archivist and another roundtable speaker. He’ll be telling the story of the Conway Colony, freed slaves who were relocated here in 1863 by Moncure Conway, an abolitionist. Among them were Eliza and Dunmore Guinn, who established a home on Grinnell Road and have descendants in the village today. Another story Sanders will relate involves the Folkmanis family, who came to Yellow Springs as displaced persons after World War II, thanks to the efforts of First Presbyterian Church, Antioch College and the local community. Atis Folkmanis, who was 10 years old at the time of the family’s relocation, went on to graduate from Antioch and later became a major supporter of the college with his wife, Judy.

Kraince believes that Antioch College today has “real momentum” around contemporary refugee issues, in part because of its students’ wealth of co-op experiences. Since reopening, the college has made about 750 co-op placements, Kraince said, more than 90 of these overseas. About a dozen students have worked specifically on refugee issues in their co-op placements, he added. Some of those students, as well as graduate students from Wright State University studying migration, will bring their work and perspectives to the roundtable.

“We hope this will be a launching board for other collaborations,” said Kraince. “There’s a lot of knowledge here.”

According to Saari and others, it’s not yet certain what form villagers’ collective response to the Syrian refugee crisis will take. But it does seem clear, given the village’s history and its present engagement with refugee issues, that Yellow Springs residents are unlikely to sit out what Jennings called the “largest humanitarian crisis since World War II.”

“With the roundtable and other actions, we’re hoping to help shape a compassionate and informed response,” she said.

For more information about roundtable topics and participants, villagers can email info@communitysolution.org. Child care is available for the event; those needing child care are asked to contact the organizers in advance.