Tag: news

Antioch College Faculty Members File Lawsuit to Keep Historic 155-Year-Old Ohio College Open

Press Release, Tuesday August 14, 2007

Today members of the Antioch College Faculty filed for a permanent injunction against the Antioch University Board of Trustees in the Greene County Common Pleas Court. On June 9, 2007, the University Board decided to suspend Antioch College operations, terminating all faculty and staff as of June 30, 2008. The legal request for injunctive relief asks the court to enjoin Antioch University from suspending College operations, from terminating the College Faculty,
and from disposing of any College assets.

The lawsuit alleges that the Board failed to govern the institution properly. First and foremost, the Board breached their contractual responsibilities by declaring a state of financial exigency and suspending College operations when less drastic measures were available. The Faculty complaint also alleges that the University Board of Trustees violated contractual obligations set forth in the Faculty Personnel Policies and Procedures that require consultation with College Faculty, and that require minimal external publicity about internal College financial matters. The Faculty asserts that decisions made by the Board of Trustees in 2004 and 2005 seriously damaged College enrollment prospects, which led to a rapid decline in revenue, and that the June12, 2007 public suspension announcement further damaged the College.

Last week the College Faculty received support from the American Association of University Professors, the leading advocacy organization for higher education faculty and the defense of academic freedom. The AAUP issued a “statement of concern” to the University Board of Trustees, the University Chancellor, and the College President, citing problems with Antioch University governance policies and “a pattern of disregard for faculty’s legitimate role in
institutional decision-making.”

Today’s injunction request asks that the University be prevented from liquidating or dispersing any College assets, including College buildings (three of which are historic landmarks), the College Endowment, its land holdings, Antioch Education Abroad, the recently-opened Coretta Scott King Center, and the Glen Helen Nature Preserve. Legal action by members of the Antioch College Faculty is one effort in a broad-based campaign by the College Alumni Board, twenty former members of the University Board of Trustees, and the many citizens of Yellow Springs who are working to keep the College open as a viable liberal arts institution. Given the University’s public refusal to reconsider their decision to suspend operations, members of the faculty found it necessary to initiate legal action to immediately
prevent further damage to the nationally renowned College and the surrounding community.

Antioch faculty, alums and current students are determined to save their school. “Antioch College has offered a very distinctive, high-quality liberal arts education for the past one-hundred and fifty years, and we, the faculty, are committed to keeping it going,” says Anne Bohlen, Professor of Media Arts. “The College buildings and grounds, including Glen Helen, are justly famous Ohio landmarks and the College is a major employer in Yellow Springs–there are numerous jobs at stake here. “

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]