Tag: news

By Aaron Keith Harris, Staff Writer, Xenia Gazette. Tuesday, August 7, 2007

YELLOW SPRINGS — Antioch College alumni urged the Yellow Springs Village Council Monday night to join their fight to halt the planned closing of Antioch College next year, while council members discussed how the village should approach an upcoming meeting with the Antioch University Board of Trustees.

Village Manager Erik Swansen and Council President Karen Wintrow were invited to and plan to attend a “stakeholder discussion session” with the university board in Cincinnati on Aug. 25.

The session will be closed to the media and the public and will include only those invited by the university. Earlier the same day, the board plans to have a town-hall style meeting, which is open to
the public.

“I want to find out exactly what it is that’s going to happen and get a handle on the community impact it’s going to have,” said Village Manager Erik Swansen.

Wintrow said she would take the “discouragement of the village” to the Cincinnati meeting, but that the university’s finances, governance and operations “are not issues for Yellow Springs village government.”

Council member Judith Hempfling criticized the Cincinnati meeting as undemocratic, saying village council should have been asked to choose which members to attend. Hempfling also said she was concerned about
the transparency of the process since the stakeholder meeting would be held “in secret.”

Don Wallace, of the Antioch College Alumni Association, presented a letter from his group to council urging them to act to keep the college open and stop the loss of jobs, including those held by tenured faculty.

“If the college is your number one employer, how is that not an issue for council that those jobs continue to exist?” said Rory Adams-Cheatham, a recent Antioch college graduate and current community manager.

Published by Joni Rabinowitz, August 2, 2007

Joni ’64 was awarded the Antioch College Alumni Association’s Horace Mann Award in 2002. The Horace Mann Award recognizes a contribution by alumni of Antioch College who have won some victory for humanity. She is co-director of Just Harvest, an organization that works to eliminate hunger and poverty by eliminating root causes and changing government politics.

Be Ashamed to Die….

I’m reflecting on the significance of this day — August 2– when one of the leading educators of modern times, Horace Mann, died in 1859. I’m angry that Antioch College, the unique, forward-looking college of which he was the first president, is trying to close its doors.

I attended and graduated from Antioch in the 60’s. During my years there, in addition to receiving a rigorous and stimulating formal education, I had extensive training in “life experience.” I was challenged to live as an adult in this complex world, and not simply to be a cog in somebody’s wheel.

Antioch College has a first-class co-op program which integrates “life experience” — not only job preparation — into the educational mix. I worked in a law firm in San Francisco, a camp for disabled children in Michigan, a hospital in New York, a factory in Ohio, an office for a social work agency in Chicago, and a voter registration effort in Southwest Georgia, as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. (SNCC).

At each of these placements I was expected to do the same job other people did, to interact maturely with others in my environment, and to write a thoughtful paper about the experience.

There’s no question: I would not be the person I am today, had I not gone to Antioch College.

During the early 1800’s, when Horace Mann was the president, Antioch faced financial troubles because it was one of the nation’s first co-educational and interracial colleges, as well as being non-sectarian. Mann employed the first female faculty member to be paid on an equal basis with men.

Horace Mann, a believer in free public education for all, advocated for education of the whole person; he challenged students to act on their values, not simply their intellect.

The current Board of Trustees has made a hasty decision to close — without much internal discussion and no discussion whatever with the rest of the Antioch “community”. It seems to me they ares buying into the trend towards corporatization of education. It seems they want to retain the Antioch name so they can recruit to the University’s 6 other campuses, and give up a commitment to the College and the traditions which define Antioch. They are also joining the nationwide movement to eliminate tenure for professors. Many of the Antioch faculty have labored long and hard at relatively low pay, in order to teach at Antioch.

In the many years since my graduation, I’ve heard that the college was having financial problems, but I’ve never been told that it was ready to close. I’ve never been asked to contribute to keep the college open. I know many of my fellow alums agree.

We may not all have been big contributors — since our education prepared us to “win a victory for humanity,” rather than to become millionaires– but nobody knew anything about this closing.

We can’t let Antioch close.

Today, more than ever, we need the robust and creative thinkers that Antioch College trains, in order to save our civilization. Today the world needs the diverse and multi-disciplinary thinking Antioch instills in its students. Horace Mann’s motto, and the motto of the college, is “Be ashamed to die until you have won a victory for humanity.” Today, more than ever, we need to train students to win these victories.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007, by Stephanie Irwin Gottschlich, Staff Writer, Dayton Daily News

YELLOW SPRINGS — Seven former Antioch University trustees are appealing to the current board to take a series of “bold” actions at an emergency board meeting later this month, including merging Antioch College with Antioch University McGregor and creating a separate board for the combined school.

In a July 28 letter to board members obtained by the Dayton Daily News, the former trustees said that the college will not successfully reopen unless the board demonstrates its commitment to doing so with “actions no less bold than those it has already taken.”

Those actions include:

Merge the college with Antioch University McGregor, the adult learning institution that offers mostly master’s degrees, also
located in Yellow Springs.

Create a separate board of trustees, with one university trustee appointed as chair, responsible for both the college and McGregor. Ensure that it has representatives for alumni, faculty, staff, Yellow Springs, students, alumni, major donors and include “luminaries in higher education.”

Empowering the new college board to meet specific fundraising and planning goals for the college’s reopening, and to hire and fire the college President.

Launch a development campaign sufficient to cover major capital improvements and competitive faculty wages and establish an endowment of at least $100 million for the college.

Explore viable alternatives to closing the college through consulting turnaround experts in higher education.

Outline plans over the next six months for reopening the college and sustaining it.

Other actions the former trustees requested include putting alumni on the new institution’s board who could immediately and publicly pledge large sums to the college.

“The main point is ‘Go ahead and do something that everyone thinks should happen,’ ” said Dan Kaplan, one of the trustees who signed the letter, in a separate interview Tuesday.

Kaplan served on the university board from 1995 until 2006, and as chair from 2002 until 2005. “There’s an upside to taking a kind of bold step that’s really an act of good faith with all the stakeholders,” he said.

In a response letter on Wednesday, current board chair Arthur J. Zucker said the board will carefully evaluate the letter’s “creative suggestions” while “also considering the financial implications.”

“We will continue our due diligence through careful review and deliberation, balanced with the need for urgency of all issues around the suspension of operations at the College, including those related to governance,” Zucker wrote.

Zucker added the board voted in June to create a governance committee to look at the governance issue, and it will report to the board in October.

“That we have expedited this process speaks to the board’s commitment to tackle the governance issue,” Zucker wrote. “It is important that everyone also understands that (university Chancellor) Toni (Murdock) and I are both strongly committed to resolving the issue of governance honestly and realistically and professionally.”

Kaplan and former trustees Barbara Winslow and Laura Markham wrote the letter. Since then, at least four more have added their names to it – including two additional previous board chairs – and others are planning to sign it, according to Winslow. Winslow, the longest-serving board member at 12 years of service, stepped down a month ago following the board’s June 12 decision to close the college in 2008. Winslow had reached the maximum term limit allowed for trustees.

The letter joins a movement to make Antioch College autonomous—either outside the university system, or within it–in order for it to survive.

The Antioch College Alumni Association, hoping to negotiate with the trustees for many of the items in the July 28 petition letter, is serving as an agent for $625,000 in cash and pledges called the College Revival Fund targeted at keeping the college open.

Rick Daily, treasurer for the fund and for the alumni association, said “in addition there are expressions of interest in contributing to a revived, self-governed Antioch College that are in excess of $2 million.”

College President Steve Lawry, who announced last week he will resign at year-end, meanwhile has increased his call for a separate board responsible for advocating sand raising money solely for the college.

“And we’re saying [Lawry’s] actually right,” Kaplan said. “Let’s bite the bullet and do it. Time is of the essence here. Move forward boldly here or wake up in five years to nothing.”

Zucker told the former trustees in his letter the board must fulfill its fiduciary responsibility to the entire university, but has a related commitment “to ensure that our college students receive the education and undergraduate experience they deserve.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7404 or
sgottschlich@DaytonDailyNews.com.