Jul 25 2007
Direct word from faculty
Dear friends, former students, fellow alums, friends of Antioch,
I am writing to you all to create a picture of what is happening on the ground at the College. Thank you for reaching out soon after the announcement of the Board’s intention to close the College. We have gone through the arc of shock, heartbreak, outrage, and back again and will continue to do so.
The Reunion was an amazing experience. Six hundred people were standing up with us and saying “NO! This can’t happen.” So many recent (90’s-2000”s) grads came back to organize the defense who were Photo and Media Arts students. It was pure sweetness to see them, to introduce them to each other, (they knew each other by reputation alone), and to dance with them until 3:00am.
Hundreds of people are working tirelessly across the country to organize and confront the decision to close. (Thank you for your sustained efforts on behalf of our loved College). People are organizing chapters, fundraisers, writing letters to counter the negative press that has been provoked by the announcement.
Soon after the first few days of grief, the faculty started meeting and have agreed to consult legal counsel regarding a case to keep the College open. We question the legality of declaring financial exigency for one unit of the University, of not following due diligence in their decision to close the College without consultation with the Faculty or ADCIL, as per our Personnel Policies. The decision to close the College for four years conveniently eliminates the necessity of offering jobs to tenured faculty if the college is re-opened. The faculty are the holders of the institutional memory, deeply committed to self-governance and democratic processes, (as messy and difficult as they can be).
Probably the most outrageous factor in this decision by the Board and the University leadership is the intention of designing the “New (Renewed) Antioch” using “experts” and focus groups. Current faculty, students, our very active Alumni, and a broad cross section of Village interests have not been invited to participate in the planning process. This replicates the Renewal Commission constituted in 2003, that included only two Antioch Faculty (among a total of seventeen) national experts in Higher Education to craft a curriculum for the 21st Century in a nine-month period, which was then handed to the faculty to implement. As resistant to a mandated curriculum as you can imagine we were, we took on the task, with good faith, and worked to make the idea of an interdisciplinary curriculum our own. We struggled with a highly intensive “learning community” model that engaged most of our senior faculty in the first year Core program for the two years of implementation,
while simultaneously delivering the upper level “old” curriculum, and inventing the “new” upper level interdisciplinary program, We were problem solving making the program attractive, challenging, and affordable, and voted to reduce the co-op program to three terms with another “summer of choice” option, taking out a big chunk of what constitutes our (as alumni) experience of an Antioch education. We feel proud of the first year program we created, that reflected our traditional commitments to social justice, development of critical thinking and writing skills, global perspectives, community-based learning, and familiarity with a number of forms of creative expression.
The Board promised us five years to make the program economically viable. They recognized there would be shortfalls in revenue in this transition. They also promised to raise twenty million dollars to renovate the Student Union, dorms, and the Library. That never happened.
Our first year entering class was 65 students, brave souls who were ready to participate in an experiment, or who had no idea what they were coming to, since we hadn’t had time to design, and advertise it. On June 9th of this year, the Board of Trustees pulled the plug on the process.
As a faculty member who taught twice in the new Core program, I would have liked the Board to have come to campus this spring to talk to students and faculty about the new curriculum, its successes and difficulties, rather than asking a consultant to run enrollment projections for the next five years, which was their basis for making such a momentous decision. They might have heard from students about their level of satisfaction with the vitality of the program, the level of challenge and engagement. They would have seen a highly effective team of Community Government leaders providing responsible and heart-felt leadership in some of the most difficult circumstances I have experienced here. My biggest sense of loss comes from not getting to continue working with those students from American Identities, Fall 2006, where we worked deeply and closely on understanding the complexities of race, class, representation, cultural understanding, and expression of those complexities through literature.
Antioch is not a place that you can attend, work at, or teach at casually. It demands a level of energy, resilience, creativity, critical examination, and courage that is hard to find in most work environments. It also means that the rewards are enormous, in participating with students as they discover their passions, talents, their “path”, in working with colleagues and staff who share the core belief that our efforts matter. I will have this love and dedication and gratitude for the rest of my days. Thank you all for being a part of my Adventure.
So what can you do?
**Go to antiochians.org for news, local chapter information, actions, and ways to donate. The point of donating, or pledging to donate, is to empower the Alumni Board to be able to negotiate with the Board of Trustees to GIVE UP THE COLLEGE to an autonomous board of oversight, that is committed solely to the operations of the College, and who would organize a Revival of the College based on principles of academic freedom, self-governance, and would use the life skills of Antioch alum, faculty, students, and Villagers in designing a college that is sustainable, vital, engaged in theory and practice in the local community and the world.
**Donate to the Antioch Faculty Legal Information Fund account at: Yellow Springs Federal Credit Union 217 Xenia Ave. Yellow Springs, OH 45387 Contributions to this account are not tax deductible, but are most appreciated at this time.
**Contribute your testimonial – how Antioch gave you tools and direction to do the work you are doing today. We are using these to lift up the power of an Antioch education – over the past decades – to demonstrate what might be lost if the College closes. Help us name the “it” in “Be Ashamed to let IT Die”. Send testimonials to me at: deagleson@antioch-college.edu
<< We need them FAST!!! >> BEFORE the August 23rd Board of Trustees Emergency Board Meeting (despite Toni Murdoch, Chancellor of the University saying recently that the decision to close was not reversible). We need to persuade them otherwise, and visibly and vocally support the Alumni Board in their negotiations.
**Adopt a current student. They are feeling heart-broken, (and maligned) and need to know they live in a larger web of concerned alumni and friends of the College. Our Associate Dean of Faculty, Eli Nettles, and our Associate Dean of the Core Program, Janice Kinghorn, have been contacting first year and continuing students over the summer. Between fifty and seventy first year students intend to come to Antioch this fall, perhaps because they didn’t have time to make other arrangements after the announcement on June 12th, OR they saw something pretty compelling when they came to visit last year, and want to be a part of what may be our last year in this iteration.
**Contribute your vision, energy, and wisdom to the effort to keep the College open.
Much love to all of you!
Dennie
