The College Faculty

By Peter Townsend

First, a disclaimer - I am not an alum and I am not a lawyer. But I am the lead plaintiff in the faculty lawsuit, so I’m going to try to bring you abreast of where we are and how we got here. Please forgive me if my lack of legal expertise causes any mistakes in this communication.

The Antioch College faculty have a clause in our contract requiring that in the event of a financial crisis at the College, the College Faculty must be consulted and Antioch University must work with College Faculty and ADCIL to find the “least drastic solution” to the fiscal crisis. Last summer it struck a few faculty that AU administration and the AU BOT precipitously announcing the college’s closing did not constitute “consultation” with the faculty, and that closing the place perhaps did not represent the “least drastic solution” to the problems at Antioch College.

Consequently the faculty formed a small legal group that selected Evan Price, of Bailey Cavalieri, Columbus, Ohio to represent us. Evan is doing a fantastic job for the faculty and, because our legal case is about keeping the college open, Evan is doing a great job for everyone who wants Antioch College to continue.

The faculty filed for a preliminary injunction to force AU to abide by our contract and work with the faculty and ADCIL to find a “least drastic solution”, and in the meantime to not sell any College assets. To see the actual court filing by the faculty, click: antiochfaculty.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/faculty-lawsuit-edited.pdf

Our case is in the Greene County Ohio Common Pleas Court, which is the lowest level State Court. Elected Judge Stephen Wolaver was assigned the case. Sometimes Magistrate Judges are also assigned to a case. Recently Magistrate Judge George Reynolds was assigned to our case.

On March 18, 2008, Magistrate Judge Reynolds scheduled an Evidentiary Hearing for April 1, 2008, from 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM. at the Greene County Ohio Courthouse.

At the April 1 hearing both sides will call witnesses, and the witnesses will testify in open court. I am predicting the courtroom will be packed with extremely interested folks.

The April 1 hearing was not expected by either side, and it has both sides scrambling. On the county WEB site:http://www.co.greene.oh.us/pa/pa.urd/pamw2000*docket_lst?316215 there a list of people our lawyer was going to depose. That list is for the case going forward, not for the April 1 Evidentiary Hearing before Judge Reynolds.

Last week lawyers for the faculty and Antioch University agreed they would take depositions before the April 1 hearing. Both sides are still scrambling to decide whom they will call for witnesses, and both sides are working frantically to schedule the depositions. The people being deposed are not necessarily the same people we indicated in our filing. This case is now moving forward at warp speed.

On March 17, 2008, the University’s attorney filed a motion to dismiss the case. Because of court rules on timing of responses to a motion to dismiss, the motion to dismiss cannot be ruled upon by the court until after the April 1 hearing. Which means that, even if the case were to be dismissed, there will already have been testimony in open court, with reporters and witnesses present. Woohoo!

The Antioch College faculty believe that after looking over our lawsuit, you will agree that our suit is not for personal faculty gain, it is about trying to save the college. We are well aware of the efforts of ACCC to save the college. In fact, ACCC represents our “least drastic solution”. The University has sworn ACCC to total secrecy, but we do know that many millions of dollars have been offered by generous alumni to keep Antioch College open and free. It is our contention that this generous outpouring of money represents a “less drastic solution” to shuttering the College, and our suit is urging the AU BOT to strike a deal with ACCC.

Legal stuff is not cheap. So far the Antioch College faculty have raised $60,000 for the case through both personal faculty donations and through generous non-faculty donations. We are a small and poorly paid faculty, in jeopardy for our financial futures, and $60K represents all the $ we can muster. We need help, if we are going to move the case forward. We hope you will donate to our legal fund to help keep Antioch College going. If you wish to donate to help us, please send a check endorsed to the Antioch Faculty Legal Fund to:

YS Federal Credit Union
217 Xenia Avenue
Yellow Springs, OH 45387
Telephone 937-767-7377
www.yscu.org/1.php

The wonderful staff at the Yellow Springs Credit Union will ensure the check gets deposited to the faculty legal fund account, and we thank you so much. This is not tax deductible.

Or you can make donations directly via PayPal on our website:

antiochfaculty.org/

However, Paypal takes a small percentage of all donations made via this method so mailing a check to the above address is better for large donations.

Yours for the future of Antioch College,

Peter Townsend
Professor since ‘71

March 14, 2008

Dr. Tullisse A. Murdock
Chancellor
Antioch University
150 E. South College Street
Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387

Mr. Arthur J. Zucker
Chair, Board of Trustees
Antioch University
2012 Prescott Pl
Raleigh, North Carolina 27615

Dr. Andrzej Bloch
Chief Operations Officer/Chief Academic Officer
Antioch College
795 Livermore Street
Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387

Dear Chancellor Murdock, Chair Zucker, and Dr. Bloch:

In our letters to you of August 7 and September 19, we set forth our concerns arising from faculty complaints that the manner in which Antioch University had decided to declare financial exigency and determined to lay-off tenured faculty was inconsistent with widely accepted AAUP standards.  Your decision not to respond substantively to our queries has heightened our concerns.

In our last letter of March 4, we urged the Antioch University trustees “to keep working with the ACCC [Antioch College Continuation Corporation] to reach an agreement that will allow the college to continue its operations uninterrupted.”  We understand that the ACCC has since submitted to the trustees a draft letter of intent for its immediate consideration.  We understand further that the university’s board of trustees is scheduled to meet this coming week to review the proposal and to formulate its response.  We urge the trustees to give the utmost serious attention to the ACCC proposal with a view to reaching a decision that will permit the college to remain in operation beyond June 30.

We will be watching further developments closely, and hope to learn that an agreement has been reached that will ensure the college’s continuing and uninterrupted existence.  Absent such an agreement, we shall determine our further course of action consistent with our established policies.

Sincerely,

Anita Levy, Ph.D.
Associate Secretary

cc:    Professor Tom Arysman, Faculty Senate Steering Committee
Professor Jill Becker, Faculty Senate Steering Committee
Professor Susan Eklund-Leen, Faculty Senate Steering Committee
Professor Pat Mische, Faculty Senate Steering Committee,
Professor Paul Davis, President, Ohio Conference AAUP

PDF of this letter available here

March 4, 2008

Dr. Tullisse A. Murdock
Chancellor
Antioch University
150 E. South College Street
Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387

Mr. Arthur J. Zucker
Chair, Board of Trustees
Antioch University
2012 Prescott Pl
Raleigh, North Carolina 27615

Dr. Andrzej Bloch
Chief Operations Officer/Chief Academic Officer
Antioch College
795 Livermore Street
Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387

Dear Chancellor Murdock, Chair Zucker, and Dr. Bloch:

We continue to watch developments regarding the future of Antioch College with keen interest, and have read the statement recently issued by the Antioch University’s board of trustees reconfirming its June 30, 2007, decision to suspend the college’s operations effective June 30, 2008. The recent decision has apparently sparked renewed efforts by the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC) to keep the college open with its current faculty carrying-out their teaching responsibilities. This office has not of course been a party to the discussions between the board of trustees and the ACCC, and therefore we are in no position to propose specific recommendations to help resolve the college’s serious financial problems. In view, however, of Antioch College’s historic importance in American higher education, and noting that the AAUP has long called on governing boards to consider all feasible alternatives to terminating faculty appointments when faced with dire financial problems, we urge the trustees to keep working with the ACCC to reach an agreement that will allow the college to continue its operations uninterrupted. We do not doubt that this is a daunting challenge, but one worth making every effort to overcome.

Sincerely,

Anita Levy, Ph.D.
Associate Secretary

cc:    Professor Tom Arysman, Faculty Senate Steering Committee
Professor Jill Becker, Faculty Senate Steering Committee
Professor Susan Eklund-Leen, Faculty Senate Steering Committee
Professor Pat Mische, Faculty Senate Steering Committee,
Professor Paul Davis, President, Ohio Conference AAUP

PDF of this letter available here.

Click here to download an electronic copy of Faculty lawsuit against Antioch University (PDF format)

Court Docket : www.co.greene.oh.us/pa/pa.urd/pamw2000*docket_lst?316215

Full text of this is included below except for faculty members home addresses which were removed to conserve space.

IN THE COMMON PLEAS COURT OF GREENE COUNTY, OHIO,
GENERAL DIVISION
Continue Reading »

Faculty Voice Unqualified Support of “Non-Stop Antioch” To Keep Antioch College Open

Recording of this press conference is available here

For Immediate Release
March 11, 2008
3:45 PM

Anne Bohlen
937-760-7834
atbohlen@gmail.com

Susan Eklund-Leen
937-361-8092
susaneklund@gmail.com

March 11, 2008—Members of the Antioch College faculty today announced that they have re-filed their original lawsuit against Antioch University and its Board of Trustees. They had withdrawn their lawsuit without prejudice in November of 2007, which meant that it could be re-filed at any time.

Ninety percent of tenured faculty members who are currently teaching and wish to be part of Non-Stop Antioch filed for a permanent injunction against the Antioch University Board of Trustees in the Greene County Ohio Common Pleas Court. The legal request for injunctive relief asks the court to enjoin Antioch University from suspending College operations, from terminating the employment of the College faculty, from disposing of any College assets, and engage with the ACCC to amicably complete their negotiations allowing the ACCC to take responsibility for the college.

After the Antioch College faculty withdrew their lawsuit in November, an alumni group known as the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC) formed to negotiate with Antioch University for ownership of Antioch College.

Two weeks ago, the University unilaterally announced that they would be suspending operations of the College for the 2008-2009 school year, even though negotiations to keep the college operating continued with the ACCC.

Antioch College Professor of Philosophy Scott Warren said “It’s clear that the University Board of Trustees is not negotiating in good faith. That leaves us no other choice but to re-file our lawsuit.”

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 suit also asserts that decisions made by the Board of Trustees in 2004 and 2005 seriously damaged College enrollment, and that the June 12, 2007 public suspension announcement further damaged the College. Finally the lawsuit alleges that Antioch University currently has a less drastic solution than closing the College, in the form of an offer to take responsibility for the college and keep it running. The lawsuit alleges the Antioch University Board should honor their financial and contractual obligation to operate the College responsibly, by relinquishing ownership of the College to the ACCC who will keep the College operating.

Former College President and current Professor of Communications Robert Devine said that announcements from the University leadership were “messages of dubious origin and of dubious meaning” and that the Interim Antioch College President “has consistently obfuscated, distorted and misrepresented the situation.”

Last weekend two alumni groups, the Antioch College Alumni Association and the College Revival Fund, met with students, faculty, staff and Yellow Springs townspeople to discuss next steps. The College Revival Fund committed $1 million to support “Non-Stop Antioch.”

“Non-Stop Antioch means just that,” says Anne Bohlen, Professor of Media Arts. “We hope that the negotiations between the Board of Trustees and the ACCC are ultimately successful, but the Antioch University administration and the Board of Trustees have repeatedly demonstrated their unwillingness to resolve the situation despite an Alumni fundraising effort that raised 18 million dollars to alleviate financial deficits. They have consistently refused to negotiate with the College Faculty and our institutional governing bodies as required by their contractual obligations. They have regularly engaged in demoralizing tactics and have been especially eager to publicly defame the College faculty and students and we are taking legal action to redress the situation. Non-Stop Antioch means we are not going away, and with the support of the Alumni are planning to continue to offer Antioch’s excellent liberal arts and experiential education program into the near future.”

Since the University Board of Trustees announced the suspension of operations in June 2007, faculty, alumni, students, staff, and Yellow Springs townspeople have mobilized to keep the historic 155-year-old institution from closing. More information about the faculty lawsuit can be found on the website antiochfaculty.org/

*** MEDIA ALERT ***

What:

ANTIOCH COLLEGE FACULTY TO MAKE IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT; Voice Unqualified Support of “Non-Stop Antioch” To Keep Antioch College Open.

When:

Tuesday March 11, 2008 at 3:45 PM

Where:

113 McGregor Hall
795 Livermore Street, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387

Why:

Members of the Antioch College faculty invite members of the media to join them and learn more about their plans. Faculty members have worked diligently with the Alumni Board and the Antioch College Continuation Corporation to plan for the future of Antioch. Now their attention is focused on “Non-Stop Antioch”.

Please join us to hear this important announcement.

Contact:

Anne Bohlen, 937-760-7834 atbohlen@gmail.com OR Susan Eklund-Leen, 937-361-8092, http://antiochfaculty.org/ for more information on the date of this event (to be announced). Note - Barring any technical difficulties a live audio stream of this event will be available at http://listen.antiochians.org:8000/listen.m3u and a recording of this event will be up at http://listen.antiochians.org/ within 24 hours.

The Faculty has dismissed their lawsuit without prejudice, while asserting their participation in rebuilding efforts in accordance with their contracts. Serious questions are raised for the university administration to answer in a timely fashion.

Full PDF : antioch-lawsuit-dismissal-111307.pdf

The faculty lawsuit was withdrawn “without prejudice” on November 13.  Withdrawing a lawsuit “without prejudice” means, in legal terms, that the suit can be refiled at any time, and will continue exactly where it left off within the legal system.

The faculty lawsuit was to find the “least drastic solution” to the current fiscal problems.  When the Antioch College Alumni Board signed documents with the Antioch University Board of Trustees to keep the college open, that was a “least drastic solution” that effectively “mooted” the faculty lawsuit.  The faculty were advised by their legal council, Evin Price of Bailey Cavalieri, to withdraw the lawsuit “without prejudice” rather than to drop the lawsuit. If conditions in the future change, the lawsuit can be refiled in the legal system as if it never left.

September 19, 2007

Dr. Tullisse A. Murdock
Acting Chancellor
Antioch University
150 E. South College Street
Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387

Mr. Arthur J. Zucker
Chair, Board of Trustees
Antioch University
2012 Prescott Pl
Raleigh, North Carolina 27615

Dr. Andrzej Bloch
Chief Operations Officer/Chief Academic Officer
Antioch College
795 Livermore Street
Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387

Dear Chancellor Murdock, Chair Zucker, and Dr. Bloch:

We have yet to receive a response to my letter of August 7, 2007, concerning the June 2007 actions taken by the Antioch University board of trustees to declare Antioch College in a state of financial exigency and to suspend college operations as of July 2008, with the intention of reopening in 2012.  We raised with you in that letter a number of important issues: the apparent absence of meaningful faculty participation in the decisions that resulted in the declaration of financial exigency and the suspension of college operations, the extent of the college’s financial difficulties, and the importance of maintaining an intact tenure system should the college reopen.  Recent information shared with us by members of the faculty, available in news accounts and in newly released documents, has heightened our concerns regarding these matters.

On August 14, twenty Antioch College faculty members filed suit against the board of trustees of Antioch University to prevent the planned closure of the college.

The lawsuit alleges that by suspending college operations for four years, the university bypassed a provision of the college’s Faculty Personnel Policies and Procedures manual giving tenured faculty “the right to be reappointed within a period of three years to any positions eliminated due to a declaration of financial exigency.  By limiting the declaration of financial exigency to Antioch College, Antioch University is in a position to eliminate the only tenured faculty within the Antioch University system.”  The lawsuit also questions the fundamental basis for the board’s declaration that the college is in a financially exigent condition, alleging that “less drastic means existed and exist to address the financial crisis at Antioch College.” It charges the university with breaching college policies with respect to “procedures to be followed in the event of necessary and justifiable budget curtailment,” and further states, “Antioch University’s poor governance of Antioch College also created the supposed financial crisis that purportedly supported the declaration of financial exigency by . . . mandating a ‘Renewal Plan’ that consisted of the elimination of the college’s entire existing curriculum and majors.”  When the curriculum plan “led to a rapid decline in enrollment and revenues,” the suit alleges, the board failed to consult the college faculty “regarding the appropriate means to correct the numerous and significant problems created by Antioch University’s ‘Renewal Plan’.”

University trustees, following a meeting with faculty and alumni on August 25, released an August 27 statement confirming a resolution agreeing “to work with the College Alumni Board to demonstrate, by the October 2007 Board of Trustees meeting, the financial and academic feasibility of the College Alumni Board’s proposal for the continued operation of the College.” In a second August 27 resolution, the trustees also agreed to a faculty and alumni request that they consider the possibility of establishing a separate board of trustees for the college.  Chancellor Murdock, earlier addressing this possibility in a July 30 Inside Higher Ed article (“Who Should Control Antioch?”), stressed that, regardless of the amount of authority delegated to the college board, final decision-making authority would continue to rest with the chancellor and the university’s board, and stated, “We are one corporation and all the assets are owned by one corporation.”

On August 31, Chancellor Murdock asked college president Steven Lawry to step down effective immediately, four months prior to his previously announced December 2007 resignation date.  We understand that the president was placed on administrative leave and barred from campus.  The university also announced the appointments of several new administrators, including a chief operations officer, and the reorganization of the college’s development office.  The latter was preceded, according to faculty accounts, by the changing of office locks and the early dismissal of staff for the day.  Faculty members report they were dismayed with the administration’s failure to consult them prior to acting against President Lawry, and prior to making new senior-level administrative appointments.  They expressed concern that the president was asked to resign because of his public commitment to alumni fundraising efforts to keep the college open.

Within days of the administration’s announcement regarding President Lawry, the faculty voted no confidence in Chancellor Murdock. Their September 4 resolution stated,

In light of the August 31st news that the leadership of Antioch College has been dramatically restructured, including 1) the elimination of the position of College President; 2) the invention of new administrative positions; 3) and the encroachment onto the operations of the Alumni and Development offices, all of which were done without consultation with the College Administrative Council or College faculty, we the faculty of Antioch College, issue a vote of ‘no-confidence’ in Tullisse Murdoch, Chancellor of Antioch University.  The Chancellor’s precipitous actions have damaged the college to such an extent that her continuation works against the survival of the institution.  The vote was unanimous among the twenty-six faculty present.

With respect to the matter of tenure, as we wrote in our August 7 letter, “[i]f the college does reopen, we hope and expect that it will do so with a tenure system intact, and with a sense of its continuing obligation to the current college faculty with regard to reinstatement.”  We understand that when the board of trustees met in June, they considered two scenarios for the future of Antioch College. The first scenario detailed the college’s permanent closure, while the second plan, which was ultimately approved by the board, involved the suspension of college operations and its planned reopening in four years. Recently released university documents indicate that the approved plan included a year-by-year countdown to the college’s 2011 reopening.  We were dismayed to learn that during year two of the four-year closure searches are to be conducted for the first eight faculty members to be appointed for the 2010 academic year, and that these appointments will not be eligible for tenure.

These ongoing issues of faculty governance, and what appears to be the planned reopening of the college without a system of tenure, have contributed to the faculty’s deepening skepticism about the university administration’s claim that the college is financially exigent and about the reasons for the decisions to declare exigency and to suspend college operations.  In particular, faculty members have maintained that the board’s failure to consult them adequately when it redesigned the college’s curriculum, and later when enrollments dropped as a result of curricular inadequacies, raises serious questions not only about faculty governance, but more importantly about the sufficiency of the board’s financial planning.  In this regard, we draw your attention, as we had in our August 7 letter, to Regulation 4c of our Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure.  Under this regulation, a “demonstrably bona fide exigency” – an exigency, that is, which permits the “termination of an appointment with continuous tenure, or a probationary or special appointment before the end of a specified term” – is “an imminent financial crisis which threatens the survival of the institution as a whole and that cannot be alleviated by less drastic means” than the termination of tenured appointments.  As noted above, the chancellor has stated that the university is one corporate unit owning all the corporate assets, including presumably those of the college.  It is clear that the financial situation confronting Antioch College over the past several years has been a serious one, but we are not aware that the survival of the university as a whole is threatened or that the university administration has shown that the college’s situation could not be alleviated by means less drastic than suspending operations for a period of four years.    Even if the college does suspend operations because of a bona fide financial exigency, the university is obliged under Association-supported standards to make every effort to place affected faculty members in other suitable positions within the institution.

We would welcome your comments on these several matters.  We also hope that the October meeting of the board of trustees and the college faculty and alumni, where the alumni will present their plan for the continuation of the college, will be conducted in the spirit of cooperation that characterized the August meeting.  We look forward to learning about the meeting and its outcome.

Sincerely,

Anita Levy, Ph.D. Associate Secretary

cc:    Professor Tom Arysman, Faculty Senate Steering Committee Professor Jill Becker, Faculty Senate Steering Committee Professor Susan Eklund-Leen, Faculty Senate Steering Committee Professor Pat Mische, Faculty Senate Steering Committee, Professor Paul Davis, President, Ohio Conference AAUP

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Yellow Springs, Ohio
September 26, 2007

THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS
EXPRESSES ADDITIONAL CONCERNS ABOUT ANTIOCH UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP

The American Association of University Professors, the largest and most prominent advocacy organization for higher education faculty in the United States, has issued a second letter to Tullisse A. Murdock, Antioch University Chancellor, and Art Zucker, Chair of the Antioch University Board of Trustees. The September 19 AAUP letter reiterates the Association’s earlier concerns that College governance procedures and College Faculty Personnel Policies were bypassed in the June 2007 announcement of the upcoming suspension of Antioch College operations due to financial exigency. This second letter also calls attention to the AAUP’s heightened concerns about responsible stewardship and the preservation of tenure in the wake of recent administrative upheaval and of newly-released information about the proposed direction of a reconstituted Antioch College.
The AAUP letter provides a brief recap of some significant recent events. Following the June announcement, Antioch College Faculty responded with a lawsuit attempting to halt the suspension of operations at the College; the suit alleges that “less drastic means existed and exist to address the financial crisis,” and that the Board of Trustees had ignored institutional personnel procedures and long-standing traditions of participatory governance. On August 27 a meeting between the University Board and College faculty, alumni, staff, and local supporters yielded a resolution in which the Board agreed to consider Alumni proposals regarding the financial and academic feasibility of keeping the College open. This cooperative effort was jeopardized a week later when the Chancellor unexpectedly eliminated the position of the College President, placing President Steven Lawry on administrative leave four months earlier than his planned departure. On the same day, the fundraising and communications operations of the College Office of Development were shut down, and only restored through intervention by members of the Alumni Board. In the aftermath, the Faculty voted “no confidence” in the leadership of Chancellor Murdock. The AAUP cites these actions by the University leadership as possible evidence of continued violations of College governance procedures and the ongoing lack of “meaningful faculty participation” in important decisions affecting the survival of the College.
New information released by the University about the College’s potential 2012 reopening without a tenured faculty has increased the AAUP’s concern that the proposed suspension of operations involves an attack on the system of tenure. While all parties agree that the financial situation confronting the College over the past several years has been a serious one, the current AAUP letter questions whether the University administration has demonstrated that the criteria for declaring bona fide financial exigency–”an imminent financial crisis which threatens the survival of the institution as a whole and that cannot be alleviated by less drastic means than the termination of tenured appointments”–have indeed been met.
The AAUP notes the lack of response to their earlier letter of concern regarding the June 2007 actions taken by the University Board of Trustees, and continues to invite the University leadership’s comments on the issues they and the College Faculty have brought forward.

Please see the attached document for the full text of the letter.

For further information:
Anne Bohlen, Professor of Communications, Antioch College atbohlen@gmail.com

Susan Eklund-Leen, Associate Professor of Cooperative Education, Antioch College
susaneklund@gmail.com
Anita Levy, Associate Secretary, American Association of University Professors
202-737-5900 or 800-424-2973
alevy@aaup.org