Dear alums and supporters,

My name is Chad Johnston and I am an alum of ‘01 and a Community Manager of ‘01-02. I was a very nontraditional student who always sought out alternatives to conventional education. Antioch was the only college I applied to and I cannot tell you how influential Antioch was to my life and my career.

I was able to go to Nonstop to talk about my current work in media reform, social justice and media policy. I knew from a distance why the committed employees and supporters of Nonstop were so important to the future of the College. However, I did not realize how deep the spirit of these brilliant people ran until I was able to be with them.

I realized in theory how Nonstop was the DNA of the institution, but until I was there to hear and see the students, faculty and staff in action, I did not realize how in practice this was so very true. The people of Nonstop are beyond courageous, and exemplify what an Antioch education means when taking subjects beyond the confines of the academy, and into action. Without this DNA, a new Antioch will be just as those in the University wanted it to be: safe, marketable, and without real value except in respect to the bottom line.

Joe Foley addresses the Nonstop community for the first time at Community Meeting April 7th

The Record: My first question is for you to introduce yourself, in terms of your experience at Antioch: when did you graduate, what was your major, what was your Antiochian experience, what was your relationship to Antioch since you left?

Joe Foley: I’m Joe Foley and I graduated in ‘64 with a B.S., I had a major in philosophy and a minor in math, and my primary interest at that time in my life was documentary film production which I did largely through co-op jobs because there weren’t any real courses on campus related to that. [...] I worked a number of times with a documentary film company in DC and Antioch kept wanting me to take a wider variety of jobs and I kept saying but I’m doing a different things there every time so it came out my way as these things tend to at Antioch and it was very good. I also did a stand at a hospital as nurse’s aide and several odds and ends of things. After Antioch I did my graduate work at the University of Iowa, which turned out to be an excellent experience though Iowa city was a place I never thought I would go. And did my graduate work in communication, I was in speech and dramatic art and worked as a teaching assistant and ultimately as an instructor there largely teaching television production and running the instructional television studio that they had on the campus. After that I taught for a year at America University in DC and then went to what I thought was a temporary job at Ohio State University where I ended up staying 25 years. At Ohio State I was teaching some production classes, largely on the television side at that point, some social science research classes dealing with impact of media on audiences, and over the years my interest evolved and I became primarily focused on telecommunication policy things, first amendment issues, media and society issues, and issues that were developing in the 70s, 80s, 90s, as information was becoming a commodity rather than a kind of free good like it had been previously.

By John Hempfling and Jeanne Kay

Steve Schwerner’s Report on Visiting Team

The first Alumni Board meeting of the year opened morning of Friday the 6th with a presentation by Antioch Emeritus Professor Steve Schwerner, who was representing the delegation if educators who came to Nonstop and reported on their visit to the Board Pro Tempore. [link to Record article on visit] Schwerner said he expected that everyone had already read the eight-page report, [Link to the Report] and preferred to answer questions from the floor rather than reiterate the points made on paper. He specified that he would be unable to answer “questions of speculative nature,” since he was not in a position to answer them, and stipulated that he could only speak for himself.

Schwerner, however, stated that the Visiting Team was “impressed on every level; we were impressed by the seriousness of the faculty, by the excitement of the students, the innovations, the ability to make something out of nothing.” Yet he emphasized that despite the unquestionable value of Nonstop, it was too early to assess how it would be reintegrated into the new college; “to lose everything that Nonstop has done seems foolish, to incorporate everything is impossible.”

By Eva Erickson and Vanessa Query

From the 20th to the 22nd of February, the Antioch College Board Pro Tempore came together for the first time in Yellow Springs to create goals and plans for the revival of their alma mater. The four main agenda topics of the meetings were finances and fundraising efforts, evaluating the flood damage of the buildings as well as theirneed for remodeling, the Definitive Agreements for the College’s independence from Antioch University, and Nonstop?s integration into the new Antioch.

Due to the sensitive nature of the current state of negotiations with Antioch University, most of the sessions were closed to the public. In fact, only two events were open: a bird-watching hike in the GlenHelen Nature Preserve and a presentation on Nonstop?s creation, successes, and what it could offer to a new vision for Antioch College.

The bird-watching was a success, if you count seven Nonstop students waking up at 6:30 on a brisk Saturday morning in February a success. Sadly, most of the board did not share the students? enthusiasm for bird-watching, as only one ProTem member ? Nancy Crow, who is also president of the Alumni Board ?arrived. Along with board consultant Matthew Derr, they all had a lovely hike in the Glen under the tutelage of bird expert Nick Boutis, Director of the Glen. We were all pleasantly surprised to find out that Derr and Crow really know and love their birds. In fact, Derr got very excited when he spotted, for the first time in his bird-watching life, a Carolina Chickadee. He remarked that he hadn?t realized there was anything other than just a regular old chickadee. Boutis replied that you could tell it was a Carolina Chickadee by its southern drawl.

By Jeanne-Kay

Research: Brian Springer, Kathryn Leahey, Jeanne Kay

Prelude: The Discourse of Toxicity

“Toxic Culture.” Steve Lawry’s infamous phrase is now part of the vocabulary of virtually all Antiochians. The year before the Antioch University Board of Trustees (UBoT) resolved to close the college, the key political issue on campus and the polemic that reached alumni revolved around the question of Toxic Culture–whether there was one, how it manifested itself, how to fix it or how to debunk its myth.

To alumni whose only contact with the community in years had been filtered through Media and University intermediaries, “toxic culture” meant a steady decline in academic excellence and increased political narrowness from their time at Antioch onwards; to conservative reporters, “toxic culture” came to be the perfect excuse to write diatribes against political correctness at liberal arts colleges; and to many observers “toxic culture” was a perfect shortcut to explaining how Antioch College had found itself in such an incomprehensibly dire situation: Antioch students were narrow-minded, unstable, out of control–they chased away new students, driving down retention and preventing Antioch from achieving financial stability. The toxic culture narrative made sense–and it was useful.