By Diane Chiddister

On Friday, Sept. 4, the keys to Antioch College will be transferred from Antioch University to the Antioch College Continuation Corporation, or ACCC. The action marks the college’s revival after having been closed for a year, and its return, after 30 years as part of a university system, to being an independent liberal arts college.

The public is invited to a recognition of the historic event at around 5 p.m. on the horseshoe on the Antioch College campus. The event will follow several hours of paper-signing by ACCC leaders Lee Morgan and Matthew Derr, who have been vested by the ACCC board with the authority to sign the agreements, and Antioch University Chancellor Toni Murdock and Antioch University Board Chair Art Zucker, who have been vested by the university board with the authority to do so, according to Morgan and Derr in an interview Tuesday evening.

Morgan, Zucker and Great Lakes Colleges Association President Rick Detweiler will speak at the 5 p.m. event, and Antioch professor emeritus Al Denman will give the benediction.

Friday’s closing finalizes an agreement between the university and the ACCC that was made two months ago. While that agreement identified Aug. 31 as the target date for closing the deal for an independent college, the amount of detail involved led to missing that target by a few days, Morgan said. The closing was dependent on the approval of several outside agencies, including the Ohio attorney general, the Greene County probate court and bondholders for Antioch University.

The drying out of campus following flooding from broken attic sprinkler system pipes in South Hall and Main Building is running ahead of schedule, said Lynda Sirk, Antioch University Director of Public Relations. “The damage is not as extensive as we believed when [Munters, the company providing mitigation of the water damage] first came on campus. We’ll be able to salvage everything and have Main Building back to its original state except for a few damaged ceiling tiles,” stated Sirk.

Sirk said damage was confined to the central areas of Main Building. “The registrar’s office, AEA and the music department stayed dry” she declared.

South Hall should be done in two to three days, said a Munters worker who wished to remain anonymous. The mitigation of Main Building will take longer, another worker said, because the painted plaster walls need a long time to dry. Wednesday morning the workers said they were waiting for a decision from Tom Faecke, Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer of Antioch University, on whether they could begin removing paint from the plaster walls so that the walls could be dried more efficiently.

This is a time of major decisions with major consequences. On the global level, we have choices about how we live on the planet and with each other. On the national level, we are faced with with either choosing to make history or suck up more of the same. Locally, our village is facing changes and choices on major issues such as energy, a new village manager, how we grow and thrive economically and what happens to the historic college that was a cornerstone of our identity as a town. In the next weeks and months, I will talk with faculty, students, staff, alumni and villagers on a weekly basis about where we are and where we are going globally, nationally, locally and even personally.

It is mid September. A year ago in June, we got the word that the college would be closing in a year. For many this was a shock. For some it was a gut feeling that came to fruition. For a few it was an inevitability in a long decline. Whatever your analysis, the event had unforeseen responses and repercussions. We all know the litany of endeavors to save Antioch College: the Alumni Association, the AC3, the efforts within the Village of Yellow Springs to bring pressure on the University and show support on the local level, National academic entities such as the GLCA and the AAUP have gotten involved in a variety of ways that are ongoing. The Antioch College faculty brought a lawsuit, set it aside and revived it. They also worked to gather roughly a thousand signatures from academic luminaries and fellow professors in favor of their cause and most potent of all, created the Nonstop Institute for Liberal Arts. The Alumni mobilized in unprecedented ways, building over 40 chapters around the country and funding the Institutional Advancement office for the campus as well as the Nonstop Institute. Current, past and future students engaged with the effort on every level, from collaborating to launch Non-stop to enrolling and pledging to return after a term on Antioch Education Abroad or co-op. The list goes on. It is not for lack of trying that the college is still in limbo.

By Jeanne Kay

Many things were different about this week’s AdCil meeting: it was held in South Hall, it started a little late and there was no coffee thermos on the table; but the main difference was that Interim President Andrzej Bloch did not sit at the end of the conference table. Instead, it was Faculty member Eric Miller, who had called the meeting, who took stacks and chaired the session of AdCil in exile.

“AdCil is just not working and won’t work under the current conditions,” said Miller as an introduction, “and we need to see if there’s anything we can do about it.” After Andrzej Bloch, by announcing the University’s unilateral decision to reconfirm the suspension of operations at Antioch College on Friday February 22^nd, positioned himself as a mere messenger of the University, several calls for his resignation were made by community members in the week preceding the ad hoc AdCil. The members present on Tuesday morning—though short of forming quorum, were thus faced with the delicate task of redefining AdCil’s mission.

Privilege, Power, and Sharpies
To my fellow first years:

This is a letter to inform you that the anti-Toni/Andrzej propaganda that has been scrawled across the walls of North is not okay. It is not okay to vandalize the private space we share. Does anyone remember last term? Does anyone remember how upset several first years got because they felt that their personal space had been invaded? Then why is this hostile behavior toward our building happening again? I can guarantee that most first years don’t want to be fined several hundred dollars because some of us can’t keep the lids on our sharpies when we get frustrated.
I understand being upset. Antioch has been a haven to most of us. It is our home, and we want it to remain our home, and some big, bad authority is telling us to vacate. This is worth the yelling. It is worth real action. Let’s not cheapen our passion with scribbles of crudely formed sentences in our living rooms. How often does Toni take a stroll through North? When do you think she’ll see these opinions? The fact is that the only people who will ever see these displays of outrage are tenants and the people who have to clean it up.