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.

To read the full transcript download PDF: pavel_curtis_interview_transcript

Interview by Rose Pelzl

Why did you agree to be a Pro Tem board member?

[...] this opportunity to recreate what Antioch should always have been. [...] An institution that encourages young people to think for themselves, to backup their ideas with actual rigor and, and to appreciate the conflicting ideas of others. [...] We have this great combination of an institution with a great legacy and at the same time has a pause in which we can really catch our breath and do what’s right without having to keep it running day to day.
[...] I didn’t want to disappoint anybody with my being on the board. I didn’t want people to assume that I had great buckets of money that I could give the college. I didn’t want anybody to assume that I had great huge amounts of time that I could give on a day to day basis to the college. So I think those were the two biggest concerns. [...] And they insisted. [...] they basically reassured me that I wasn’t going to be disappointing anybody. [...] So I agreed because I am very excited about the whole possibility of what we’re doing. And I resisted because I didn’t want to let anybody down.

  Antioch College is based on both classroom and real world learning.  Let’s look at our recent Near-Death and Revival asking What happened? What did and didn’t work?  What could we learn?  Here are my own 12 learning areas.

1. Organizing, not blaming.  What worked was not complaining and blaming, but lots of organizing and dialogue with help from everybody – Faculty, Students, Alums, AND from the majority of Trustees, who, believe it or not, really do want Antioch College to survive, be healthy, and thrive.  Lesson?  Involve, don’t blame.

   I was undecided about going to a co-op community, after hearing rumors of the failed attempts in New Mexico with the Place of Text course. But I was convinced to take a job in Albuquerque, working at Channel 27, the public access television station.

News of the Board of Trustees’ decision this summer to close Antioch made everyone second guess what they would do for the fall. I had made the decision to go on co-op, because that was one of the main reasons I had come to Antioch, but soon realized I had made it too early. After purchasing my plane ticket and committing to renting out a room, I realized it was too late to change my mind and return to Yellow Springs in the fall. I never contacted Antioch to assure them I was going on co-op, secretly hoping to sabotage the planning and end up back on campus. When I arrived in Albuquerque, however, unsure and hoping my job was unavailable, I saw they were understaffed and needed all the help they could get; my job was definitely still free for the taking.

Dear Antioch Community,

This is a letter to everyone from Beca and Tim. We have both recently returned from the New Mexico Co-op “Community”. Two of our classmates are being expelled for events that occurred throughout this co-op “community” experience. As we were both present throughout this entire ordeal and had a close connection with both students, we felt we should share what we witnessed, and why we feel these expulsions are unjust.