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.

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.

ComCil

Nic Viox (Chair)

Shared governance is a historically important part of this institution, and I am privileged to be a part of it. In Nonstop’s ever changing future, I hope to provide as much continuity as I can by sitting on CoCcil again this term. I intend to do my best to provide service and support to the community as a whole: staff, faculty, and students.

Lincoln Alpern

I think ComCil is important as a venue for the community to address important (if often dull and day-to-day) issues about how we sustain and improve ourselves as an institute and as a community. On ComCil, I intend to serve this community to the best of my abilities, and to do my bit to fill the student quota. In the unlikely event of a real controversy, I will attempt to be a calming influence and voice for reconciliation and constructive dialogue.

Eva Erickson

I am running for ComCil because I want to make sure that our actions line up with our values, and that these Antiochian values that we hold so dearly as apart of our identity are preserved in the future Nonstop/Antioch, regardless of what happens. I also want to try to make this semester be as good as we can make it. I’m looking forward to being involved in this facet of community government, and learning how ComCil is apart of the bigger picture.

Rose Pelzl

Dear Antioch,
Between periods of extreme stress and sadness I have thought about what this all means for me and my future, but mostly my heart goes out to others.  I came here not too sure about how I would feel about this place, in fact, after I came here to visit I had a lot of doubts about whether I really wanted to come here.  I remember that some people were doing an art project called ‘Antioch is Fucked’ and I asked them, “Is Antioch fucked because of us (the incoming class) or without us?”  “Both,” they told me.  While I have come to realize that while they had a point, there is also a lot of “the new class is so watered-down, the real Antioch is dead, etc.”  Well, for my part, I’m pretty watery but besides our poor grassroots recruitment I think that people always idealize the past.  Antioch may only have a hundred students but it remains a vibrant community and an amazingly educational place.  I think that Antiochians remain concerned about this place, what it is becoming, what it maybe used to have been, because the idea of Antioch is so beautiful.  That same idea remains today.  It is, and always has been, an image.  Despite that, Antioch, the people here, the environment, has helped to me find that image for myself, not of a flourishing progressive bastion of education and social activism, but of the personal.  For me there is always an ideal, and there is reality, what we want to become, and what we are.  Whether these differences are real or just mental, Antioch has taken me closer to my image of the world and myself than I have ever experienced.  I have seen glimpses of what life can be and I think that the freedom that Antioch creates, freedom to express as well as to learn, makes it a sanctuary. 

By Tyler Morse
Recruitment has been a constant theme in discussions about the future of Antioch College. Several months ago, when the Antioch College Board of Trustees finally offered a compromise with the possibility of keeping the school open, Antiochians began to think about what the college might be like next fall in its “dim” state if the school was still part of the University. When the major donors thought about it they decided they didn’t want to be major donors at all unless the college was free to conduct its own affairs. The problem is it would probably be cheaper for the University to close the college then sell it, so there is much to discuss before an agreement can be reached and probably a long wait for an already frustrated community. How long that wait turns out to be could have big effects on campus beyond the stress it creates. Because Antioch College might not be open next year the Board of Trustees feels it is unethical accept any new students even if they are well informed about the situation. Currently, if someone sends in an application, “We just file them,” says Meredith Taylor, who by herself makes up half of the Antioch College Admissions Department. Meredith has filed 71 completed online applications and there are at least 21 more in progress, along with many that were sent by mail or fax and filed but uncounted.
Kip Vosler is a twenty-one year old gas station attendant in Yellow springs and is one of the 21 incomplete online applications. He first visited Antioch with a former student he met at the Yellow Springs street fair. His reaction was an “instant attraction” to the campus, but then again it may have been for the student that he is now dating. Kip’s attraction to Antioch is not just physical, he especially likes the concepts of the co-op program and narrative student evaluations. He was surprised and a little mad to learn that the University believes Antioch’s program is unattractive to serious students. According to Meredith, Kip is not the only prospective prospective student that wants to show the Board how serious he is. Unfortunately for Kip, the Admissions Department is not currently allowed to process applications beyond filing them for later analysis, and there has been no active recruitment of a first year class for the coming fall. For a school that might be closing next year, with an Admissions Department of two people, over a hundred applications is a very impressive number, but during a normal school year Meredith would expect about five hundred applications by now.