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.”

Oct. 2: The Junkyard Ghost Revival

7pm, Apollo Room, Student Union, Wright State University

Celebrated spoken word theater, The JGR- Derrick Brown, Andrea Gibson, Anis Mojgani, and Buddy Wakefield- will guide the audience through a tour of their personal junkyards.
[Co-sponsored with with Women's Center at Wright State]

Oct. 4: The History of Jazz

9am-12pm, Bryan Center, Room A, 100 Dayton Street.
1-4pm, Senior Citizens Center, 227 Xenia Avenue.

Steve Schwerner, Antioch College emeritus faculty, will teach a day-long workshop on the History of Jazz, starting with its origins in the African-American tradition to the present day world music it has become.

Oct. 5: Founder’s Day

The Nonstop Community will celebrate the founding of Antioch College in 1852 by Horace Mann, the father of public education in the US, with assorted festivities.

Click here for more Nonstop Presents events.

At a time like this, I hardly know what to say. We should all be celebrating the success of so many of our peers, who have worked hard, grown, struggled, and given their all to graduate. We should all revel in their achievement, and it should be an inspiration to this entire institution. Alas, an ominous cloud hangs over this campus, blocking the radiance of this otherwise brilliant day. After 155 years of progressive teaching, real-world education, and academic excellence, this institution will be condemned to the pages of history, an idea and memory still certainly, but a living entity no longer. I guess I am between two minds. Half of me wants to celebrate Antioch College, be positive, and follow Bryan?s lead, thanking all my closest friends and the staff and faculty who have made a profound impact on my life. The other half is angry, ashamed to see the dream of Horace Mann come to a most unfitting demise after so many years.

By Molly Thornton
At this point in time, we are all coming to the realization that the rollercoaster of the last three months is still rolling, and there is no end in sight. We are all at wits ends, and reaching dates in the timelines of our lives at which decision making can not be prolonged. In this time, the fight for Antioch can feel futile and exhausting, and better left abandoned than lived through for another moment. In this time of great struggle, and want to give up hope, the only thing I can think to do is to share with you some of the thoughts I sort through when in extreme doubt, which give me the strength to fight for one more day.

   I can?t remember when I?ve been prouder of being an Antiochian: proud of alumni who raised $18 million in 125 days, proud of students who refused to bail when the going got iffy and the pipes got leaky.  I am grateful to faculty who so espoused the values of Horace Mann that they have hung in when salaries were cut, when names were black-listed during Joe McCarthy?s rampage…and now, when tenure is spelled ?tenuous.?  I bask in the  reflected glory of past Antiochians… Stephen Jay Gould, Coretta Scott King, Eleanor Holmes Norton.  Hey, I once grilled a hamburger in the C-Shop for Rod Serling and shared a chemistry class with Mario Capecchi!  (I would be  delighted to sign  autographs.)  An anti-bumper sticker person at heart, my little Honda now sports a sticker that proclaims ?I ?Heart? Antioch College.?

There is much that I regret.  Immature below my years, I did not march  when we invaded Vietnam.  I did not understand civil rights.  ?What difference does it really make what fountain they drink out of? where they sit in the bus??  (Until my date and I were refused service in a restaurant  because we were a mixed couple.)  I graduated third from the bottom of my class and had to make up those grades before I even dared apply to graduate school.  I was accepted only because of the support of one professor (Dr.  Bill John, who believed that nobody can be that hopeless!) and because of my Antioch degree.  Some of us are really late bloomers!