This week in 113 there was a multi-media presentation that didn’t suck. Some kids whined about missing lunch so now they have to go to class at 8:45 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the spirit of hygiene, Beth gave away soap to Eleanor Holmes-Norton fans and the kid who guessed that the pool is named after somebody named Poole. And of course Pulse blew up like a Blow-Pop.
Charms Community Meeting take one, action: a bunch of fruit flavored kids smoking on the outside, bubbly personalities on the inside, fabulous!
In Pulse, Cil-weary community members Erin-Aja Grant and Julian Sharp, student representatives to ComCil and AdCil respectively, introduced a proposal for building a community referendum to propose a no-confidence vote of University Chancellor Tulisse (Toni) Murdock.
The meat of the proposal which is still in draft form and was projected on a screen at the front of the room, centers around Murdock’s handling of the August 31st lock out on employees of the Office of Institutional Advancement, “The unprofessional and dehumanizing experience brought against the locked-out employees speaks volumes of Chancellor Murdock’s leadership and lack of commitment to ethical standards.”
Also Grant and Sharp proposed a draft of a second community referendum, which would support an autonomous Antioch College that would be free from the auspices of the Antioch University system. Again, the referendum still in draft form reads, “We support the formation of a College Board of Trustees autonomous from the University governance structure. If independence is not granted, we do not believe Antioch College will survive.”
There were cheers and claps and serious concerns. Carole Braun, staff member and UE 767 representative, wanted to guarantee that her non-union colleagues’ jobs were protected from retaliation if their names were signed to a referendum endorsing a vote of no-confidence. The answer, from a number of community members talking out of turn, was that there is a protection, though the specifics of that protection is unclear at this time.
In the rest of the meeting…Thank-yous went quickly. Joyce Morrissey was named the Community Member of the Week. There were 23 announcements. Then some students got a wake-up call.
“The horarium is getting tweaked,” said Associate Dean of Faculty and Mathematics Professor, Eli Nettles. Tuesday and Thursday classes that go from 9:00-10:50 a.m. will now go from 8:45-10:35 a.m., and classes that go from 11:00-12:50 p.m. will now go from 10:45-12:35 p.m. The announcement comes on the heels of complaints from students who have only ten minutes to eat lunch and go from one class to the next on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
There were also announcements from two men in town who urged community members, students in particular, to register to vote in the up-coming Yellow Springs council election. Voting registration forms are in the Coretta Scott King Center and the Community Government office.
First off in Pulse, Art Professor Nevin Mercede brought up comments she made last week about the upside of unlimited laundry service. She said that if her comments rubbed anyone the wrong way she urged them to take up their gripes with her in private.
Phillip Wooten, a fourth-year, complained that the scheduling of Faculty Senate meetings at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesdays inhibited Mercede’s ability to stay and talk about the things she’d said. Mercede responded that she’d been trying to get the Pulse section of the meeting moved earlier in the meeting agenda so that faculty members could stay longer to get more of the gist of the conversation. But Mercede insisted that it has been offensive to her to be in close quarters with students who haven’t washed.
At which point first-year J-Bear Casale remembered his announcement, “I’ll be digging through the trash this week for a ‘recycling audit.’” And the tangled web of Pulse spun to the point that the conversation was deemed inappropriate for the forum and insufficiently important for the amount of time it was taking.
Once upon a time some kids who grew up in the 90’s wanted to save their school.