Month: September 2007

McGregor Students get a Voice

Charlotte Dungan started in the Liberal Arts program at Antioch University McGregor in 2006 in the hope of becoming a teacher. She is a mother of two, and works as a computer contractor. She is also a lunch teacher at the Antioch School, which she calls “probably her best hour of the day.” She says her educational experience at McGregor has been very fulfilling. “I’ve been to three other schools and it’s been by far the best education I’ve had.” She hopes to graduate in the Spring of ‘08.

In 2006, she founded the McGregor Voice, a newsletter written for and by McGregor students. It is published twice a quarter with a circulation of 150 copies.

Continue reading McGregor Students get a Voice

Antioch Internet Digest

Antiochians.Org
This is your one-stop site for all things revival.  Antiochians.org should be your greatest resource for finding the latest banter between Antiochians, networking with alumni across the globe, and keeping up-to-date on all happenings of the Alumni board and their resolution.

Portal.antiochians.org
Community access for all Antiochians.  Here you can discuss all things Antioch on a community forum, create a blog, and learn the latest.  The possibilities keep growing for this new virtual community. Continue reading Antioch Internet Digest

Interview: Dan Shoemaker

He’s the bearded guy from the reunion picture that ran in the Times, “the one that looks most like an old hippie,” for whom the Oscar ceremony is a holy day. A teacher at Bowling Green in Cultural Studies and Antioch class of ‘92, Dan Shoemaker has become one of the more frequent visitors to campus to reconnect with the Alma roots, most recently for a film lecture last weekend. The Record has a conversation with the man from the 90s about movies, SOPP, and “being a good Antiochian.”

What is your favorite movie?
The Third Man, with Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. It’s beautifully shot, and it’s sort of post modern in a way because the protagonist keeps doing  all these things he thinks are the morally right things to do, but because he doesn’t understand the context he’s in, they’re the wrong things.

What were some of the main events that happened during your years at Antioch? Was there a lot of stuff happening while you were there?
Well, it’s Antioch, so there’s always a controversy happening on campus. Are you talking about [what’s] important to me, or important to the community in general?

Well, both. Whatever really sticks out in your mind.
Well, probably the biggest thing that happened while I was attending Antioch was the first discussion of the Sexual Oppression Prevention Policy. At the time, it was a very polarizing discussion on campus. The initial draft of the policy, as it was presented to the community by the women of the Womyn’s Center, had, I think, about 10 or 12 points to it. Two of them were unconstitutional, and the Dayton Daily News reported the Dayton ACLU’s opinion that too much of the policy was unconstitutional. …One of the policies that was unconstitutional was that people who had been accused of a sexual offense were supposed to be removed from campus on the basis of the accusation before any hearing happened. So there was a due process question, and I think a lot of men were threatened by that. So it was very polarizing, controversial, and in a lot of ways it was very unpleasant to be on the campus at the time.

It also happened during the quarter -we were on the quarter system then- where two of every bad thing that could happen on a college campus happened: we had two college students die that quarter and it was a tremendously difficult time. I think we lost about half of the entering class. However, the result of all that turmoil is, or was, a sexual prevention policy as you know it today, which I think is a great policy. It’s been widely instated and how can you argue with a policy that merely asks people to establish consent? … I think the SOPP as it exists is a triumph. It’s a triumph like a lot of other Antioch triumphs; something really good came out of something really bad.

It really bothers me when I read criticism of it in the press that a lot of people who are commenting on it don’t understand that it was initiated by students. They make it sound like it’s some kind of top-down regulation imposed by crazy liberal academics on a student body that just wants to party. It just bugs me how they don’t understand how it came about.

I’ve heard that many alumni have felt cut-off from Antioch. Have you personally experienced any of this?
No, Antioch was a life-changing experience for me. I’ve not been as connected as some people, I think, but I’ve tried to stay abreast of things, and I think even more so since the announcement … One of the good things that’s come out of the crisis is that it’s put me back in touch with a lot of Antioch people I knew and have fallen out of contact with. It has introduced me to a lot of Antioch people that I didn’t know previously, and whom I think are really great people. So, I feel a lot more connected now than I did previously, even though I felt sort of connected before.

Do you have any advice as to how we can make the gap smaller or bridged between Antioch and its alumni, or is that irrelevant to you?
No, I wouldn’t say it’s irrelevant. I think there are a lot of alumni who have been alienated from the college because of the university governance structure and unhappiness with the university, a lack of confidence at the college and determinance on destiny.

How would we be able to decrease that lack of belief in the structure, or in Antioch’s current state?
By making the college more autonomous, which is what the alumni board is trying to accomplish, in addition to keeping it open.

Do you have anything else to say to the community?
[Laughter] Sure, I could think of a couple of things: first of all, I want to say that everyone I spoke to during the teach-in, and after my talk this weekend was respectful, if not indeed courteous, whether or not it was something we agreed upon. So, I’m not buying any of this “toxic culture” stuff. I was also impressed with the intellectual quality of the discourse I had with Antioch students, so you all should feel proud of yourselves and mad about how you’ve been misrepresented.

I guess the second thing is– how can I put this…  if the Record is trying to talk to me, it’s only because I’ve been a good Antiochian. And you all should try to be good Antiochians. I’m a little reluctant and sort of embarrassed to be interviewed because there are a lot of people who are doing many more important things than I am doing. It’s not that I haven’t been doing anything, but mostly … I’ve been complaining, which I think is part of a basic Antioch skill set; develop your criticism … and analysis. I had the misfortune of getting my picture in the New York Times over reunion weekend which, I guess, gave me a certain amount of stature and raised my public profile, but not in ways that translated to any kind of leverage.

So do you feel like it shouldn’t have been your picture in the paper?
Well, I think it only happened because so few people got to ask questions for the Board of Trustees and I was the one that most looked like an old hippie and therefore supported the Times’ inaccurate representation that everyone at Antioch is taught to smash the system. My most meaningful Antioch experience was my internship at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, where I was not taught to smash anything! I feel bad that my picture was used as an illustration of The New York Times’ stereotype of Antiochians.

They too were once young

Hassan Rahmanian- Associate Professor of Administration and Management

Where were you when you were 20 years old?
It was 1970, and I was at the University of Tehran which was and still is one of the major universities in Iran. I was part way through my second year as an economics major.

How did you decide to go into economics?
The way it works in Iran is you have to take a very challenging entrance exam. The test I took also included science, since my background included lots of math and sciences. So I was accepted into the chemistry program. I didn’t like the program, and the next option was the economics program.

What was going on politically when you were 20?
Well of course the Vietnam War was going on, the situation in the Middle East with Palestinians, and the student movement in France. All of this greatly affected us since the Shah of Iran was in power, who was very supportive of American policies. So any critique of the Vietnam War or the issue with Palestinians was to directly challenge the Shah. In Iran part of being in college is also being political. That was part of my initiation to being a student, and it was almost expected by society. So my first political involvement was organizing with students to support a strike for the city bus drivers. The strike was in response to cut subsidies.

What goals did you have for the future?
Well that was the year I got married, and I have been married now for 37 years. The political engagement made for odd aspirations. I was very much enjoying my time, and probably reading three times what was required of my classes. I joined a sort of underground university. There was a professor who had his Ph.D. in Sociology who came to Iran to teach, but was then silenced because he was too political. So he went underground, and some of us followed him to learn. It would meet in different times at different places so it would not be found. It was raided by police several times. He became one of the icons for the revolution even though he was not around when it occurred. He associated with the ideology of Islamic revolution, and his name was Ali Shariati. He was trying to bring a Marxism view combined with an Islamic concept.

What type of student were you?
I was a very good student overall. I was actually valedictorian when I got my master’s degree. The major part of my education was outside of the curriculum, learning underground. My reading and learning outside of the curriculum was much more than what I was required to do.

A Week with the Maasai

African Time, like Antioch Time, is an elusive force that moves all appointments back by anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. So Sarah and I are not surprised when we are asked to wait for twenty minutes in the back of the truck that is to take us out to the rural secondary school where she is working. Then abruptly, there is a further cause for delay. From just beyond the nearest line of stone-and-metal houses, a cloud of black smoke boils into the air. People from the far fringes of this town become aware of it before we do, and everyone seems suddenly to be on the move. Men and women are running toward the smoke, scooping up small children, while even smaller ones, temporarily abandoned, toddle after.

The ten or so people with us in the back of the truck–most of them Maasais in various purples and reds–also pour out. We follow them. This town is Monduli Chini, and Monduli Chini’s main source of petrol (that’s gasoline, to you) has just burst into flame. The petrol vendor’s house, which was also his shop and storeroom, has caught fire and the man himself has been rushed off to the hospital with grave burns. No one bothers to return to the truck. There is not enough petrol in the tank to get us where we need to go, and not enough in the town to fill it.

The truck sets off in search of a source of fuel. African Time ticks on. Where they find the petrol, Sarah and I aren’t sure. It is nearing dusk when we arrive in Eluai. The place is named for the Maa word for thewhistling acacia: a silver tree with nail-length thorns that alternate on its branches like barbed wire. Each tree is laden with a number of inky black pods, and in many of the pods ants have bored small holes. When the wind blows—and in Eluai the wind is always blowing—they keen eerily.

This is a place full of strange plants. One tree has an acidic sap that can take flesh from bone. “If you swallow,” one local boy warns gleefully, “it kill a man in one minute.” The most colorful plant in the area is a spindly shrub that puts out sprays of yellow, jawbreaker-sized fruits; the fruits are poisonous, but the roots make a traditional Maasai medicine for malaria. Also present are the monolithic baobab trees, with fruits that resemble nothing so much as hand grenades. The grass here is sharp and whiplike. The ground is hard and carved by dry gulches. It seems an unlikely place for the cradle of humanity, but the famed Olduvai Gorge is just next door.

Noonkodiin, where Sarah works, is the area’s only co-educational secondary school, and it serves the Maasai people. With most of the students gone on break, the compound is calm. In the night, the hyenas come out and the wind breaks against the metal roof, which thrums like a sounding board.

But the mornings are quiet. There are women singing over the cooking fire in the kitchen. There is Sarah and her Pali chants. Nothing like it. (One of the mornings, an exception, finds us waking up to the rambling monologue of the local madman, who apparently wanders the area unmolested.)

Then from Eluai it’s out to the home of one of the students, at his invitation. The journey is four hours on foot. At first there is a dirt road. Then there is a cowpath. Finally, there is just scrub. When we reach the half-circle of thatched dung homes that house this student’s family, we collapse onto stools and are given bottles of lukewarm Coca Cola.

Our accommodations for the night are ample by the standards of the place. The student–whom we know as Daniel–and his father have vacated their own bed for us to use, but there is a catch: they have installed with us Danny’s little sister, a grinning, gap-toothed little goblin who kicks in the night and clambers across us once or twice early each morning. It’s a mystery to me how one small girl can find my kidneys so unerringly in near darkness, but she does it.

“No one bothers to return to the truck. There is not enough petrol in the tank to get us where we need to go, and not enough in the town to fill it.”

If I weren’t slowly beginning to learn otherwise, I would assume that these people were living as they had been for hundreds of years. But the land shapes the people, and the lack of it even more so. They are not nomads any longer–there is not room for that. And the bomas, which used to house unrelated people, no longer does–a result of the government’s policy of parcelling land out to individual families.

There are bead-decorated calabashes as well as plastic buckets to be found here. Glass beads and imported plastic ones. But there are deeper surprises here too. Daniel’s father, for instance, calls himself the chairman of the forest. As far as I can tell, his job is to work with the government to make sure local people obtain the paid permits required to cut wood in the area. He complains bitterly about those violators who destroy the environment.

And later, prompted by Sarah, Daniel shows her a pamphlet his father gave him on female circumcision. His father has told him he will never circumcise another girl in the family. It must be a recent decision: in a water-blotched photo album that Danny’s mother shows me, several color photographs show a slim young woman in a white dress, accompanied by her glowing family in ceremonial garb. These document the day of her circumcision. Their expressions are unreadable, but there is an unmistakable air of satisfaction to them. Meanwhile, the male circumcision rite is strong. On the way down from a mountain hike, Sarah and I see young men running towards an unknown destination. Curious, we inquire with our companions, who tell us that the men are running because they must all arrive together at the  place where the collective circumcision of the latest age-group is being celebrated. It’s African Time, and they are late for the party.