Month: November 2007

And Then We Wait…

Banners, signs, and golden balloons all over Yellow Springs announced the arrival of the Antioch University Board of Trustees last week Wednesday. In addition to the meeting between Trustees and the Alumni Board, around 130 alumni from around the country flocked to campus to await the decision they had been working towards since June: the lifting of the suspension that is scheduled to make the College go dark by July of next year. The weekend, however, ended without a decision.

Resolute and chanting the Antioch community descended upon the Bryan Center last Thursday for the presentation of the alumni business plan to trustees, villagers and Antiochians.

Spirits were high, when alumnus Matthew Derr revealed the $18 million in cash and pledges the alumni have raised to encourage Antioch University to deliver significant autonomy to the college. Continue reading And Then We Wait…

Jury Still Out, Courtroom Left Wondering

“I feel like it’s absolutely wretched,” commented third year student Rachel Sears, “but I hope it means that they’re considering a yes.” With the announcement on Saturday October 27th that the Board of Trustees’ decision in regards to the future of Antioch College would be delayed, the Community has been, once again, left hovering in uncertainty.

Homecoming weekend, with its flood of alumni—some of them coming from as far as Slovenia—its media momentum, and the yellow decorations extravaganza, had a climactic quality that led many to believe that the decision would come “now or never.” On Saturday afternoon, students, alumni, faculty and staff gathered on the Stoop, expecting an imminent announcement. “Have you heard anything?” echoed back and forth while wild rumors and sophisticated interpretations of alumni board members’ facial expressions went around, and test rounds for the Main Building North Tower Bell made everyone jump. The announcement at the John Bryan Center that no decision would be reached at the end of the weekend, and that trustees would be flying back home that same evening broke the illusion that October 27th would be a historic day. Continue reading Jury Still Out, Courtroom Left Wondering

Major Changes in IT

This weekend marks a number of changes in the operations of Antioch University’s IT system. In addition to the move of the college’s server and change in FirstClass login names, new policies have been drawn up that will give IT staff legal access to Email boxes of employees.
According to head of the IT department, William Marshal, there are 30 to 40 servers that support University IT operations, two of them running Email services. The Yellow Springs campuses have their email on a server that was here in Yellow Springs and the other four run their mail off a server in New England. Marshall, who accepted the position of Chief Information Officer 10 months ago, explained on Tuesday, “What we’re doing is putting everyone on the same server because there are problems with people communicating across campuses. That server will be physically located in New England.”

The server migration will take place this weekend, November 3-4, and FirstClass will be offline for the transfer. Coinciding with this move of hardware is a move from current usernames to the NetID system. When the FirstClass email system goes back online all usernames, formerly the user’s first initial and surname, will become Datatel, or NetID numbers. For students, this is the number on caf/key cards and the number used to access my.antioch.edu. Continue reading Major Changes in IT

To The Editors

To the Editors, Kim-Jenna  Jurriaans & Jeanne Kay:

It is hard to express all the feelings of joy and frustration, of elation and disappointment  from being on campus last week during the meetings of the Board of Trustees and the Alumni Board.  Particularly as decisions which we all hoped would have already been made are still on hold as negotiations continue.  But it is easy to be proud to be an Antiochian, more so now than ever.  Proud to see the Alumni rise up and support our college.  Proud to get to know the incredible alumni who have put together plans for the future and raised more money in four months than has ever been raised before in many times that period.  Proud to see the students led by CG pull together for the common good of the college which they clearly love as much as any who have graduated.  And who are as deserving of the degree as any who have gone before.  Proud of the faculty who have stood by the college and the students.  Proud of the staff who are working under the most trying of circumstances, with special kudos to the development staff who have accomplished miracles over the past few months without knowing whether it would be enough (it is, for now). Proud to walk around the village and see such support from the YS News and other local businesses. I arrived cautiously optimistic and, since the announcement that the AB had raised $18 million almost three times the  figure that the BoT said was required, remain optimistic that the suspension order will be lifted, the college will get its own board of trustees and will become sustainable on the model that we recognize as the heart and soul of the Antioch experience.
I look forward to being proud that the University Trustees will recognize the right thing and do it soon.  That they will soon acknowledge all the “yes” signs, large and small, around campus and the quality, dedication and potential of the current students who posted them.

Allen Spalt, ‘66