Author: Record Editors

Letter from Chelsea

Dearest Community,
I wanted to share with you my response regarding the events that took place this last weekend and on the future of Antioch College. It is true that the university will cease its’ operations of Antioch College effective June 30tth, 2008. This is not new news. In fact, its not necessarily negative news.  This past weekend the university continued with their position on the future of Antioch College, but has not concluded their negotiations with the ACCC.
We in CG were deeply troubled by the way their announcement was delivered to the community and are attempting to help paint a clearer picture of our current situation and our possible future. In no way are we trying to instill a false sense of hope, but the reality is that what was stated on Friday was presented with far more certainty than the situation warrants. We believe that the university administration and BOT are justifiably concerned about their legal position in regards to the college, but they can not speak for the ACCC, especially when those negotiations are continuing, which we understand that they are. Although the university administration and BOT can say that they are no longer operating Antioch College after the 30th of June, they cannot say that it will for certain be closed. The type of self-fulfilling prophecy that was exhibited this past weekend is dangerous and damaging to all of us, and the future of this amazing institution.
Continue reading Letter from Chelsea

Letter from Zach Gallant

If anyone has taken a course with Scott Warren, they’ve heard his analogy of the situation at Antioch “It’s like the grandchildren walking up the stairs with a pillow to smother grandpa for the inheritance money”. Appropriate analogies have never been what I’d refer to as an Antiochian strength, but this is as accurate as it is vivid and amusing.
At the same time, let’s take a step back and ask ourselves, like I imagine the grandfather from that analogy might between muscle spasms and screams, how we let this happen. When people at home or work ask me why Antioch is closing, as much as I’d like to scream about the evil University, what I always end up answering is “Decades of mismanagement by radical liberals”. The University is certainly not innocent in its money-grubbing opportunism and disregard for history, tradition, or decorum, and the cowardice of these destroyers will not be forgotten. But they are simply vultures, looters attempting to squeeze another penny out of someone else’s hard work. They are not frightening aside from their prevalence. What’s much more terrifying to me is what allowed them this opportunity: The death of the Antioch dream. Continue reading Letter from Zach Gallant

STAFF PROFILE: STEPHEN DUFFY

By Tyler Morse

Steven Duffy is, in general, a man of few words.  If Duffy is asked a quick question he gives a quick answer; if something important should arise, his thoughts are in order and he’s ready to roll. While he’s at work he keeps Olive Kettering Library running smoothly and happily, and when he’s not he spends his free time either exercising at a gym near his home in western Dayton, or perfecting his abilities as an all organic “ghetto gardener.”  Before his forty or so years making fines disappear at the library, Duffy spent a decade in and out of Antioch College as a “wild ‘n crazy hippie”/student.  After his first three years at the school he moved to the “promised land”, West Hollywood, where he opened a free clinic and supervised 125 volunteers dealing with “V.D. birth control, draft counseling (for Vietnam draftees; Duffy’s own draft lotto number was never pulled), dentistry and psychiatry.” Occasionally the clinic didn’t have enough money to pay the rent. Continue reading STAFF PROFILE: STEPHEN DUFFY

Letter from Jude Logan Demers ’97

My People,
As an Antioch College Alumni ‘97, I am proud to share that I stood front row at Sen. Barak Obama’s presentation yesterday with my fiancé and 12,000 people.  I am also happy to share that I “taped” it and have uploaded it to our web site www.youtube.com/judemers .  I invite you to watch this motivational and inspirational speech in five parts.
The reason that I write this in my opening paragraph info is that us Antiochians are humanitarians.  It is time to appeal to Sen. Obama in seeking help and assistance for Antioch College.  I am offended and insulted by Antioch University’s Board of Trustees treatment of Antioch College’s Staff, Faculty, Administration, and Students.
We Antiochians of Antioch College fame have been the source of the philosophies, missions, moneys, knowledge, and wisdom that created Antioch University and it’s many Universities. Continue reading Letter from Jude Logan Demers ’97

Letter from Alex Mette

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.  Continue reading Letter from Alex Mette