Author: Record Editors

IT Continuing Problem for College Community

By Alex Borowicz

As the term exhales its final waking breaths into the snow-filled December air, students scramble to finish final papers and senior projects.  Besides the late nights, slippery walkways, and myriad of distractions, Antioch students face one obstacle that has been plaguing the school for months: feeble internet speed that leaves all community members fighting for their own chunk of cyberspace.

Not 10 years ago, before the heydays of file sharing, Antioch was the proud owner of a T1 connection that brought internet to students, staff, faculty, and administrators.  T1 lines are capable of transmitting at speeds of 1.5 megabytes per second for both uploading and downloading.  These days however, speeds have fallen to merely a fraction of their former rates.  Even with the proliferation of the internet and its increased accessibility, Antioch College has been reduced to around half that speed, suggesting that perhaps the college is now being given only a partial T1 line. Continue reading IT Continuing Problem for College Community

Editorial by Jeanne Kay

On September 1st, 2006 I was walking through the streets of Yellow Springs, two huge suitcases behind me, looking for Antioch College. I hadn’t visited before. I didn’t know what any American college looked like. (Actually, I still don’t know.)

I got scared at first. I’ve told the story many times of how I missed the class photo because I was busy sobbing “I want to go hoooome” in Weston Hall. I was twenty one years old and had crossed two oceans, two straits, one canal in the past three years but I was scared to death. It was the first time I had to live on my own, as an adult, in the world. At 16 I had dropped out of school, and at 18 I had raised anchor to flee an unbearable reality and sworn to come back only when I felt strong enough to fight everything that had made me leave in the first place. But I felt completely lost, helpless and had no idea what to do with myself when I first set foot on the Antioch campus. Something had been missing from the trip, apparently, because I didn’t remember why I was here or what in me made me believe that I was up to the task of living in the real world.

Continue reading Editorial by Jeanne Kay

Editorial by Kim-Jenna Jurriaans

“It’s a wild place,” I remember my English teacher in University, an Antioch College alumna from the late 70s, saying when talking about the College back home in the Netherlands. In hindsight she could not have predicted just how right she was.

Sixteen months ago I embarked on a transcontinental journey to a small town in Ohio, hoping to reinvigorate a joy for learning I once had. Little did I know that less than a year later, I would find myself amidst one of the biggest stories in US higher education of the last decade. I had taken a leap of faith and it had changed my path forever.

At times, it is still unreal how this national uprising of alumni and campus community –the Antioch Revival, as it has come to be known — came about and just how massive it is. Online listservs are buzzing at all hours of the day and deep into the night, when alumni, having come home from a long day at work and having put their kids to bed, give up on a good night’s sleep to share their expertise in areas like law, fundraising and communications in one of dozens of online planning discussions (some running 80-posts deep in your Gmail inbox), while a volunteer IT team, made up of alumni professionals from around the country, work graveyard shifts to live-stream audio of campus meetings and build websites, including that of the new College Revival Fund, which in the last 125 days has raised close to $18 million in gifts and pledges to keep Antioch College open. Things are simply going too quickly to pause and realize the magnitude of experiences we’ve undergone in such a short period of time. Yet it somehow feels organic; as so often at Antioch, madness soon became a state of normality.
Continue reading Editorial by Kim-Jenna Jurriaans

ACAN Ad #3 – Non-Stop

ACAN Ad #3 - Non-Stop[display_podcast]

This winter break marks a critical turning point in the movement for Non-Stop Antioch. The College Revival Fund has delivered its first $2 million payment to the university to maintain continuous operations of the college, with another $4.6 million promised by December 15, and admissions is open for new transfer students.

We must sustain our momentum and keep pushing to establish autonomy for the college, lift financial exigency, restore tenure, recruit first-year students, and continue full, uninterrupted academic programs and support services.

We must be especially vigilant during the winter break to assure that our campus, its property and community, are kept safe.

We know that current students face the difficult choice of whether to leave in the face of such uncertainty and ambiguity. We are calling to you to stay with us and to fight, as we are with you. We will do everything we can to support those of you who decide to stay. We’ll join you in the struggle to improve conditions on campus and hold leadership accountable. Continue reading ACAN Ad #3 – Non-Stop