Articles from the front page.
On Monday, February 9, the offices of the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute in the Millworks complex in Yellow Springs were flagged by the Department of Building Regulation of Greene County, due to a miscommunication regarding the acquisition of the proper occupancy permits. Folks had until 5:00 p.m. that day to remove all personal effects and evacuate the building, and no one will be allowed to occupy the space until the issue is resolved.
The following day, a meeting with the Department was held. Present at the meeting were Chief Building Official Al Kuzma, an associate of his, Millworks owners Ellen Hoover and Sandy Love, Nonstop designer Michael Casselli, former College Revival Fund Treasurer Don Wallace (who signed the rental lease), and Executive Collective members Susan Eklund-Leen and Chris Hill.
According to an email sent to the Nonstop community by Hill and signed by the entire Executive Collective (Hill, Ecklund-Leen, Beverly Rodgers, and Hassan Rahmanian), at the meeting it was decided that Nonstop will work with a licensed architect, to ensure the space continues to be up to code and that the paperwork for necessary permits are delivered to the Department. After these initial steps, there will be a series of inspections of the Millworks space, the first one on Friday, February 13, says Nonstop IT Coordinator Tim Noble.
In addition to the inspection, for a short period of time on Friday, people were admitted into the building, in order to give visiting members of the Board ProTempore a tour of the space.
The future of Nonstop’s new home is hopeful. Tuesday’s meeting was productive, the obstacles seemingly conquerable. Hill felt “very encouraged by what seemed to be a shared interest among all those present at the Tuesday afternoon meeting in remedying the situation in a timely fashion.”
“If all goes well,” writes Hill, “we could be back in the space within a week.”
Until that time, classes will continue as scheduled in their various locations across the village, and other events and meetings will be shifted geographically as necessary. Hill’s email contained phone numbers of Nonstop staff members that should be contacted with questions or concerns. Nonstop’s HQ phone number has been forwarded to Nancy Wilburn, who is acting as a sort of temporary central dispatcher.
“Because Nonstop is so well integrated with community,” says Noble, “alternative space isn’t hard to come by.” To that end, thanks are due to the individuals and businesses in the Village of Yellow Springs who continue to unwaveringly support Nonstop.
Katie- your compost is HOT.
John Hempfling-
I wouldn’t mind kissing you-
one of these days-
Tim Noble,
You are solid gold laser talent.
feminism starts at home.
do your chores. (literally)
The CMs
are holding
this community
together-
Thank you
<3<3<3
Susan D-
If you’re reading this, you know
I’m thinking about you 😉
Will you be my
radical valentine?
It’s like that dangerous voltage
meeting those helium balloons.
Love explosion.
You are a wizard,
Jonny No.
I <3 Nonsters!
Casselli
ACAN showdown was
pretty cool-
thanks for that!
tie-dye + fractals =
you are my electric girl/
mint chocolate mouth X
daisies and little princes = <3(squared)
I want to get in
on your activist action
boots and shorts
dot com
back slash
please be mister february
Well, I was on the board of trustees from ’95 to the time of the closing. I voted against the closing. When they closed, I was immediately elected to the Alumni Board. And when our Board of Trustees was reconstituted I was asked to come back on.
Myself and two other trustees formulated a letter to oppose the closing of the college. We circulated the letter among former board chairs and trustees, and I believe in the end we got something like 54 signatures. At the same time the Alumni Board, of which I was a member, was organizing to keep the college opened. After the November 2007 Antioch University Board of Trustees meeting, I helped organize a group of people who had been very generous to the college, and they all said, no money without an independent Antioch College. That led to a meeting in New York, where the BoT asked us to form a board to negotiate the future independence of the college. We called ourselves the Antioch College Continuation Corporation, AC3. When the University broke off discussions in 2008, another group emerged and I was asked to be on the group, and we call ourselves the ProTem Board
In the short term, a smaller college, a small liberal arts college that can provide a disruptive education. In the long term, a small self sustaining liberal arts college which attracts students who want to mark their mark, and not always in the most traditional ways. But a college that provides a very rigorous engaged activist curriculum that can prepare students to engage and be intellectually active as most of our alums are. I’m in Washington D.C. and just visited with Eleanor Holmes Norton who is so supportive of all our efforts.
Nonstop has been amazing. It reminds me of what happened in the 60’s, through towns and cities people were setting up alternative universities. They were interdisciplinary, connecting knowledge with action. There were courses that dealt with what was really going on the world. Professors combined activism with academic subjects. In response to what was going on, young people wanted to learn about meaningful things.
And it has been wonderful for the town of Yellow Springs.
[On the future] I can’t comment because I just don’t know.
What cannot be misconstrued is how wonderful Nonstop Antioch is.
I have no idea. As soon as we get control of the college we will reopen it as soon as possible. When its ready to be reopened.
I was a history major, from ’63 to ’68. I was born in West Chester County. Antioch was the only college I applied to. I loved it and I keep on loving it.
You know, I don’t have one most exciting co-op. I taught phys. ed. to kids in Chicago… I had a co-op, and I worked in an advertising agency in Europe. I learned sort of first hand the objectification of women. I was setting up for shoots and even modeled myself. I was in a photo that appeared in Playboy, a disembodied leg over a man’s shoulder. I didn’t shave my legs and he didn’t want to hold it. He said, ‘Well, this is filthy,” like unshaven legs are somehow less clean. I have to chuckle, or in more popular parlance lol, I am now the head of the Women’s Studies program at Brooklyn College!
When I look back what really stands out is the extraordinary, unique individuals. What extraordinary, bright, complicated, unique, et cetera, individuals. It really did stress taking young kids and teaching them how to live on your own as an adult. As a thinking, caring, intellectually engaged adult. And every meeting is so difficult in the most wonderful sense of the word.
I’m the director of the Women’s Study Program at Brooklyn College, and the project director of the Shirley Chisholm Program of Brooklyn College Women’s Activism.
Do you know who Shirley Chisholm is?… She was the first woman of color elected to Congress, and the first black candidate for the democrats for President of the United States. Obama owes so much to her. You should look her up.
When I was a trustee I lived with so many Antiochians. I’ve had over thirty Antiochians live with me. Four CMs lived with me. Steve Shwerner, do you know him? and Nancy Crow lived with me.
February 3, 2009
“I’m an evangelist, and I was hunting for a cause.”
– Loren Pope (1910-2008)
Greetings from Texas!
Last semester I had the privilege of attending the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute as a transfer student from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, my hometown college. (If you follow college football, you may know that the TCU Horned Frogs have been ranked number 7 in the nation by two polls. I’m no college football fan but my instincts tell me that’s a fairly good ranking.) This semester, I am back in Fort Worth as a visiting student at TCU and working two jobs equivalent to forty hours a week. However, I do not consider my absence at Nonstop as anything more than the first Nonstop student more or less on ‘co-op’. Indeed, my intent is to return to Yellow Springs in the near future, perhaps as soon as this summer.
As I mentioned, I transferred into the Nonstop Institute last semester, having only been to Ohio once, and never having lived outside of Fort Worth, Texas before. I took a risk, just as all budding Antiochians do when deciding to attend the College. Not getting the privilege of a physical campus zoned for educational purposes, nor moving into a pre-assigned dormitory, nor signing up for classes in advance of my arrival, nor even knowing if there was sustainable work in the village, though, perhaps I took too much of a risk. But after following Antioch College years after I enrolled in TCU, I felt that I could trust the people whose hands I was falling into. And in the end, I was not disappointed in the care, commitment, and concern I received. After years of wondering, hoping, and praying that I could get the Antioch experience, I was finally an Antiochian.
Since first reading about Antioch College in Loren Pope’s Colleges That Change Lives, I knew that it was the education and experience (‘to be an Antiochian’) I was looking for. Indeed so much so that I tried to remake the Antioch experience in the realms of my personal, working, and intellectual life. I hardly need to repeat to you, faithful alums and board members, of the value of the Antioch education. The three pillars of an Antioch education, co-op, community, and classroom, are unmatched in that form. Antioch, as Pope put it in his Colleges That Change Lives, “is in a class by itself.” The Antioch you went to, however, was not the Antioch I attended. To many, the Antioch I attended was not Antioch at all. The Antioch I attended was not a campus, or a centrally-located culture, or even a space but a lived experience. It was a real education, or as Hassan Rahmanian said it, education as action. Antioch College is something, as evidenced by your outstanding commitment, carried throughout your life. And though your experience may not be mine, we are intertwined not merely by the name Antioch College, but by a cultural memory; one memory that reminds us of people, place, and struggle. My personal memory of it will be, in one semester, learning to live on my own, adapting to a new place, paying bills, holding a job, interacting with new people, watching my back (yes, in Yellow Springs, don’t laugh!), filling out W-2 forms, and engaging in every intricate facet of my education. None of that would have occurred without the people I learned from and with.
But the purpose of this letter is to not tell you about how, perhaps like you on your co-ops, I struggled. What frankly compels me to write this note, then, is to address upfront the worrisome rumor I am hearing that not only will Antioch College at its earliest be open in 2010 but that many faculty, staff, and students may in turn not be a part of the process to reopen it. It is a rumor, yes but as a student on co-op, I live off of hearsay, so please do not think that any one person is perpetuating this notion.
Regardless, as you will hopefully see when you visit Nonstop on February 15th, Antioch College is being lived out every day as truly what an education should be: learning, wherever, regardless of the situation. The professors I studied under know this best, and confronted this mighty feat all of last semester. They worked without offices, taught in living rooms and churches, interacted without any central meeting point other than the spaces we could find around town. They also kept going without knowing what would happen next. The faculty and staff ultimately were living off the tension of last year but this time, without the comfort of an office.
The faculty and staff developed a school in less than a year’s, maybe even six-month’s time. And when I came, I developed it too with these wonderful, brilliant, and amazing people. They taught me what I could not teach myself. And together we lived the education provided by Antioch College.
“So I ask you . . . to cherish up in your hearts, these, my parting words,” Horace Mann ended his final commencement speech to a graduating class from Antioch. Let me give my take on the parting words: please, don’t forget these outstanding individuals who changed my life.
Yours, fondly,
James Russell
Hopefully of the
Antioch College Class of 2011