Articles - THE RECORD

Postcard from Co-Op

The date of departure draws near, and my passport, for which I applied three months in advance, fails to arrive. Calling the Department of State only lands me in voicejail. I pester my local congressman, whose kindly-sounding office ladies assure me that they’re writing stern words on my behalf. Listening to them, I imagine a flurry of limp, kindly-sounding emails. I do not count on them.

The government has decided that travelers to Mexico and Canada must have passports, and underestimated the surge in demand. Across the country, people are getting their passports one, two days before their trips, or not at all. Lines at the passport office in DC begin at 4:30 in the morning. Meanwhile, public transportation—my only kind—starts at 7 AM. So three days before my plane leaves, I pack my sleeping bag and head into town to bed down in front of the office.

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Rising Concern about Struggling Library

The announcement of the Board of Trustees meeting in June to suspend the operations of the college sparked another series of serious staff cuts. It has left the remaining members of the college staff and faculty scrambling to cover workloads far greater than in years past. In February, the struggling college already had to eliminate twenty non-faculty positions.

As Jill Becker, Associate Professor of Dance, mentioned at the open meeting of the Board of Trustees on Saturday, services such as housekeeping and security have been cut, as well as the hours of the Olive Kettering Library on campus. While the library was formerly open Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 11:00pm, staff cuts have reduced the available hours considerably. Students and faculty now have to do without the library in the evenings and Sundays.

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Dispatches from Community Meeting

Beginning with applause and admiration for literally every one on, around, and off campus, and ending in voiced disappointment over the cutbacks on hot breakfast, this year’s fi rst community meeting covered a lot of ground in a little time (sort of). McGregor 113, fi lled with a lot of old faces, and several new ones, was immersed in applause and a recurring sense of Antioch pride every few minutes, which helped to lead to its lengthy two hour session. Continue reading Dispatches from Community Meeting

Letters from the Editors

Dear Community,

Nostalgia, for some a warm and fuzzy word that expresses honor for the wisdom of your predecessors and respect for the past; for others it’s a synonyme for backwardness and lack of adaptability to the new.

It is putting on a pedestal the imperfect because it conveys a feeling. It’s what fuels places like Cambridge, Harvard and Yale, where the the cherished traditions and glorified experiences of the father become the promises of the son and his daughter after that. History and memory in these places are captured in historic buildings that never crumble. I can only assume that on a campus where the choice is between moving into Dickens’ or Byron’s old room, black mold and poorly done grafity is not an issue.

Nostalgia is allowed, it seems, encouraged even when it is backed-up with ever impeccable buildings and supplemented with state of the art new computer labs, as if to prove that one has not stayed behind.

But what if the buildings are crumbling? Recently, the media with willing quotes from those who should defend us, has all to often made a parody of Antioch. Our decaying buildings become indicative of our loss of academic rigour, piercings and tatoos a reason to declare our spiritual demise. What we are left with is nostalgia for better days long out of reach.

If attending the meeting in Cincinnati has done one thing, it is to counter this. Those attending showed that we are rich in thought and spirit, we were intelligent and compassionate, eloquent and creative and we hold on to what our predecessors have left us with because have made it our own and we value what it entails. To speak with the words of alumnus Larry Rubin “To say that our product is based on nostalgia shows a misunderstanding of what we are about and it shows a misunderstanding of what education is about. It is about collective memory, not condos.”

Dear Antiochians,

At Saturday’s Cincinnati meeting, many community members expressed their satisfaction at finally being able to meet the members of the Board of Trustees. The pleasure to be able to interact face to face with the people behind the institution was genuine and candid. An exterior observer might wonder why, considering the circumstances… But Duffy explained it well at the stakeholders session: “Antioch is an intimate place; our students care about intimacy”. “We want to have a relationship with you”, he declared to the Board in our name.

Antioch is a place that favors intimacy; and the question has already been raised: if the college does stay open, how big should it become? Nostalgics of the late 1960s ‘golden age’ sometimes hold the 1500-2000 students model in reference. Toni Murdock, in her recent PhD Commencement speech, refers to her “dream” of a “virtual commons” as the university of the future. This idea goes in the direction of current patterns of globalization—as described by her principal reference throughout the speech, Thomas Friedman—in which the physical space becomes increasingly disregarded, at great loss for the local.

The Antiochian values of bottom up action, shared governance and community solidarity are contrary to that vision. They call for resistance against any such attempts at uniformization and dehumanization. They call for the recognition of the collective through respect for the individual, and the sacredness of personal interactions.

Whatever a future Antioch College may come to be, I hope that it will always remain an intimate community. The so often undermined power of intimacy sometimes resurfaces despite it all, and authentic interactions might still hold more value than is usually attached to them. We can look for proof in the outcome of Saturday’s meeting.
With Love,

-JK

First Impressions

Between mandatory meetings, the Sexual Offense Prevention Policy, the Racial Discrimination Prevention Policy, partying, registration, going to class, and trying to keep the school open, the first week at Antioch College has been a baptism by fire for the first years.

Students arrived for orientation and move-in on Thursday, the 23rd. They were given an eleven item check list, and went from station to station getting room keys, filling out paper work, and being handed bags of free stuff. Carmen Atlee-Loudon described her first impression of Antioch College as “slightly disorganized but really welcoming.” When Gina Potestio, arrived at Antioch her first thought was “this is going to be interesting”. Eric Kobernik’s first impression of the college was “hardcore.”

After the first day came the mandatory meetings scheduled back-to-back, sending students from one building to another. Friday was the most tightly scheduled, with both the SOPP and RDPP meetings being held that morning. First years were anything but overwhelmed with the myriad activities planned for them. “I was stoked to do everything; that’s why I came here,” said Kobernik.

That evening a community gathering was held to prepare for the Board of Trustees meeting, and at six o’clock in the morning the next day students, alumni, and villagers gathered outside of Antioch Hall to join the caravan to Cincinatti. Among the students who woke up early that Saturday morning, there were more then a few first years, a number of which also had the opportunity to address the board at the morning meeting.

“It was one of the most amazing demonstrations of solidarity among a group of individuals that I had ever seen,” said Jay Casale, one of the first years who spoke to the board on Saturday, “It struck a really deep chord in me.”

The effort to keep Antioch open was very visible to all the first years.Some even felt a little lost in the hustle and bustle surrounding the issue. “It was kind of overwhelming, in the way that you want to get involved but you’re not really sure what to do,” said Atlee-Loudon.

While stopping the college in which you just enrolled from closing is not the normal freshman concern, fitting in is, although first-years at Antioch seemed to be taking that in stride. First years were being shuffled around together, and had plenty of time to socialize, something they found easy, because, as Atlee-Loudon put it, “everyone is so welcoming and friendly that it easy to start conversations.” Even socializing with the upperclassmen (usually represented as big and scary in cliché) came easily to the members of the entering class. “[at Antioch] they want to be your friend, in other schools upperclassmen shit on the freshmen, [but] here it is much more social,” said Kobernik.

Maybe the biggest challenge posed to the class of 2011 is answering the question “Why did you come to a school that you were told would be closing in a year?” This year’s entering class is here to make the most of this year and do everything that is quintessentially Antioch. Students want to get in their last walks in the Glen, engage with the SOPP and RDPP, attend Board meetings, and take advantage of their classes. The climate of solidarity on campus and the exceptional community mobilization since the June announcement might also have weighed in the balance. As Eric Kobernik put it some students are here because of the closing, and they might not have had a shot at such an exhilarating orientation anywhere else.