Category: From the Editors

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

Special Thanks

This term, the Record wouldn’t have come to life without our extroaordinary staff who worked with  a (nearly) unfaltering dedication to write articles on time on top of overcredits, busy schedules and other nonstop Antioch activities.

We thank warmly:
Sally for never needing a reminder, Alex for the amazing centerfolds,photos, and time, Sarah for her instituional knowledge, Levi for teaching us so much (!!) Paige for not letting us forget her, Eva for the hours  and the lastminute breakfasts, Zach for all his unpublished op-eds, Ben for the popularityscopes sometimes done in extreme circumstances, AJ for jumping on board so late and getting it so fast, Stacey for her efforts, Billy for managing to make community meeting reports actually entertaining, Kathryn for crossing state borders, Natalie for volunteering, Carl for making us see beyond the bubble, Tommy for being so reliable, Miyuki for her breathtaking bravery, Diana for her journalistic talents, Yuko for her literary mastery and delightul late night playlists, Bryan for his time in the office (Utley for Congress in ‘08!), and Mish for being so unbashedly herself and letting it show in her articles.

We also thank all the alumni who have contributed to the Record, by sending contributions, gifts, or letters of support

We thank passionately:
Rowan Kaiser for his unfaltering presence on layout nights
Laura Fathauer for knowing more about Antioch than the whole University Leadership combined
Jonathan Platt for his warm presence
Matt Baya and his webteam for getting the Record online every week
Christian Feuerstein without whom there would have been no first issue
Tim Noble for “being really great”
Michael Casselli, …he’ll know why.

-The Editors.

Time to Move On

While drinking my routine cup of coffee in Emporium yesterday, my eyes lingered for a minute on the bright red flag near the window that reads “Antioch alive!” I remember thinking “Yeah… It is for now. But for how long?”

In spirit, the campus appears pretty dead right now; students and faculty are trying to secure a future at other institutions and alumni throughout the country are once again left without agency. Continue reading Time to Move On

Sink the Captain Save the Ship

“I did not get this college into this mess, it’s been going on for 30 years, I’m here to get it out of the mess.” –Toni Murdock

If one thing has become evident this week, then it is that Toni Murdock is not the person to get Antioch out of this mess. While holding on to the claim that she did not build the sinking ship, she is not using the wisdom of the crew that sailed it for years. Meanwhile, she does not have the expertise to address the needs of the college, nor the willingness to learn about its history in order to tackle the systemic problems that prevent it from flourishing.
Her appearance in AdCil on Tuesday has once again made that clear.
Murdock’s interpretation of the joined resolution, two weeks ago, goes straight against that of the Alumni Board. Good faith indeed seems to be lost when seeing members of the AB shake their head in disbelief this week when hearing the chancellor convey her outline for the road ahead.
Following Toni’s vision, we cannot recruit students until “financially stable” another two years from now. Financial exigency, meanwhile, continues to be used as a means to terminate faculty and staff contracts, setting off an avalanche of insecurity across campus.
Current students fear their departments and community disappearing, and accepting new students in the near future does not seem to be part of the Murdock strategy for success. Continue reading Sink the Captain Save the Ship

Breaking Point

By Kim-Jenna Jurriaans

Antioch shakes you to your core; it breaks you and puts you back together with pieces of the people around you becoming part of you. That is what the past four months have felt like for me. If anything diverts me from the disappointment over the resolution that was meant to be the moment of relief and reward, then it is holding on to the unexpected bonds I made since this summer. I do not feel relieved, I do feel rewarded.

Continue reading Breaking Point