Category: Issues

Why did you agree to become a ProTem Board Member?

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

What is your vision for the new Antioch?

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.

How do you think Nonstop will be integrated into the new Antioch project?

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.

When do you think the College will reopen?

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.

What was your major?

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.

What was your most exciting Co-op?

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!

What was the most important thing Antioch taught you?

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.

What are you involved in now?

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

If any building on Antioch College campus was yours to manage (or neglect), which building would it be and what would you do with it?

Jeanne Kay: I would transform Spalt into an internationally renowned medical center to study and extract the properties and virtues of toxic mold.

Tim Noble: Norment. I’d rebuild it. It was my favorite house.

Shea Witzo: I’m sure Toni and Tom’s Main Building pool party was a lot of fun. I’d probably do that with another building, like South. Wait…

Juliet Hansen:  North. I’d turn it into an indoor rainforest, and live in it of course!

Lincoln Alpern: The Library. I’d produce a blockbuster horror movie filmed in the basement.

Queer Center

Coordinator: Nic Viox
The queer center is a group is open to anyone who self-identifies as a queer. I hope to have a few events this term, including [but not limited to]: movie screenings, a musical guest, and Genderfuck! More information will be forthcoming as events begin to take shape.

SANE (Students for Alternatives to Neoliberal Economics)

Coordinator: Jeanne Kay
What is neoliberalism? How does it operate on local, national, international levels? After the financial crisis, what can we do to help build a post neoliberal world? How does Nonstop fit into a larger struggle as a bastion against the corporatization of Higher Ed? Are Obama’s policies challenging or maintaining the neoliberal economic order? What should be the role of the international financial institutions post-Washington Consensus?
These are the questions that SANE will attempt to tackle this term, through discussion groups, fieldtrips, movie events, speakers, and hopefully, an AntiWatt radio show!

The Alternative Library

Coordinators: Katie Connolly, Jonny No, and Rose Pelzl
We are here to support the academic realization of our community with the Alternative Library. The ‘Alt Lib’ is a unique and radical book collection comprised of harder-to-find alternative print media including periodicals, books, magazines and archived materials from main campus.
Recent donations have been added to augment the previous Pennell House collection including some incredible resources from faculty and personal collections. Other collections that are housed and managed in conjunction with the Alt Lib include the Womyn’s Center collection and the Underground Zine collection. In terms of integrating other IG collections salvaged from the Union much work remains undone, but we’ll be focusing on them later this year.

Over the course of this and subsequent terms Nonstop’s tech team will assist in cataloging and indexing the contents of the collection in the hopes of making digital resources available as well, and the Alternative Library coordinators are actively partnering with infoshops and other radical media organizations around the country in an effort to help establish a universally accessable digital incarnation of the zine library. For now, you’ll be able to check items in and out from Campus North.

So what can you do help? We’re glad you asked. A data entry system has been developed locally to aid in entering data to index the collections; so for now all media will be available during open hours on an honor-based system. When you check out materials, we would humbly ask that for each item you take home you take a few minutes and do the data entry to catalog another item. Training is available to help you learn to create the necessary records and enter the item into our database through a web browser at the internet kiosk computer on the pole in the Alt Lib. Ask a coordinator, Tim or Andrew for help with this and we’ll show you how.

Radical Crafting:

Coordinators: Shea Witzberger, Rose Pelzl
We are an open community group for artivists and craftivists. We want to foster resource and skill sharing and provide a place to activate craft as empowerment, community building, and beauty makin’. We are collecting materials for community use and hope to facilitate both workshops and larger community wide projects this spring. Please contact us about your interests in learning, teaching, or participating in ANY workshops, including skill shares on sewing, screening, deconstructing, patching, tayloring, knitting, or dyeing that will lead up to an end of the term D.I.Y. AntiFashion Show! We are here to support you. Let us know what you want to see, and look out for event postings!

Inter-faith Dialog

Coordinator: Jessie Clark
We will be engaging in intriguing discussions about spirituality, religion and all the juicy bits in between. The discussions will take place over tea at the Dharma Center every other Sunday at 1 o’clock. If you have ever pondered the meaning of life or have a general interest in the theories of others come join us!
The focus will be on exchange and mutual discussion, sharing religious woes and oohs (epiphanies), what bothers us and what is helpful to us in thinking about the spiritual life (need there be such a thing?). We are interested to hear what you think about these hot topics. Atheists & religious misfits also welcome. For more information e-mail me at jessie.spoons@gmail.com. Hope to see you there!

Antiochian Values

Coordinator: Eva Erickson
the meetings will discuss all of our shared values and agreements, and our culture. Why do we have these values? What is great about them? What needs improvement? How can we make sure that our practices and culture reflect/match our values? How can we extend these values beyond our community? How can we make sure that these values are kept within Nonstop and Antioch regardless of the uncertain future?
The purpose of Antiochian Values meetings is not to create/revise laws, policies etc. but rather to create ongoing dialogue about who we are and what we stand for and WHY it’s important. Through questioning, we (re)discover the love, purpose, and basic being of Antioch and Nonstop, for when we question, we cease to take things for granted and remember why we’re all here.
Everyone is welcome to attend.