AEA Digest: Pick your Destination

By Eva Erickson and Stacey Johnson
If you followed the many colorful flyers plastered around campus, you would find yourself in the Antioch Education Abroad (AEA) office, surrounded by foreign food, information, and a crowd of advisors and students sharing their stories from far-away places. This gathering at least shows that AEA, even in the face of the college’s instability, is thriving as usual.
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A Letter from the Antioch College Alumni Board

The statement below is supported by the majority of the Antioch College Alumni Board.

Since there have been different interpretations of what the Alumni Board intended in approving the agreement with the University Board of Trustees on November 3, 2007, and since recent actions by administrators contradict both the spirit and specifics of our understanding of how that collaboration should proceed, we hereby clarify our understanding of the terms of the agreement
We do so by indicating specific initiatives that fulfill our understanding. These understandings will guide our contributions to keeping Antioch College moving forward in the direction we all desire.
1. Immediate retraction of Andrzej Bloch’s letter of November 9, 2007, to the faculty. On November 9 the faculty withdrew its lawsuit in an attempt to encourage a more collaborative process–a gesture that should be welcomed, not dismissed. We believe that faculty employment should be assumed to be continuing, not terminated, with the understanding that a genuinely collaborative process may indeed recognize that some faculty positions need to be eliminated and that such a process will benefit the Antioch community much more fully if faculty are encouraged to suggest means for making such adjustments. Continue reading A Letter from the Antioch College Alumni Board

Dispatches from Community Meeting

Antioch College, Celebrating 155 Years of Market Tested Toughness
By Billy Joyce

It’s only just begun. Community Meeting was charged with anger and uncertainty this week. With the decision to lift the suspension of operations obliterating the past and only halfway tracing the future, distrust of the university’s minions and its board of trustees runs high.
University Vice Chancellor and Spokesperson Mary Lou LaPierre jockeyed for Community Member of the Week honors this week by putting a heroic spin on this past weekend’s Board of Trustees decision to lift the suspension of operations. Continue reading Dispatches from Community Meeting

Letter from Steve Mooser ‘72

To Antioch Students,

I am over at a conference in Europe and immersed in the duties of participating in that.  I read the NYTimes dispatch which indicated in part that after the initial euphoria among students last Saturday, there was concern because nothing in the “historic agreement” was firm and permanent about the future of the college.  There are multiple conditions, provisions and questions.
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Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, How Say You?

This weekend, the future of Antioch College is sitting in the hot seat of a court room. Antiochians, Yellow Springers, Alumni, members of the Board of Trustees (BOT), and many reporters with pen at hand have come to witness a decision that could be either a death sentence or an Antiochian Renaissance. No one, not even BOT members, knows what the decision will be, yet everyone has strong feelings about the outcome. Some people think that the Board’s decision to close is unlikely to be reversed. Others believe that the Board will keep the college open. Gina Potestio, a first year, is, “trying to stay optimistic, and hearing the feedback from the upper-level students saying it’s going to close is a little hurtful after seeing … what everyone’s doing for us.” Many students are in denial about the possibility of Antioch closing. “I just really didn’t want to think about [the closing],” explains James Kutil, a second year student, “so, I’ve kind of been in a numb panic, because the school closing means a lot to me.” There is still a gut feeling that the college just can’t close.

Continue reading Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, How Say You?