SENIOR PROFILE: TOM SAIN

So what year and major are you?
I’m a fourth year and I’m going to get my BS in physics.

What are you doing for your senior project?
I’m designing a circuit that relates to resistance to temperature.  It’s kind of abstract right now because I haven’t really done anything on it. So I guess when that day comes that I have to present it is when I will know what my senior project is.  Until then there’s not much I can say on it.

Yea there’s a lot of people who are stressed out about their SP. People don’t seem to know what they’re doing.
I mean the school is closing and that puts such a burden on all of my academics. It just freaks me out.  Continue reading SENIOR PROFILE: TOM SAIN

Letter from Zach Gallant

If anyone has taken a course with Scott Warren, they’ve heard his analogy of the situation at Antioch “It’s like the grandchildren walking up the stairs with a pillow to smother grandpa for the inheritance money”. Appropriate analogies have never been what I’d refer to as an Antiochian strength, but this is as accurate as it is vivid and amusing.
At the same time, let’s take a step back and ask ourselves, like I imagine the grandfather from that analogy might between muscle spasms and screams, how we let this happen. When people at home or work ask me why Antioch is closing, as much as I’d like to scream about the evil University, what I always end up answering is “Decades of mismanagement by radical liberals”. The University is certainly not innocent in its money-grubbing opportunism and disregard for history, tradition, or decorum, and the cowardice of these destroyers will not be forgotten. But they are simply vultures, looters attempting to squeeze another penny out of someone else’s hard work. They are not frightening aside from their prevalence. What’s much more terrifying to me is what allowed them this opportunity: The death of the Antioch dream. Continue reading Letter from Zach Gallant

Letter from Alex Mette

Dear Antioch,
Between periods of extreme stress and sadness I have thought about what this all means for me and my future, but mostly my heart goes out to others.  I came here not too sure about how I would feel about this place, in fact, after I came here to visit I had a lot of doubts about whether I really wanted to come here.  I remember that some people were doing an art project called ‘Antioch is Fucked’ and I asked them, “Is Antioch fucked because of us (the incoming class) or without us?”  “Both,” they told me.  While I have come to realize that while they had a point, there is also a lot of “the new class is so watered-down, the real Antioch is dead, etc.”  Well, for my part, I’m pretty watery but besides our poor grassroots recruitment I think that people always idealize the past.  Antioch may only have a hundred students but it remains a vibrant community and an amazingly educational place.  I think that Antiochians remain concerned about this place, what it is becoming, what it maybe used to have been, because the idea of Antioch is so beautiful.  That same idea remains today.  It is, and always has been, an image.  Despite that, Antioch, the people here, the environment, has helped to me find that image for myself, not of a flourishing progressive bastion of education and social activism, but of the personal.  For me there is always an ideal, and there is reality, what we want to become, and what we are.  Whether these differences are real or just mental, Antioch has taken me closer to my image of the world and myself than I have ever experienced.  I have seen glimpses of what life can be and I think that the freedom that Antioch creates, freedom to express as well as to learn, makes it a sanctuary.  Continue reading Letter from Alex Mette

Dispatches from Community Meeting

By Erin-Aja Grant
In the last 7 days there have been two community meetings held, mainly about the same thing. The much-anticipated University BOT meeting held in L.A. was supposed to provide some clarity about the intentions of the AC3 and the status of acquiring Antioch College. Both meetings talked extensively about the BOT meeting and the AC3 but differed in their message.
On Friday Andrejz Bloch called an emergency community meeting that was facilitated by ComCil chair Levi Cowperth-Waite and fourth year Sara Buckingham. There was no CFB, announcements, or ‘thank yous’ but it was very much a community meeting. This meeting was met with great anticipation from the community since Andrejz and Linda Sirk had been in L.A. and CG remained in L.A. for the results of the University BOT meeting that commenced this last weekend. When Andrejz made his announcement on Friday the community had a mixed bag of emotions. Many did not understand, as Andrejz described,  “As the University’s reaffirmation that the college will be closing as of June 30, 2008.”  Faculty members like Chris Smith asked questions as well as community members, staff, and students. Many felt disheartened by the news because the media was awaiting the community’s’ reactions about the closing of the college. Antioch Alum, former staff, and AC3 member Steve Schwerner was openly in opposition to Andrejz’s announcement. He said the AC3 asked for Eric Bates and David Goodman to go to L.A. and they were not allowed. As questions were fired at Andrejz many were left unanswered. Continue reading Dispatches from Community Meeting

Letter to the Editors

        
I was shocked and angered on Sunday evening when, while enjoying the company of old friends and a box of wheat thins, I read the “movie review” offered by Barbra Davis.  Opening with a criticism of Tim Peyton’s work, Davis finds Tim’s reviews “distressing”, she goes on to argue that a critical review is “NOT about [Tim’s] and his own personal biases [caps present in original publication]” and that Tim fails to define some of the terms he uses.  Further, she writes, “the record is not a soap box, it is a means of communicating news in an upbeat fashion; or it should be.”  Let us examine these claims one by one. Continue reading Letter to the Editors