Tag: governance

Vital Affirmations at a CG meeting

To the Community:

I appreciate Community Government’s strong affirmation of students’ right to freedom of expression. By unanimous vote at last week’s meeting, ComCil rejected a proposal by the Lawry administration to appoint an editorial board to oversee the Record.

In my view, the administration proposed this board to further its plan to censor and control what is printed in the Record — and thus to censor and control the students of Antioch College. As adjunct faculty mentor for the Record staff, and as a longtime friend and admirer of Antioch College, I applaud ComCil’s defeat of the administration’s proposal.

ComCil’s meeting was also an affirmation of the great value of Antioch’s unique system of shared governance, in which students play such a vital role.

This was the first ComCil meeting I’ve attended in several years, and I was deeply impressed — as I have been so many times in my 25-year association with Antioch — with the quality of the work that was done. And the way it was done: a room full of students deeply committed to Antiochian values interacted cohesively, respectfully and responsibly to serve the best interests of the college. Like the Record, shared governance is a both an important service to the Antioch community and a deeply significant educational experience. How can it be that this administration is so bitterly opposed to both?

Sincerely,

Don Wallis

Come Together: Fighting the ‘Purification’ of Antioch

Come Together: Fighting the ‘Purification’ of Antioch By Jeanne Kay

An open letter to the community (that includes you, Steve)

Purity is the opposite of integrity—the cruelest thing you can do to a person is make her ashamed of her own complexity. The stories of our lives have no morals.

–Excerpt from Fighting for our lives, CWC.

Two issues are prevalent on the campus political agenda this fall: President Lawry’s would be coup d’etat over community governance and its bundle of repercussions (censorship of the Record, growing risk of expulsion…) and the seemingly unbridgeable gap between first and third/fourth years. And the more I think about it, the more I believe that those two are linked. If we newcomers feel estranged from the upperclassmen, it may not be our supposed puerility that’s to blame but our assumed inability to recognize the gravity of that first matter. “Our Antioch is fading away!� seems to be their leitmotiv, but what can we say after less than two months on campus? Can we even all it ‘our’ Antioch? On what grounds can we join the ranks of old-time Antiochians fighting for the integrity of their alma mater? We cannot root our commitment to a bond to an idyllic past, but we certainly know and care about the Antioch we applied to.

Now because of our relative inexperience of the old Antioch spirit as cherished by the old-timers, we first years might ask what all the fuss is about. We might see it as an exaggeration, a mere case of ‘good-old days’ syndrome, and detach ourselves from the struggle for the preservation of Antioch’s identity. I am writing now so that this does not happen. From the perspective I’ve developed after having sat with Steve Lawry at the Monday 10/2 lunch and the Thursday 10/5 breakfast, read his response to Daniel Solis’ intelligent open letter on Pulse, and listened to third and fourth years talking about their growing frustration and disillusionment at Antioch’s culture shift, I can only conclude that President Lawry’s controversial decisions of the past month have not been a series of spontaneous oppressive interventions in mere reaction to a chain of events but a carefully planned out attempt to make an authoritative stand. He is clearly set upon changing the Antioch culture and has been taking advantage of this start of term’s “incidents� to make it clear to the community that the intended power shift is on the march.

On ideological, personal, emotional levels, we have every reason to rise against the takeover endeavor. The mere idea that our culture of idealism is being threatened on the pretext of economic efficiency—however badly we might need it—should be enough to infuriate any of us. But does this intended cleansing of the campus radicalism even make sense on a pragmatic level? If I think about it, Antioch’s reputation of radicalism is the very reason why I came here. Politics and freedom, especially to the most extremist levels, are why I chose Antioch over any other place in the world. And if those are taken away, what’s left? State of the art facilities? A wide-ranging curriculum? An exhilarating social scene? Or just the overall excitement of living under Ohio skies? Frankly, if you pull out radicalism from Antioch’s culture, if you try to tame the wild forces that make it the unique place it is, these very forces that Steve Lawry dismisses as “corrosive to a learning environment�, and shift our culture from libertarian to merely liberal, then I might just as well move to any other neutral, mainstream college that at least has available Russian literature classes and dorms free of toxic mold! So why does the president seem so positively set upon taming Antioch’s culture a top priority? How does marketing and prospecting for new students fit into this logic? Two possibilities come to mind: either Antioch’s radicalism bothers President Lawry on a personal, ethical level, or he is genuinely concerned with our low retention rate and candidly believes the complaints he has received from discontented transferring students. If it were the case, all would come down to the mission statement, the core identity of the college. Is Antioch for everyone? No! But this answer isn’t as blinkered or elitist as it seems, for it is not based on superficial labeling of someone’s beliefs or identity, but on her ability to deal with our challenging them. In the majority of cases, I think, we are not saying: “Conservatives go home� or any kind of “if you don’t think like us, go away.� What we are saying is this: “We are a bunch of committed, passionate people, and our politics are part of our profound identities, so we will not be afraid to defend them and to confront you about yours.� And maybe not everyone is up to endure this kind of dynamics, which demands perpetual reconsideration of one’s beliefs and the ability to defend them. In this way, and in this way only, is Antioch not for everyone.

During his Monday lunch with first years, Steve Lawry cited the case of a student who dropped out because of his Nike sneakers being vandalized by some Antiochian extremists. He presented it as an example of radicalism being “corrosiveâ€? to the community and the kind of attitude he was determined to make disappear. This might look like a reasonable demand, considering that you don’t believe in the use of violent means in ideological struggles, (it is not necessarily the case— and although this might not be the point here, I believe it would still be good to acknowledge it), but it is not something to be enforced from the top-down. Imagine that I knowingly chose to go to a conservative college; I would stand in the minority on an infinite number of issues and I would face different kind of pressures—in a variety of degrees of violence. Would I still call the school president to complain because people have attacked my anarchist beliefs? Would I expect him to start a campus-wide campaign to promote ideological tolerance? Of course not. But because at Antioch the voice coming from the flock is that of the minority position, it changes everything. It seems threatening to the average person who isn’t used to it being expressed freely, who isn’t used to living in a place where our alternative realities are considered the norm. So any judgment, censure or condemnation of the means we use to fight for our minority positions is up to us as a community, and to us only. Bottom-up is the only healthy approach. And, of course, we will be hearing about the threat of physical violence as a latent upshot of too much libertarianism and as an argument for more control and censure. But we all know where instrumentation of people’s fears lead to, don’t we?…

A top-down attempt to transform any pre-established culture anywhere is not only dictatorial and oppressive it is also absolutely impossible. The only way Steve Lawry can succeed is by gradually phasing out Antiochians and replace them with the mainstream, tamed, innocuous students he wishes populated this college. Only by screening entering students at the source, in Admissions, can he ever obtain his dream student body. But that’s not us. Like ungrateful brats quintessentially incapable to please our exacting parents, we’ll never be up to fulfill our president’s expectations. Should we sigh in relief? No, because even if our identities are untouchable at the core, our freedom to express them in the open is likely to be increasingly jeopardized by the administration’s attempts to sanitize the campus.

“Antioch-this is/Your chance to come together/To unite and fight� reads a Haiku Declassified in last week’s Record. The idea that an ideological battle between part of the administration and Antiochians has started is slowly making its way to the stratum of first-year students. I am part of it, and ready to meet the challenge. Are you?

Letter from Callie Cary

“In our society the two institutions commissioned to provide the substance of a democratic public sphere, as a place for critical nquiry, are the news media and academia.�
This quote comes from a review of David Horowitz’s book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America� by 1979 alumnus Robert McCheseney entitled “David Horowitz and the Attack on Independent Thought,� “ in which both McCheseney and Antioch alum Gordon Fellman ‘57 are included.

Robert McCheseney is a Research Professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Changing campus culture in the name of intellectual freedom is certainly not a new theme in the higher education community. The larger question is how is the term intellectual freedom being defined and by whom? Are the standards universally applied to everyone in the community, and who or what are the arbiters of those standards? And finally, what are the intended educational outcomes of these cultural changes?

It was made clear by President Lawry in his first address at Community Meeting last spring, as well as at subsequent meetings with the Alumni Board and alumni groups around the country, that he seemed to arrive with an agenda, a preconceived opinion about the campus culture and the governance system.

According to the President’s assessment, as stated in “Lawry Challenges Campus Culture; Students Troubled� (Yellow Springs News, 10/5/06), students are too confrontational, lack mutual respect and social maturity, are self-indulgent, use menacing language, and speak irresponsibly, and all these behaviors lead to an anti-intellectual, closed community that prevents students from being able to “embrace the full spectrum of ideas and opinions, without prejudgment….� The article goes on to say that Lawry feels that “A less threatening campus…will help the College retain some of the students who tend to leave Antioch because they feel attacked by other students.�

Where did the President’s perspective come from after such limited exposure to the student body, or anyone else in the community? Is this based on anecdotal information provided by those who oriented him before his arrival? In his presentations, Lawry sites a conversation he had with a student while he was on campus being interviewed for the presidency- a student who had said that he might transfer out of Antioch because he felt uncomfortable with the campus culture. Lawry has also mentioned how a student wearing Nike sneakers got attacked for not being more sensitive to the scourge of sweatshop production. OK, but is there some concrete data to support the theory that the campus culture is the main reason we lose students, or why students don’t come to Antioch? Past data from the exit interviews conducted by the Dean of Students Office over the years has shown that students leave for a variety reasons, including financial, social, academic, developmental, and finding a dream co-op, but very rarely because of campus culture and climate. According to existing data, there has never been one overriding reason for student attrition.

And so, it’s been almost 10 months since this message was first delivered. What steps have been taken to change the campus culture? Apparently, the governance system has been targeted as an axis of confrontation and is described as “out of control� and combative with the administration.

I am puzzled by this assessment. I served on Community Council (ComCil) in 05/06 and was extremely impressed with the high and civil level of discourse between faculty, staff and students, the student chair’s oversight of the meetings, the humor and creativity of the members, and the overall sense of responsibility members felt for the community. We debated, persuaded, challenged, changed our minds, built consensus and agonized over some difficult and frustrating situations on the campus. We also made every effort to engage with the administration to orient the new President to the Council’s purpose, and to express concern over some of the decisions that were being made without any consultation with Comcil, decisions that had historically been brought to Comcil for deliberation and input.

Although at times a very frustrating experience, for me as an alum, it defined one of Antioch’s core values and part of its mission – to create informed risk takers through participation in a laboratory of democratic decision- making. It would be a mistake to define Antioch’s system of governance as a locus of power for all decision- making, but it would be equally misguided to discredit and ignore the significant educational implications of the decision-making process that happens within this system.

Community governance at Antioch provides one of the most unique educational experiences the College has to offer and, if properly facilitated, allows all community members to feel some ownership and responsibility for the community in which they live and work. For students, these skills are further developed and tested in the various co-op communities they enter around the globe. It is this praxis that, with trial and error, teaches students some sense of humility and cultural mobility. It is the ingredient that helps to turn out so many interesting, entrepreneurial, and, yes, outspoken graduates. Last year Antioch College had three graduating students receive Fulbright awards. That sort of intellectual inquiry doesn’t happen in a vacuum!

I have never understood the concern that oppositional perspectives, be they conservative or radical, are somehow oppressed at Antioch.

Antioch alumni, young and old, have always been represented throughout the political spectrum. I know for a fact that Republicans and radicals (some now democrats) actually sit side-by-side with each other as Trustees and Alumni Board members! The alumni work in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, many are organizers, artists and educators, but regardless of their path, most feel passionately about their values. The alumni take Antioch’s first President Horace Mann’s dictum “Be ashamed to die until you win some victory for humanity� very seriously.

There are some very real challenges facing Antioch right now, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with working on creating a campus that promotes open dialog, the administration needs to be sure to walk the talk and to create a forum that builds consensus around what the walk is…and maybe what shoes should be worn. I would also hope that energy is quickly shifted to other institutional priorities with specific steps being outlined on how best to address the recruitment and retention of students and faculty of color, improving the physical plant, supporting faculty moral, professional development and the integrity of tenure, and building a culture of mutual respect and labor incentives for the union workers, exempt staff and middle managers.

Top-down decision-making rarely has any educational value and it generally doesn’t promote a climate of mutual respect or intellectual freedom. If retention, recruitment and fund raising are the priorities right now (as they have been for decades), the entire Antioch community should be embraced as ambassadors, future alumni, future donors, future leaders, and advocates of an extraordinary educational experience that has held a truly unique place in the landscape of higher education.

Callie Cary ‘84
Second-generation alum and former Director of Alumni Relations

Community Meeting

By Kathryn Leahey

Greetings and salutations, fellow community members! After a two week sabbatical, your source of information on all things community meeting has returned. Yes, you may now collectively exhale. This week’s meeting proved no less engrossing than usual, even involving some controversy over our own beloved editors. First, however, our community engaged in our weekly batch of gratitude and notices. The much-coveted title of Community Member of the Week went to Hassan Rahmanian for his work on both AdCil and the Coretta Scott King Center search committee. Much of this week’s gratefulness was imparted by, to, or among CG. Melody thanked her FWSPies, and Hope thanked Hannah and Jessica for cutting her hair and letting her bitch. Melody was thanked by Antoinette for being the glorious Events Manager that she is. Hope also thanked Melody for taking her to my hometown, Chicago, at some point in the future, for the experience of getting out of Yellow Springs and wandering around her first real big city. Hope, I wish you much Windy City fun – write something on a wall at Gino’s for me. Levi B. thanked his roller coaster incident mates as well as Sarah Buckingham for her work on ComCil. Outside of the Dynamic Three, Meghan Pergrem, who was thanked by Erin Winter for her help with the Art Show, also thanked BAMN. Finally, Jean Gregorek and Jim Malarkey were thanked for organizing the poorly-attended but very moving Guantanamo Bay Teach-In last Thursday.

Next, twenty different town criers announced many things, most of which will have happened by the time this is actually read by anyone. Here’s what you ought to know: I am starting a Latin language and literature group. Likeminded, nerd-identified individuals may contact me via FirstClass. In other news, ComCil and AdCil are currently discussing highly important issues of the RAB and shared governance, respectively. Go to the meetings. Really, go right ahead. Those interested in becoming a CM, Record editor, C-shop manager, or Pennell House coordinator in the near future ought to get his or her application turned in as soon as possible. Speaking of Pennell House, the much-anticipated Art Show, which is taking place at Pennell House, is on Friday beginning at 8pm. Live music, performance pieces, and food will be provided for the more easily distracted of us. Saturday night will see a bonfire and the fire party as well as a late-night bike ride. Various other fire-related events will take place over the next few days, including a meeting entitled “Fire Up Your Crotch�, an examination of alternative menstrual health. On Monday, Anne Shine, a pianist from New York, will be performing a free concert at 8pm. Tuesday is the Black and Tan Dance, for which Melody still needs volunteers, especially anyone who knows how to make an ice luge. On October 19th, a day-long counter recruitment event dubbed the Uprising Tour will be taking place. October 23rd, Christian Smith from the ACLU will be on campus from 7-9 talking about higher education and the War on Drugs.

On a shocking note, everyone wanted money this week. Haruna proposed $200 for Japanese cultural events while Meghan asked for $400 for Pennell House activities. The strangely exact figures of $421 and $722 dollars were requested for a ceramics event and Fire Week, respectively. Seventy dollars is needed to reimburse the person who replaced the swing in front of North Hall, $150 to provide for the SOPP Community Day dinner, and $100 to bring the formerly mentioned ACLU speaker to campus. Melody wants $250 for Black and Tan while three separate people requested sums of $500, $200, and $150 to bring bands to various community functions.

Next, like ice in a blender, our community was Pulsed. Going into the proverbial smoothie of conversation this week were the topics of the now-infamous “Cowboys and ‘Indians’ Party� and the new look of the Record’s most popular item, the Declassifieds, a tasty combination that, no less, gave me a headache. When the party was first brought up, the notion immediately sparked a dialogue about the perceived division between upper- and underclasspersons here at Antioch. Our community members pitched such ideas for the remediation of the problem as chem-free socials for first and fourth years, interest groups, attendance of Thursday night karaoke bashes by all involved, a “Big Brother/Big Sister� program of sorts, and upperclassperson attendance of first-year Core Communities to aid in the understanding between classes. Dennie Eagelson simply asked third- and fourth-years to “assume that [firstyears] have some thoughtfulness before you jump their ass,� a sentiment surely echoed by many of my fellow freshies The only idea proposed that was criticized was the notion of the two groups actually talking to each other during meals. The notable lack of mealtime communication can be attributed to a disorder known as “Caf Anxiety� combined with general social awkwardness so prevalent here at our beloved school. After much conversation on the topic, CG thanked all involved for a productive and respectful conversation.

After many left, we then moved on to a topic that did not prove so productive and was not conducted quite as respectfully. Several community members expressed great concern over the reformatting of the Declassifieds section of the Record. Some accused the editors of shaming the community with their previous Letters to the Community, saying that they were taking their frustrations out on the wrong people. Foster countered the claim by telling those present that the section is simply “not bringing out the best in us� and that reactionary Declassifieds make the paper accountable for things that the writer would have otherwise been too intimidated to state publicly. He admitted that he realizes that the letters may have offended some, for which he apologized, but that he felt valid points were made. He also said that the current haiku policy may change soon if he and Luke find it ineffective. When asked why the haiku format was chosen, Foster replied that haikus are fun, short, and made people think about what they are writing a little more before it is published. Those who have a problem with the policy or anything else about the paper can bring it to RAB, a board that meets on Friday at noon in the Antioch Inn. When the letters and haiku were discussed at the last meeting of RAB, little problem was found with either. Until next week, Antiochians, Pulse among yourselves.

President Lawry Shows His Teeth

By Wesley Dawson

At the AdCil meeting Tuesday October Tenth School President Steve Lawry began discussion with a document entitled “Principles of a Community Learning Structure.� Presumably written by Lawry himself, the page subtitled as a “Draft for Discussion� had all statements and no questions. Community members present at the meeting found the document demonstrative of the President’s desire to change to a more top down school power structure that negates decision making shared governance once had.

The bite in the document seems to be that even though Lawry has been instigating what many older students see as unprecedented change on the school, it is written as an explanation of policy rather than a proposal for change. Lawry’s point is to say that the community government never had any real power beyond advising the real decision maker, himself.

The document asserts that the purpose of shared governance is purely educational, preparing students to “be effective in public life and to represent their views and values convincingly in public affairs after leaving college.� This is not unlike Student Government models in many other colleges where students hold no power beyond fund raising and throwing parties. One purpose this parallel serves to the perspective of a newer student like myself is to say that Antioch is, and always has been, structured the same way as any other college in the country.

Many students, some of whom who have been at the college longer than the President, disagree with the statements in his document. They say that while the President of the school holds the official power, they have historically taken heed of the community’s wishes and made decisions as a representative rather than an authority. This point of view shared by many members of the community asserts that until the current president, governing power was shared under shared governance.

Teachers present at the meeting were noted as saying that the ability to utilize real power allows students a better opportunity for learning to be “effective in public life� because it allows them to do so as students instead of just “after leaving college.�

The document does not refer directly to Steve Lawry but rather to a theoretical President but also includes statements like, “Faculty have in recent years gained greater direct responsibility for curricular matters. This is a welcome and healthy trend and it should continue,� which, aside from the date, is the only part that shows that Lawry himself wrote the document, and recently. The rest could have been a policy set out years ago by the school administration were it to always have the absolute power Lawry asserts it to have.

According to the President, “AdCil’s role is advisory to the President and the administration� and ComCil is “a place of discussion and debate on community matters� not “an alternative locus of authority to the President, the administration or the faculty.� Older students say that while the President’s statements may correspond to how the school policy is written, it is a new interpretation of that policy that does not take account of how school decision-making has historically worked at Antioch.

If that is the case, the student body faces the question of whether the decree of authority is more important than the ideals of community. President Lawry has already considered this question and made up his mind.