Tag: health

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

“Antioch’s Near Death and Revival as a Learning Experience” – Michael Brower ’55

  Antioch College is based on both classroom and real world learning.  Let’s look at our recent Near-Death and Revival asking What happened? What did and didn’t work?  What could we learn?  Here are my own 12 learning areas.

1. Organizing, not blaming.  What worked was not complaining and blaming, but lots of organizing and dialogue with help from everybody – Faculty, Students, Alums, AND from the majority of Trustees, who, believe it or not, really do want Antioch College to survive, be healthy, and thrive.  Lesson?  Involve, don’t blame. Continue reading “Antioch’s Near Death and Revival as a Learning Experience” – Michael Brower ’55

From the Editors

  “The dazzling vision and relentless passion of the founders.” One might have thought that the title of Jim Malarkey’s Founder’s Day presentation was slightly hyperbolic. If you attended it, however, that preconception most likely vanished somewhere between Horace’s claim that ”nothing today prevents the world from being a paradise,” and Arthur Morgan’s quest for an “informal utopian community of learning.”

I remember when I was 14 years old and, when asked “what do you want to do when you grow up?” relentlessly answering “change the world.” I also remember losing momentum for the project as I advanced into the disillusioning turpitudes of adolescence. Like many teenagers in quest of identity and purpose, I wondered how to reconcile that yearn for transformative action and the weight of reality that gradually imposed itself on me.

Many educational institutions, observed Malarkey, have the purpose of “meeting market demands” and helping students adapt to society. What about students who do not recognize themselves in the profile of “fit in, slide through, and get away?” he asked. Then there is Antioch. Antioch as a hyphen between what the world is and what the world ought to be.

Antioch, in the time of Horace Mann was indeed a bootcamp, recounted Malarkey, if not for the revolution, for winning victories for humanity; a “cross between Harvard and West Point” where students exercised for two hours every day, academics were rigorous and morals stringent. “A war of extermination [against ignorance, oppression of body and soul, intemperance and bigotry] is to be waged and you are the warriors” was Horace’s message to Antioch graduates.

“This is not just a bachelor’s degree’” exclaimed Malarkey, “This is a War Cry.”

Arthur Morgan in the 1920s perpetuated and added to Mann’s vision. To prepare for the frontlines, you have to find your purpose; Co-op was thus instituted. Gen-Ed courses were brought to the curriculum, based on the idea that learning to know how the world works is not just a preference but a responsibility. Finally the idea that the whole human being thrives only in a healthy community inspired the principles of community governance.

The three legged stool was created.

“Education in America must mean nothing else than this,” declared Malarkey, drawing comparison between the task ahead and the boulder in Glen Helen under which the Morgans are resting together. To be a radical means to get to the roots, deep down to lift the boulder. “And Antioch is the place for that to be done.”

Antioch’s spirit “keeps losing itself and then finding itself,” observed Malarkey yet the “feisty if elusive Antioch spirit of inquiry and action” that characterizes it seems to resiliently survive through generations of Antiochians, regardless of incessant administrative turnovers, gaps in vision and top-down renewal plans.
And no matter how it redefines itself perpetually, Antioch continues attracting students who, like me, once dreamed of changing the world and wondered how to do it. Not only does it draw us in, but most importantly it revives the embers under the ashes, the will to take on that boulder, and the certitude that the potential to lift it is within us—assuming, of course, we get to graduate from Antioch College.
-JK

SOPP Office Hosts Conference on Public Policy and Women’s Health

 Last Thursday the SOPP office hosted the third annual Women’s Health Month Conference. This year’s topic was “Understanding the Influence of Public Policy on Women’s Health”. Although the conference was not as well attended as in past years, there was a good assortment of health care providers and academics present.

The first presenter, Dr. Wendy Smooth, an Ohio State Women’s Studies Professor, provided an overview of “Women as Policymakers”. According to Dr. Smooth, Women, and especially women of color, carry some of the most progressive legislation and are more likely to list health care as one of their top priorities. Unfortunately, female politicians are still in a very small minority – only two percent  of Congress. On the state level, women are more present with around 22 percent of all state legislator positions. Dr. Smooth also covered some power dynamics within political meetings that make it difficult for female politicians to get an equal voice.

Julie Piercey and Laurie Housmeyer from Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio presented on public policy effecting sex education, contraceptive accessibility, and other women’s health issues. In their synopsis, they compared the US with several European countries in numbers of teen pregnancy and numbers of sexual partners, amongst other factors, making it clear that our educational programs and cultural support systems are failing.

Our own Women’s Studies professor, Isabella Winkler, gave a different perspective on women’s health by looking at the interaction between public policy and the GLBTQ community. Winkler posed the question which part of a GLBTQ community would fit into the constraints of a woman’s health conference and continued to challenge public health policy to expose in what ways construction of identity alters health and policy.

In an attempt to help attendees bring concerns into action, Ann Hembree rounded off with “A brief Training on How to Influence Public Policy,” that included guidelines for talking to politicians and ways to become involved.

For more information on Women’s health and how to get involved, the SOPP office can be reached at PBX 1128.