Nonstop - THE RECORD

Nonstop Planning for June Alumni Festival

By Eva Erickson and Carole Braun

Ever since the Alumni Board’s official decision to move Alumni Reunion to October 2-4, from its usual time in June, Nonstop has been planning the Summer Alumni Festival, whose purpose is to both celebrate Nonstop’s accomplishments and to connect or reconnect Alumni with Nonstop. Much of the specifics of the Festival are yet to be determined, but the plan is to have work projects – such as painting a mural on the back wall of Millworks that parallels the bike path – dinners, and social events. The Festival is scheduled for the 18th through the 20th of June with hopes that the Alumni Board (AB) members will attend some of the events, since they will be in town for their summer meeting. The Alumni Festival could potentially sync well with the AB meeting, because it may have less time to spare in hosting visiting alumni. “The Alumni Board has already discussed having a very business-oriented meeting in June,” said Aimee Maruyama (’96), Director of Alumni Relations and Development. AB member Christian Feuerstein ’94 writes, “I would imagine that parts of our annual meeting are going to be Nonstop events, much as we did with our last AB meeting.”

Nancy Crow ’70, AB President, though hopeful that the Alumni Festival may bring more alumni to attend open meetings, is concerned that it may draw potential donors’ attention from the effort to get Antioch College back. “Calling the June event an alumni festival makes it appear as an alternative to the Reunion in October,” said President Crow in a subsequent telephone interview. It’s going to cause a tremendous amount of confusion,” she said. “We all share the same goal–to revive Antioch College–and we need to be strategic in our fund raising.”Crow would prefer to see the June event be framed as a celebration of what Nonstop has accomplished. Nonstop “carried forward the cause of progressive education,” she said.

In This Issue:

-Committees Form to Tackle Transition Issues

“An Evolving Piece of Work”: Joe Foley on role as Vice-President, the Nonstop budget and the Alumni Board’s upcoming challenges

–Summer Alumni Festival in Lieu of Reunion in June

–Beehive Collective Pollinates Community Day

–Nonstop Students at Work: An Academic Portfolio

We all believe we are torch bearers: an Interview with Micah Canal ’08

Question of the Week: Staff Special!

-Concept Paper Forum:

“The rest is pretty okay” by Gerry Bello ’97

“Cheap Glitter and Mixed Feelings,” by Lincoln Alpern ’11

“Collaborative Process,” by Dan Reyes

-Letters to the Editors & Op/Eds:

“Support Nonstop,” by Chad Johnston ’01

“Support Nonstop, 2” by Tony Dallas

Committees Form to Tackle Transition Issues

On Friday, April 3rd, ExCil appointed to the Alumni Board Taskforce Molly Thorton of Class of ’10, staff member Carole Braun and Chris Hill of the Executive collective. The Alumni Board representatives have not been appointed yet. The Taskforce is a result of the March 7th the Alumni Board resolution “to foster collaboration and build consensus with representatives of the key stakeholders… Nonstop, the Board Pro Tem, and the Alumni Board.” The Taskforce was charged to develop the proposal presented by Nonstop to the Alumni Board so it could be presented to the Board Pro Tem. The Pro Tem Board has subsequently declared that they will not be sending representatives to the Taskforce, because “part of the board should not be involved in making a proposal to themselves,” according to Matthew Derr.

Matthew Derr, Community Meeting April 7th

Meanwhile, TAG (Transition Advisory Group) met for the first time Tuesday, April 7th. Appointed by Matthew Derr, TAG currently includes student Jeanne Kay, Community Manager Chelsea Martens, Faculty Jean Gregorek, Executive Collective member Hassan Rahmanian, staff person Joan Meadows, Head of Alumni Relations Aimee Maruyama, Alumni Board member Ellen Borgersen, and Yellow Springs Village Council President Judith Hempfling. At the Tuesday meeting TAG defined its charge: “The Transition Advisory Group will work to facilitate communication between stakeholders in Yellow Springs and in the larger Antiochian community during the transition towards an independent Antioch College. It will advise Chief Transition Officer Matthew Derr for the Pro Tem Board.”

“The next few months are going to be extremely difficult,” said Jeanne Kay the spokesperson for the group, “Nonstop’s faculty and staff’s livelihoods and lifeworks are endangered, there is a multiplicity of visions for the new Antioch, and rebuilding the college will take a lot of work. TAG, hopefully, will tend to the community’s concerns, open communication channels between the Pro Tem Board and the Yellow Springs community, and do creative problem-solving as a group of committed Antiochians that have been part of the struggle since the beginning.”

Jeanne Kay reports to Community Meeting April 7th on first TAG meeting that morning

Also on the 3rd, in accordance with a proposal brought by the Executive Collective, ExCil created a ten-person Advisory Group to help coordinate the efforts of Nonstop community members working in the Alumni Board Taskforce, TAG and Nonstop Community Goverment. The following were appointed to the Group: students Jonny No and Shea Witzberger; staff Donna Evans and Nancy Wilburn; Faculty Dennie Eagleson, Bob Devine and Nevin Mercede; Executive Collective member Susan Eklund-Leen and Beverly Rodgers; and Community Manager Meghan Pergrem. At the ExCil meeting ExCol member Chris Hill explained the history and rationale behind the advisory group: “One of the first ideas that the Executive collective floated was a larger, perhaps between 5 and 7 members of the Taskforce coming from Nonstop [but] Nancy [Crow] seems to want to keep the group smaller. So, we decided what might work, effectively, would be to have an advisory committee… that would serve as an advisory committee not only to the Taskforce but also to the folks that are going to be part of TAG.”

Cheap Glitter and Mixed Feelings, Reaction to the Concept Paper by Lincoln Alpern ’11

[From the Editor: On April 1st, 2009, the Concept Paper for an independent Antioch College was released on antiochians.org. Read the concept paper here.

[Click here to discuss the Concept paper on the Record’s Forum]

I’ve looked over the Board Pro Tempore’s concept paper a couple times since its release a few days ago, and my feeling are, to say the least, mixed.

I have to admit that it all looks very smart and exciting. In fact, there’s a lot of that stuff that I think I could get on board with. They want to enact more diversity initiatives and make the college more international? Great. Require students to develop a working knowledge of at least one additional language? Sure. The Distinguished Faculty program, with classes taught by alumni and friends of the college? Why not?

The Board is committed to a tenured faculty. That’s good. And though it doesn’t say so in the concept paper, I understand they also want union staff. Also good.

They propose a restoration campaign, and want to make the campus more sustainable. I support them in this too, so long as we take said “restoration” measures to have maximum emphasis on utility and minimum emphasis on glamor. Concentrate on the necessities of running a healthy college in line with our values, not projecting a classy image. I think we can all agree that Antioch College is never going to be luxurious, so let’s not throw desperately needed money away trying to make it look luxurious.

I agree with the Board’s wish to lower tuition. In fact, I would like us to commit to a long-term vision that one day Antioch College will be entirely tuition-free, with grants available for travel for geographically challenged students.

I also support the proposal to have students and faculty contribute a certain amount of work while on-campus, which I’m sure would also be a feature of an eventual tuition-free program. This Spring term at Nonstop we mandated a 4 hour per week work policy for students which-though beset with glitches-has on the whole been a step in the right direction.

However, I feel some of the concept paper’s other ideas give cause for concern. Most importantly: the three-year plan.

Anybody who’s seen my comments on Listen Up Antioch and ACAN knows that I think essentially eliminating break time for all parties involved is a spectacularly bad idea. In an emotionally and intellectually charged atmosphere like Antioch’s, students, faculty and staff need frequent breaks for a little change of pace, not to mention rest and recuperation.

Faculty, in particular need time to perform their own research, so they can stay on top of the latest information in their field and so that they can produce their own innovations, as good Antiochians do. Somebody at that DC area chapter meeting also pointed out that staff need time for building maintenance, and there simply wasn’t enough of it last time we were on trimesters.

Reading over the outlines for the curriculum plan, I can’t help picturing students running a three year educational obstacle course at top speed, with no time to rest, and also no time to pause and reflect. The best learning requires that the student have the opportunity to stop and digest what they’ve learned, subjecting it to critical analysis on the way. That’s what Antioch has always stood for. For this, the student requires time; more than three years, possibly more than four. Heck, let’s go back to being a five-year college, if that’s how long it takes to get the job done properly.

And while utilizing new technology to keep students in touch with the community while out on co-op sounds like a good idea, I can all too easily picture the concept being used to cram more work and obligations onto already overburdened students.

The first time I heard mention of this three-year notion was after the “Visioning a College” weekend at Earlham last year. The way I heard it, the alumni were talking about a five-year program and the organizers basically said “There’s nothing eye-catching about a five-year institution, why not go for a three-year program?”

In other words, the idea first came up as a marketing gimmick. When an institution bearing the name “Antioch College” is reduced to throwing cheap glitter over its program to attract students, I’ll know the Antioch I went to, the Antioch I loved, is well and truly dead.

Wake up, people! This is Antioch. We don’t want the students who are attracted to pretty buildings, or to a curriculum which rushes them through their education without time for any actual learning. Let’s have a curriculum which actually reflects our values of introspection and critical engagement.

One argument for the three-year plan is that it will be helpful in lowering tuition. What if instead we utilized that Antiochian propensity for innovation the Board brags so much about in the concept paper and find another way to keep costs down? Something that does not require such a potentially disastrous setup?

Elsewhere, members of the Board Pro Tem have been quick avoid making any definitive statements about curriculum, because they don’t want to tie the faculty’s hands. I can’t imagine what they thought they were doing with this extremely detailed concept paper, but it can’t’ve been keeping a blank slate.

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage the Board to let the faculty-once (they admit) they have a faculty-develop a workable curriculum, with input from Board members of course, and also of past, present, and prospective students, to insure that the result is something which addresses the needs of all Antioch stakeholders. As I said in my Listen Up and ACAN comments: we don’t need a plan that’s “trendy” or slick. We need a plan that’s right. A plan that’s Antiochian.

Lincoln Alpern

Class of ’11

“This is remarkable,” Op/Ed by Tony Dallas

Having watched Antiochians over the past fifty years, it has been my experience that while Antioch has gotten smaller–as a direct and indirect result of the ’73 Strike, the 25% cuts in faculty the year after (financial desperation has never worked as a recruiting tool), lingering on the edge of bankruptcy and oblivion, presidents who have not been fond of the institution and have tried to change it into something more marketable and mainstream, shrinking resources and departments (we all know the story)–the students who have come out of Antioch over the years (and those now at NonStop) continue to be, more or less, of the same cloth. Folks, this is remarkable. And the reason for this is the faculty, staff and the smart students who saw through the absence of trappings to something genuine that would engage them.
To be an effective teacher at Antioch demands a dedication and malleability on the part of teachers most institutions don’t require.
I am in the midst of a long essay on Antioch. I have interviewed 20 people, each person for about two hours: from students in the 1930s to current students at NonStop, as well as a number of faculty and two presidents. I think this bit of transcript from my interview with English Professor Jean Gregorek more than makes my point.
JEAN: I was teaching 19th Century British Lit. 20th Century British Lit. Post-Colonial Literature. Literary Theory. Contemporary Drama. African Literature and Caribbean Literature. And Detective Fiction.
ME: Boy, that’s a lot.
JEAN: (Laughs.) In my line of work it’s unheard of. I’m a complete anomaly. No one tries to cover that much…A normal English Department at a small school is, you know, six or seven people.
(Actually, after I interviewed Jean, I checked both Oberlin and Kenyon’s Websites: they both have between 15 and twenty instructors in their English departments. Antioch in its last year had two and a half.)
The point I am trying to make is this: these teachers are not only damn good in their fields, they take on an extraordinary amount of extra work because of their devotion to the ideals of Antioch and because they get a charge out of the students (OK, not all of the students: but even the difficult ones, they are there for them). Teachers for Antioch are as self-selecting as the students. And if outside proof were needed to make this point clear, let me direct you to the 2000 and 2001 National Survey of Student Engagement-sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Pew Forum on Undergraduate Learning.
Antioch College ranked number one among 470 institutions in “Level of Academic Challenge” and “Enriching Educational Experiences” and in the top 10% in “Active and Collaborative Learning,” “Student Interactions with Faculty Members,” and “Supportive Campus Environment.” And, according to the Franklin and Marshall study of Baccalaureate Origins of Doctorate Recipients, Antioch College was among the top twenty undergraduate institutions whose graduates went on to earn Ph.D.s.
Loren Pope, in his 1996 addition of Colleges that Change Lives, says of Antioch College: “Antioch is in a class by itself. There is no college or university in the country that makes a more profound difference in a young person’s life, or that creates more effective adults. None of the Ivies, big or little can match Antioch’s ability to produce outstanding thinkers and doers…For decades this yeast of American higher education…has produced higher percentages of future scientists and scholars than any Ivy League university except Princeton.”
Between 1985 and 1990, according to Ph.D. data supplied by the National Science Foundation, in overall Ph.D. output (in all fields) relative to total undergraduate enrollment, Antioch College outranked M.I.T., Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Cornell, U. California-Berkeley…and the list goes on.
It is past time we stopped this self-flagellation. The problems of Antioch are not and were not the quality of its faculty. The NonStop faculty and staff is the DNA of Antioch College. And without that DNA what you have is little more than an instruction manual.
Let us not forget the passion and dedication from which NonStop was born. Let us remember were it not for the threat of a lawsuit by the University, Nonstop would have been called what it has always been in reality: Antioch College in Exile. And let us remember the Alumni Reunion of ’07 and how for so many of us it was the assault on the faculty that galvanized us into action. Or as Emeritus Dance Professor Dimi Reber articulated our collective concern in her eloquent letter on behalf of the faculty: “I am writing because current faculty are facing possible layoffs and the elimination of tenure and feel unprotected…Our dignity as faculty is at stake, the definition of what Antioch is and has been is hanging in the balance.”
At this crucial time of transition we must support what is the mind, heart and soul of Antioch College–the staff and faculty of The NonStop Stop Liberal Arts Institute. More than support them, we must celebrate them!
Make your donation now to NonStop to guarantee the future of a vibrant and prosperous Antioch College! (secure.imodules.com/s/1050/qs1_index.aspx?sid=1050&gid=1&pgid=310&cid=809)
Carpe diem!

Tony Dallas