On Friday, Antioch independent Once Again

By Diane Chiddister

On Friday, Sept. 4, the keys to Antioch College will be transferred from Antioch University to the Antioch College Continuation Corporation, or ACCC. The action marks the college’s revival after having been closed for a year, and its return, after 30 years as part of a university system, to being an independent liberal arts college.

The public is invited to a recognition of the historic event at around 5 p.m. on the horseshoe on the Antioch College campus. The event will follow several hours of paper-signing by ACCC leaders Lee Morgan and Matthew Derr, who have been vested by the ACCC board with the authority to sign the agreements, and Antioch University Chancellor Toni Murdock and Antioch University Board Chair Art Zucker, who have been vested by the university board with the authority to do so, according to Morgan and Derr in an interview Tuesday evening.

Morgan, Zucker and Great Lakes Colleges Association President Rick Detweiler will speak at the 5 p.m. event, and Antioch professor emeritus Al Denman will give the benediction.

Friday’s closing finalizes an agreement between the university and the ACCC that was made two months ago. While that agreement identified Aug. 31 as the target date for closing the deal for an independent college, the amount of detail involved led to missing that target by a few days, Morgan said. The closing was dependent on the approval of several outside agencies, including the Ohio attorney general, the Greene County probate court and bondholders for Antioch University.

The June 30 agreement followed a year of negotiations in a task force composed of Derr and Morgan, representing the alumni group ACCC, and university trustees Dan Fallon and Jack Merselis. Detweiler served as the mediator for the group.

“There is relief that the year of hard work and focus resulted in an independent Antioch College and a university that has the best possible prospects to thrive,” Derr said. He and Morgan were speaking for the task force, they said.

The revival of the college is a singular event in the history of higher education, Derr and Morgan said.

“Antioch College was one of the top colleges in the country in the late 1960s and it fell on hard times,” Derr said. “Here we are reviving it. There’s never been a story like this in higher education. No one thought we could pull it off.”

The closing follows a two-year Antioch College alumni effort to save the college after the university board voted in 2007 to close the school the following year due to financial exigency.

The alumni effort to create an independent college succeeded because there was “such a broad and diverse group of people who put forth such a level of effort and conviction that the college should survive,” Derr said, describing the effort as a “relay race” in which, when one group of alumni faltered, another took over.

Many college alumni cared deeply about saving the college because they believed they had received a unique education that needed to be available to future generations, especially in an increasingly complex world.

“It’s a simple model but a powerful one,” Morgan said, regarding the Antioch College synthesis of scholarship, self-governance and real-world work experience. “No one else is doing it.”

The ACCC raised $6 million to pay to Antioch University as part of the June 30 agreement, and an additonal $10 million to begin college operations. Leaders anticipate the need to raise about $40 million more in the next several years, Derr has stated. Morgan and Derr were the key fund raisers for the effort.

The role of Detweiler and the GLCA in reaching the agreement was pivotal, Derr said this week.

“We’re very grateful to the GLCA and Rick Detweiler,” Derr said. “Without Rick and the support of the GLCA presidents, this agreement would not have happened.”

After the Labor Day weekend, Derr, who is the chief transition officer for the ACCC, will set up his office in the second floor of the Olive Kettering library on the Antioch campus. His immediate tasks include hiring people to trim the trees, clean the gutters, and other necessary work required to return the physical plant to good shape after having been shuttered a year, he said.

The hiring of the new staff for the college will also continue. ACCC leaders anticipate hiring about 37 faculty and staff, including the staff for Glen Helen. About 10 employees have already been hired, including Antiochiana archivist Scott Sanders and two administrative assistants, Derr said.

In a previous interview, Derr stated that the number of first-year employees will include about five or six faculty members from various disciplines. These faculty, who will be known as Arthur Morgan Fellows, will be responsible for developing programs for a “symposium year” in the college’s first year. ACCC leaders have stated that they do not anticipate having new students on campus until the fall of 2011.

But between the closing of the deal on Friday and the beginning of the newly independent Antioch College on Tuesday, Derr will take a few days off. He has not had a vacation in some time, he said.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com

We All Believe We Are Torch Bearers: An Interview with Micah Canal

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I recently had a conversation with Micah Canal, 2008 graduate of Antioch College, who came back to Yellow Springs in January to join the effort to support Nonstop and for the recreation of the College. He is currently working for the College Revival Fund.

D: So, where are you from?

Micah: I was born on the side of a mountain in southern Oregon, (where we lived) without electricity. My parents went back to the land in the early 70’s. They were hippies, sort of, but I am also part redneck because of growing up in rural southern Oregon. I have always walked that line of someone who embraces my redneck-dom and also someone who was raised by college graduates, and has had a fairly privileged life. I am one of the people who loved high school, rare among the Antioch diaspora.
I was supposed to come to Antioch in 2004, and I deferred until 2005 because I was in love, and I needed to stay on the West Coast. We (my classmates and I) were informed when we got here that something called the Renewal Commission had changed the college that we thought we would be attending. To this day I am still unclear as to why… there was no information that was conveyed to us or our parents that we were going to be a part of a new, untested learning model. That was a real shock.
Fela Pierre-Louis and Olivia Leire, and I organized the first year class in the first two weeks into something called the First Year Liason Committee. It was my first experience with organizing at Antioch, and what an interesting, difficult, troubling, infighting experience it can be. We became Antiochians … for three years, and some of us graduated, and most of us didn’t. There were sixty-seven people who entered with me, and of those less than twenty graduated. I think of us as the lost class, because we were the first under the learning communities, and some of us were the last ones out, and some of us are still here. That is my brief history about Antioch.
My major in one hundred words was Social Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. I studied economics and international relations. My focus was on change-making, trying to do it from the grass roots and also within institutions. All of my professional work has been in the non-profit sector, and I imagine that is where I will stay. That will be my life’s work: social entrepreneurship, building and contributing to organizations that do good works.

D: What brought you back?

M: That is a very complex question, especially because things have changed so much here. I came back, fundamentally, because I knew that there was unfinished business in Yellow Springs. I knew that my professors and my student comrades and so many of my Antiochian family were struggling to reach a goal that from afar, from 2500 miles away, seemed a lot more clear than it does here in Yellow Springs. I came back because I believe in a place like Antioch, a place that instills the values and ideas, and a place that is built on the motto that we come back to over and over again, ( “Be Ashamed”).

D: What is your job with the CRF?

M: I do communications work. I work on the web page and help to craft the news and the messaging that goes out to alumni. I work on the e-newsletter and the print newsletter. I try to help chapters organize and publicize their events. Being the youngest person in the office, you get stuck with helping out with people’s computers, and I usually make coffee. My job is largely computer based.

D: What is your analysis of the “Save Antioch” struggle?

There are a lot of different groups here and in the meta-Antiochian community who are working for different things. There is the Board Pro Tem, and the Alumni Board. The Alumni Board created Nonstop – or has been an important agent in the legal and financial creation of Nonstop. And there is the College Revival Fund. Within those organizations, there are different factions. There are people of different ages, different graduating classes, and they have different opinions. One thing about Antiochians is…it is our charming little downfall …that we all believe that we are the torch bearers. We all have the notion that our version is the correct version, and we have to save Antioch from all of the other incorrect understandings of what that word and this land means. I think that it is a huge part of the difficulty we are faced with right now. We have different notions about who carries the torch. Is it the alums? Is it Nonstop? Within Nonstop, is it carried by the students or the faculty? Is the torch carried by the land here? Once the Board Pro Tem gets it back–is that Antioch?
For someone who graduated in the 50’s, they are not going to recognize Nonstop as Antioch. We (the recent generation of Antiochians) believe and have strong connections to professors, a culture, and a staff that remain to some extent over at Millworks. The people who have the money it is going to take to save, to make this thing tenable for the next 155 years, don’t. This – this Olive Kettering Library, the Main Building, this is how they (donors) can relate, at least most of them anyway. And that is not an answer folks want to hear.

D: How do these competing visions impact our efforts?

Are we working on the same effort? I am not convinced we are. I am not convinced we aren’t. We are all communicating with other Antiochians out there, and we pass on our prejudices and our gripes about stuff that is happening here. I think that that process hurts our fund raising effort, it hurts our PR effort with the rest of the world. It hurts our image. It doesn’t build the forward momentum that we will need as an institution and a community to revitalize Antioch. Every one is working hard for their vision. It doesn’t matter what institution you are working for, whether it is Nonstop, or CRF, or BPT or the Alumni Board. In reality, I think our visions have more in common with each other than are different. We are focusing a lot on the differences.
We have an economy that is sinking. The situation in the outside world and here in the Antiochian community is like a perfect storm. We should be seeking whatever breaks we can get. We should be seeking whatever shelter and unity we can find, because it is hard enough, a big enough of a pipe dream to think of starting a college in this economic time.
I am optimistic. Antiochians are not good at faith. I believe that despite all of this, every one that I have talked to has good intentions. I have a lot of faith in Community Government. I have tremendous faith in Chelsea. She carries a lot of respect from all the different groups. With that respect she serves to unify us. The charisma of a capable leader is really important, and she holds a lot of that. The reason that she does is that she is very responsible about the way that she represents the ideas and the will of the community. She is a tremendously capable person.
I am optimistic about the innocence and passion of many of the young people involved. I think we should be listening to them more. Obviously, I am a young person, and take that how you may. I think there are a lot of very good ideas. There are ways to move forward in the hearts and minds of the most recent graduates. We should be reaching out to them. We may not have the deep pockets, but we have the energy, the wherewithal, and the ideas that are going to make any effort to recreate a college successful.

Dispatches from the Alumni Board Weekend

By John Hempfling and Jeanne Kay

Steve Schwerner’s Report on Visiting Team

The first Alumni Board meeting of the year opened morning of Friday the 6th with a presentation by Antioch Emeritus Professor Steve Schwerner, who was representing the delegation if educators who came to Nonstop and reported on their visit to the Board Pro Tempore. [link to Record article on visit] Schwerner said he expected that everyone had already read the eight-page report, [Link to the Report] and preferred to answer questions from the floor rather than reiterate the points made on paper. He specified that he would be unable to answer “questions of speculative nature,” since he was not in a position to answer them, and stipulated that he could only speak for himself.

Julia and Lela

Schwerner, however, stated that the Visiting Team was “impressed on every level; we were impressed by the seriousness of the faculty, by the excitement of the students, the innovations, the ability to make something out of nothing.” Yet he emphasized that despite the unquestionable value of Nonstop, it was too early to assess how it would be reintegrated into the new college; “to lose everything that Nonstop has done seems foolish, to incorporate everything is impossible.”

Several board members pressed Schwerner for a more definite assessment of the way Nonstop would or should be integrated back into Antioch College, but he found himself unable give any more details; “how to incorporate [Nonstop] verges on the area of speculation,” he said, “I do know what I’ve been told from people whom I trust who are on the ProTem Board, that that hasn’t even come up yet; that all of the attention is being focused on getting the college back.” Signing the Definitive Agreements was described as the ProTem Board’s priority, as well as securing accreditation, fixing the campus buildings and fundraising for the new college. The Visiting Team’s report, however, fulfilled its purpose with great success, according to Schwerner; “everybody on the ProTem Board now believes… that Nonstop is a really serious organization and needs to be looked at as something to help with the building of the new Antioch,” he said, “that’s probably the single, most important thing that came out of this visit, from my perspective.”

Matthew Derr Speaks to the Board

Chief Transition Officer and Consultant to the Board Pro Tempore, Matthew Derr started his address to the Alumni Board by commenting on the previous conversation on the reintegration of Nonstop; “the history of the college–recent and back to Horace Mann–is essential to what happens next and we are all stakeholders in that history,” he said, “the notion that somehow an institution starts in a new direction and loses that legacy is one of the most unattractive and certainly not a beguiling characteristic to the ProTem Board.”

Matthew Derr then announced that the Task Force was making “significant progress in coming to an agreement with Antioch University;” “we are in a dance together… until we come to an agreement,” he said, “the dance seems to be speeding up and the parties seem to be getting along.” He expressed confidence about the eventual separation of the college from the University “in a way that we described in the alumni resolutions from Reunion and in the charge for the Board Pro Tem.” While the room erupted in laughter at Derr’s statement that “much of what we’re doing now is actually in the hands of attorneys, and that’s a very good sign,” he assured the board that GLCA “neutral” lawyers were involved and that all parties involved in the task force were working in the same direction. The Task Force will meet in Boston on Monday March 16th for a midpoint report, and a GLCA press release will follow.

Derr dismissed the rumors according to which the date of the definitive agreement had been deferred. “It’s in everybody’s best interest to do this sooner rather than later,” he said.

Despite the economic crisis, the fundraising target for the 90 days period are not unattainable, Matthew Derr affirmed. “We’re making progress, funds are coming in, big gifts seem to be coming in daily, people are taking our appointments, they’re not turning us down.” As to his fundraising strategy, Derr said: “My essential case statement is: now is the only time when one gets to support Antioch. It’s now. I personally give to planned parenthood, but it will be there next year.” He further explained that “by necessity,” the focus was on major giving ($25,000 and up,) but that a broader, Obama-style fundraising campaign was to be expected for the upcoming years.

In regards to the college’s accreditation, “it is a very narrow band of work we’re doing,” said Derr, who emphasized that the task consisted of delineating a process for obtaining accreditation; “it’s process, not content,” he underlined. “It is our impression that there is a lot of goodwill and interest in facilitating this,” he assessed.

The issue of the concept paper was then discussed. Derr explained that the concept paper outlined a business plan but did not address curriculum, and was written for the primary purpose of showing a plan to the University, and was now being used solely for fundraising purposes. When further questioned by board Member Laura Fathauer ’95, Matt Derr acknowledged that “the concept paper should have been out there earlier,” and said that it will be circulated “as quickly as we possible can.”

Matthew Derr asserted that there was a “high degree of communication” between the ProTem Board and Nonstop. Corroborating examples include the ProTem Board’s decision to send the visiting team to report to them about Nonstop, their choice to meet in Yellow Springs in February and to let Nonstop give a presentation about their work, and Matthew Derr’s weekly meeting with Nonstop’s Executive Collective. He echoed Steve Schwerner’s statement according to which the Board ProTem was not yet in a position to be taking concrete decision about Nonstop; the spirit of the board follows the following logic: “We will make no assertions, we will make no commitments until we can make promises. I think it’s partly based on the history of unfunded mandates…and this board tries to behave differently,” he said, “you should not interpret their silence as meaning anything other than silence, and I encourage you to look at their actions and try to understand how they may look at the world.”

When several board members expressed concern about the fact that no Nonstop faculty member had been invited to join the Board Pro Tempore despite the alumni board’s recommendation, Matthew Derr answered that the bylaws included provisions for both a faculty member and a student to join the board. However, none of the Nonstop faculty is, as of now, officially a faculty member of the college: “there will be no employees of the future Antioch College until we have Antioch College,” he declared, “and the process by which we have employees hasn’t been defined.” Moreover, having a board member engaged in a lawsuit against the University would be problematic for the negotiations; the faculty lawsuit was thus cited as another reason for the current absence of faculty member on the board.

“The Board ProTem is aware of the challenges of the calendar, and the decisions that the Alumni Board and the CRF Board will need to make, and the fact that this vacuum is there,” Matthew Derr concluded, “but there isn’t a plan to make this vacuum go away until there is an Antioch College… our timing is off, to pretend otherwise is just not right.”

Julia and Lela
The Proposal Committee

Nonstop Presentation
Nonstop presented Friday afternoon the “Nonstop Antioch Proposal to the Antioch College Alumni Board.” The proposal was written by a committee of ExCil, which included Beverly Rodgers, Hassan Rahmanian, and Chris Hill of ExCol, Community Manager Chelsea Martens, student Jeanne Kay, faculty Jean Gregorek, and staff Carole Braun.

Beverly Rodgers began the presentation with the Parable of Talents (Matthew 25:14) asserting that the investment that the Alumni Board had put into Nonstop, and the retention of the institutional wisdom of the faculty and staff, would fail to pay “dividends” if “Nonstop ceases to exist at the end of June”. Furthermore, “if Nonstop’s successful relationship building outreach lies foul for a year and a half, I think we will have the same consequences as the buried talent, only you may not have one talent left, it may be totally eroded.”

The proposal described how Nonstop could be integrated into the new independent Antioch College; students could be working in recruitment, fundraising and rehabilitation of the campus; staff working as staff and faculty taking on various administrative roles, writing grant proposals and mentoring students.

“What we’re asking this weekend is for you to help us fine-tune this proposal. It will take all of us to be able to come up with a proposal that makes sense to the governing bodies, to the responsibilities that all these governing bodies have,” said Chris Hill.

During the Question & Answer section, Alumni Board members asked for far more concrete projections than the committee was prepared to make. “Have you thought about what the budgeting would look like for the planning for the reopening and the long-term health of the college?” asked Alumni Board President and Board ProTem member Nancy Crow. Other questions regarding a time-line for bringing the proposal to the Board ProTem and curriculum were asked as well. In response Chris Hill said that conflicting messages made it unclear to what extent the ProTem wanted input on certain issues. Also, they felt, “it was much more important to look at the larger picture and say, ‘if this is something that you feel can go forward, then let’s work together and figure it out.’ I think it’s a larger question.”

The next day, in closed session, the Alumni Board passed the following resolution:
“In the spirit of building from the movement toward an independent Antioch College that the Alumni Board has been trying to advance;
In the hope of strengthening the united movement that has informed the Alumni Board’s creation of three separate entities, one for finance (CRF), one for academics (Nonstop), one for governance (Board Pro Tem);
The Alumni Board establishes a Taskforce to foster collaboration and build consensus with representatives of the key stakeholders who have played such an important role in our movement to develop an independent Antioch College: Nonstop, the Board Pro Tem, and the Alumni Board. The Taskforce is charged to develop the proposal presented by Nonstop to this Board yesterday for presentation to the Board Pro Tem. ”

Julia and Lela

Julia and Lela

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Julia and Lela

College Revival Fund Discusses Nonstop Financing Issue

College Revival Fund (CRF) Treasurer Barrie Grenell said that the new bookkeeper was close to straightening up the budgeting mishap. “We had to go back and relook at all of the transactions that took place and make sure that we did have everything correctly, and we need to still do that with the pledges….but in terms of the cash part we feel confident that we’ve got that part down. Grenell announced that a CRF audit was upcoming that would focus on July 07 to December 31st ’08.
Grenell went on to address the issue of Nonstop’s funding. The last benchmark to guarantee Nonstop’s funding through June had not been met yet, and after previsions of incoming funds in the next two months, it was estimated that between $50,000 and $60,000 were still to be raised to fulfill the deficit, but it was suggested that the working figure should be set at $75,000 because of the uncertainty over incoming revenue.

Nonstop unrestricted funds coming every month were presented as one of the best ways to fulfill the gap; about 11,000 dollars have already been transferred from unrestricted funds to Nonstop, and any upcoming unrestricted funds not used for administrative overhead is set to go to Nonstop. Most outstanding pledges were said to have been made by Alumni Board members; Grenell said she had “some indication” that some of these pledges would not be fulfilled.

The floor was then left to the board’s questions. Nonstop IT Coordinator Tim Noble enquired: “I see no evidence of pledges being made [between Dcember ’08 and February ’09] which leads me to believe that nobody is pledging for Nonstop because perhaps they’re not being asked. At what point did we stop raising money for Nonstop?” Director of Alumni Relations, Aimee Maruyama, answered that only gifts in cash were asked to be given to Nonstop, because of the urgency of the situation. “It’s more a strategy for fundraising,” she explained, “because right now… what we need for Nonstop are cash gifts. We’re doing pledges, which is future money, for an independent Antioch College.”
Tim Eubanks ’00 suggested cutting spending in other areas in order to redirect money to Nonstop. Barrie Grenell asserted that Nonstop’s budget should not be micromanaged; and it was said that cuts in the CRF budget should be discussed in another venue.
Budget Committee member Wayne Snively suggested that each board member commit to collecting $2,500 from fundraising or personal funds; Barrie Grenell specified that this would be an average, since each board member’s circumstances vary.

Nonstop Executive Collective member Chris Hill reminded the board that Nonstop came under budget by $150,000, and was thus not responsible for the deficit. She asked whether the CRF would continue to fundraise for Nonstop. “I don’t make decisions on goals,” said CRF Executive Director Risa Grimes, “I put the mechanism into place; goals are set by the ProTem Board and by the CRF board…our primary job is to raise money for an independent Antioch College… We’re in an ambiguous situation; our salaries are being paid by the ProTem Board.” Nancy Crow intervened to specify that “we have one unified fundraising campaign…we are all working towards the same goal: the independent Antioch College… Everything has to happen under that umbrella,” she said. The board, according to Nancy Crow, hopes to see “much of the wonderful work that Nonstop is doing funded as part of the plan for the independent college going further.”

“What I’m saying is why can’t there be an assertion by this board that we’ve made major contributions to the revival of the college” said Chris Hill, “and if there’s a shortfall of 50 or 75 thousand dollars, why that money can’t come from the millions that are being raised to benefit the people who have put their professional lives on the line to stay here and keep the college open and to create a really good story for you all… We’re responsible for real concrete contributions to this revival.”

Several solutions were suggested to remedy the deficit through June, including sending Nonstop community members to chapter meetings, reducing the Nonstop budget–though some objected that Nonstop having come under budget and considering that a commitment had been made by the board to cover the approved budget– and board members individually fundraising among their friends and alumni from their area. “We are going to try our level best to make sure that we can fulfill our promises,” Nancy Crow concluded.

Pledge forms were distributed during the meeting, Barrie Grenell announced that $7410 had been raised in cash, $10,700 had been raised in pledges, there was 350 dollars pledge payment and a possible $5000 withholding, for a total of between $18,000 and $23,000 raised in the hour.

Julia and Lela

Toxic Talk: Steve Lawry’s Culture War

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By Jeanne-Kay

Research: Brian Springer, Kathryn Leahey, Jeanne Kay

Prelude: The Discourse of Toxicity

“Toxic Culture.” Steve Lawry’s infamous phrase is now part of the vocabulary of virtually all Antiochians. The year before the Antioch University Board of Trustees (UBoT) resolved to close the college, the key political issue on campus and the polemic that reached alumni revolved around the question of Toxic Culture–whether there was one, how it manifested itself, how to fix it or how to debunk its myth.

To alumni whose only contact with the community in years had been filtered through Media and University intermediaries, “toxic culture” meant a steady decline in academic excellence and increased political narrowness from their time at Antioch onwards; to conservative reporters, “toxic culture” came to be the perfect excuse to write diatribes against political correctness at liberal arts colleges; and to many observers “toxic culture” was a perfect shortcut to explaining how Antioch College had found itself in such an incomprehensibly dire situation: Antioch students were narrow-minded, unstable, out of control–they chased away new students, driving down retention and preventing Antioch from achieving financial stability. The toxic culture narrative made sense–and it was useful.

For many students on campus, however, accusations of toxicity and the clean-up crusades that followed translated into a daily struggle to uphold shared governance, preserve freedom of expression, and debunk a myth that had been imposed from top-down unto what was most experienced as a close-knit, supportive and safe community. “It became difficult to go anywhere on campus without hearing conversations within our community about this analysis of our home,” writes Community Manager Chelsea Martens ’08, a student on campus during the toxic years; “we were being told that no, it was not the structural instabilities of a poorly managed governance structure, or poor financial stewardship of Antioch College by the AUBoT that was suffocating our campus, but a damaging toxic culture that was making Antioch College ill.”

On Monday, March 2nd 2009, The Antioch Papers (www.theantiochpapers.org) published previously unreleased confidential documents that shed light on the workings behind the toxic culture narrative. Through them we learn that Antioch College President Steve Lawry (2005-2007) considered himself engaged in a full-fledged “culture war”–with the full mandate and support of the UBoT.

The attributes of a “failed culture” according to Steve Lawry

The centerpiece of the Antioch Papers’ release is Steve Lawry’s report to the University Board of Trustees on November 2nd, 2006. The seven-page long document was subsequently emailed to all board members and prefaced by Chancellor Toni Murdock’s warning that it should be “treated as a confidential document.” She expresses concern that “the proposals he raises will require far-reaching discussions with faculty and others at the College;” and asks for trustees to exercise their discretion since “it is important that [Lawry] lead and manage them carefully. We would not want some portions to reach members of the community without the careful preparations this kind of process deserves.”

The report begins by exposing what Lawry calls “the attributes of a failed culture.” Here, he describes student culture as intolerant and confrontational; “persons who might not fit the narrow mold of an acceptable Antioch student are subject to severe scrutiny on arrival. Their social values and political credentials are tested through a process of ‘calling out.'” Lawry explains such a phenomenon as students feeling “resentment” from past alienating experiences; “many Antioch students bring with them grievances for how they have been treated in the so-called ‘real world,’ for some by virtue of non-normative lifetyles, not fitting in mainstream culture, etc. As one student rather starkly put it, ‘the Antioch student is the person who did not have any friends in high school.'”

The college president goes on to pinpoint “substance abuse and a tolerance within the student community for it” as yet another cultural problem needing to be remedied. Lawry’s decision to expel three students from the entering class of 2006 a few days after orientation is an example of his attempt to remedy to what he perceived as a major issue for the campus.

Lawry further advances his argument by arguing that “the intellectual and learning environment has over the last two decades been diminished, in my view, through admission of large numbers of students with weak academic backgrounds.” To the college president, this trend in decline makes the Antioch’s self-managed education system as inadapted. The system of narrative evaluations, moreover, “can fail to hold accountable others for unsatisfactory progress,” Lawry writes.

Finally, “a deeply confused ‘shared governance’ model,” according to Lawry, had “…become [a] vessel[…] for vociferous opposition to the administration and strangely misdirected power struggles.” Community governance, he assessed, “has doubtful educational benefit.”

The Mental Health Issue

Steve Lawry’s depiction of Antioch’s “failed culture” then diverges to the issue of students’ mental health. Citing director of the Wright State clinic Dr. Cynthia Olson, Lawry claims that “the [Antioch] student body displays an exceptionally high proportion, for the age group, of persons with bipolar disorders, schizophrenia and eating disorders, exacerbated by high co-morbidity with substance abuse.” To Lawry, “campus social life and the health of entire learning environment are affected negatively” by this “issue.”

On October 31st, 2006, a week before his report to the UBoT, President Lawry informed the college faculty of his concerns about students’ mental health compromising the success of the college. In a document subsequently circulated among the community, former Antioch College President Bob Devine ’67 states: “When a President of a respectable institution tells the faculty, on the basis of a single conversation with a mental health professional, that the students they are teaching have too many gender disorders, bi-polar disorders, eating disorders and other psychological problems, and that is why the College is unable to recruit and retain students, and is the source of the institutions budgetary problems, I have reservations.”

In Fall 2007, an admissions counselor who requested to remain anonymous reported to the Record that Lawry had communicated instructions in 2005/2006 for students to be screened for mental health problems during the admissions process. The question as to whether this constitutes an act of discrimination naturally arises, since the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 “recognizes and protects the civil rights of people with disabilities and is modeled after earlier landmark laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and gender. The ADA covers a wide range of disability, from physical conditions … to conditions such as emotional illness and learning disorders,” and applies to “a nursery, elementary, secondary, undergraduate, or postgraduate private school, or other place of education.”

On November 2nd, 2006, Dr Linda Sattem, director of the Antioch College Counseling and Wellness center, published a letter on a community forum that stated that as early as March 2004 she “sent out a campus-wide announcements concerning rumors that indicated thinking along the lines of ‘If Antioch did not admit such messed up students, the college would not be having such problems'” Sattem clearly states that “Antioch students are not different than other college students. Our students do not have more problems, more severe problems or a higher incidence of mental illness.” She ends her letter by emphasizing to students: “there is nothing wrong with you. You are not the reason the college is having difficulties.”

Lawry Gets “Culture War” Mandate From UBoT

Steve Lawry’s report concludes with a statement of confidence as to his ability to “shift” the culture to “one founded on intellectual freedom, open inquiry and respect among all community members.” He further recognizes the task as “very hard” because “large numbers of those who see the College as a fit socially and politically continue to bring with the values and attitudes anathema to the culture that we are trying to build.”

Lawry thus set out to renew the culture by changing the way in which was portrayed to prospective students. The Board contracted an independent agency in 2005 to make new recruitment materials that would present a picture of the college that a different population of college students would identify with. Notably, the college’s tradition of shared governance was increasingly downplayed. Professor Jean Gregorek recalls changes on the college’s website in particular; “the portion of the website describing community engagement –under the caption ‘you have a voice,’ ironically enough–was dramatically revised at Steve’s direction to eliminate references to student participation in college governance,” she says.

Lawry presents the “culture shift” operation as crucial to the college’s survival. He plans to adopt “bold and very ambitious” leadership in “addressing the problems identified above.” Moreover, he appears to be advocating for a shock therapy based strategy; “incremental change will not be timely or effective.”

The closed session minutes from the UBoT meeting of November 2-4 2006 state that Lawry told the board that “building a new Antioch entails revamping the structure and operations and a realignment of the faculty to meet new needs.” The minutes report that “Steve was commended by several trustees on the frankness of his report.” Trustee Larry Stone, in particular, stated that he was “pleased to see the support for Steve around the table,” since he feared that “some will see Steve as the problem.” “Lack of community and toxicity are real problems,” he said, “which were identified by the NCA well before Steve arrived.”

Antioch University Tullisse “Toni” Murdock “recognized the courage it takes to fight a Culture War … and underscored the support Steve is receiving from the ULC [University Leadership Council.]” Trustee Sherwood Guernsey “proposed a motion to support the president of the college and his vision,” the resolution was “revisited and passed the following day,” as follows:

RESOLUTION 11.4.06:13 (S. Guernsey/D.Fallon)

RESOLVED, that the Board of Trustees of Antioch University supports president Steven Lawry’s vision for Antioch College based on mutual respect, intellectual freedom and open inquiry [as envisioned by the Renewal Plan] within the University system with the same shared values.

The “mutual respect, intellectual freedom and open inquiry” tryptych is used consistently through several documents–from Lawry’s report to the February 2007 UBoT board meeting.

Divergent Agendas

In a private letter sent to Steve Lawry on October 7th 2006, Professor Bob Devine provides an interpretation of the grounds for the UBoT’s support for Lawry’s culture war: “The origins of the mandate to “clean up the culture” of the College are fairly clear,” he writes; “Between those on the Board who are still angry about the ’60s and ’70s (not just as they played out at Antioch, but in a much broader cultural sense), those younger Board members who experienced the symptoms, among students, of several years of autocratic, insensitive and ineffective leadership, and those who have critically limited experience with 18-year olds (like yourself) and consequently experience the generation gap as a constant affront, it’s no mystery how such perspectives might coalesce to forge a mandate. In my view it’s a misguided mandate, for the very reason that it conflates symptoms with causes.

Chelsea Martens ’08 advances the thesis that the UBoT culture war was nothing less than a red herring: “You have to ask yourself then, why was so much attention focused on an analysis of our campus culture, and not on more significant factors of governance or finances? What interests did this narrative serve? Simply, it was a cosmetic analysis that removed our focus away from the real issue at hand – the mismanagement of Antioch College by Antioch University – and placed the blame squarely on the victims -Antioch College itself. By faulting Antioch for its troubles, and not highlighting any institutional short comings, it paved the way for our very closure, while simultaneously ignoring the responsibility of the University to the College.”

Levi B. Cowperthwaite was Community Manager in ’06/’07; after reading Lawry’ “failed culture” report, he commented in an email to the Record: “Steve cites no evidence for his claims (something my Antioch education taught me was essential when making an argument, especially in a formal document). He was always fond of retelling one or two inflamatory anecdotes as if that constituted a thorough and inarguable statistical analysis of campus culture. In this document, he can’t even seem to produce his favorite flimsy stories as an attempt to back up his claims. This makes me wonder if he wasn’t so much as proposing an analysis to the board as he was confirming a characterization they had already provided for him.”

Indeed, it appears that Lawry made an unrealistically prompt assessment of the state of Antioch college’s culture upon arrival.”After being on campus for approximately 7 days, President Steve Lawry addressed the entire campus for the first time during our regularly scheduled Community Meeting,” recalls Chelsea Martens, 2007-2009 Community Manager; “He shared with us his excitement for the experience and challenges of being Antioch College’s newest world-class President. After a few minutes into his speech, he began to address the issue of a “toxic culture” on campus … I raised my hand and asked Steve, ‘How, after being on campus for only 7 days, do you know us well enough to know our biggest faults?’ It became quite apparent … that this was not an astute observation made by our newest President, but a narrative that had been told to him, strategically, for the purpose of waging a culture war at Antioch College.”

Another instrumentalization of the toxic culture narrative regards the rationale for firing tenured professors. Lawry claimed that dealing with the culture problem would require a “realignment of the faculty,” and his concerns about the lowering of academic standards and out-of-control state of the student body reflected directly on the faculty’s reputation and legitimacy. Media Arts Professor Chris Hill believes that Steve Lawry was preparing the grounds for cutting faculty positions; she recalls a faculty meeting in Spring 2007 in which Lawry spoke; “it seemed that he might be trying to convince the BOT to combine the College with McGregor,” she said, “he offered few details. I asked him at that faculty meeting–if his plan were ratified did that mean that some of the tenured faculty sitting in the room at that time would lose their jobs, and he said yes. I believe that someone else, either at that meeting or the next one, asked how many would lose their jobs, and he didn’t respond. He was probably expecting that exigency would be declared, and that would allow him to cut back on tenured faculty positions, but that level of detail was not provided to the faculty (or Adcil) at that time.”

Patriarchy, Responsibility, Agency

“It was always ironic that Steve was so fond of the term ‘intellectual freedom,’ since the culture he proposed was one that favored limiting campus discourse to only those topics he deemed ‘appropriate,'” further writes Cowperthwaite, referring to Lawry’s attempt to censor the Antioch Record in Fall ’06 and make it unacessible to alumni by demanding that it be taken offline. “Sex was not appropriate. Speaking truth to power about the lived experiences of queer people of color, survivors of sexual assault, people dissatisfied with the expectations given them by society – that was not appropriate,” he continues, “and stepping out of line, the line predetermined by him, meant punishment. He even told staff members that ‘dissent = termination.’ One administrative staff member privately criticized Steve to me and then asked me not to repeat it, adding, ‘Please, I have a family to feed.'”

After the UBoT voted to close down Antioch College, a New York Times article quoted Steve Lawry perpetuating the Toxic Culture narrative at Reunion 2007:

“In its glory days, it attracted students who wanted to change the world, through war protests or work in communities. But Steven Lawry, Antioch’s president, said in an interview that more recently, the college became a magnet for students who felt marginalized, and so bred a political narrowness and culture of resentment. By way of example, he cited students getting “called out” for wearing Nikes, seen as an emblem of globalization.”It became less about intellectual rigor, than a political and social experience,” he said. “The boot camp of the revolution became the model.””We were offering a political re-education” instead of a liberal education.And that model, he added, is sharply at odds with what most students are looking for these days.”

Several faculty and students wrote open and personal letters to Steve Lawry, characterizing the president’s public blaming of the community as “yet another hit in the stomach” during already traumatic times.

To Martens, the cultural war years are the occasion to “learn a lesson: what power do we give a President, and it what ways do we give up our own agency and voice? By hiring Steve Lawry –a man who had no prior experience dealing with youth– to come in and ‘clean up our act’, we invited him to participate in a savior complex,” she says, “we gave up our own power by thinking that what we needed was someone to save us from ourselves. It’s a common patriarchal narrative – a Father Knows Best narrative, if you will – that empowers someone with little knowledge about our community, our struggles, our dreams, and the reality of being young in a chaotic world, with the task of making top-down decisions that do nothing to make our community a more engaging and compassionate place to be. Really, what we needed was for a President who understood the task at hand and who joined us in our commitment to making this world a better place, and who could have gently and compassionately, charged us with the responsibility to do this work with as much dignity, passion, and love as possible.”

Intox vs Detox

Chelsea Martens is now Community Manager at the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute. She still has to deal with the consequences of the toxic culture narrative on a regular basis, as it continues to influence the Antiochian collective unconscious. She is weary of the reductive, oversimplistic analyses that come with the standard toxic culture debate, and tries to provide a more complex discourse; “Antioch College is a demanding educational experience. And we wouldn’t have it any other way,””she explains, “where else can you go to learn about the problems that the world is currently facing, while also being charged with the responsibility to do something about it? Coming to terms with the numbers of victories needed to win for humanity, rattles you to your core. And sometimes, during this process – a process that I would call a detoxing process – you experience sadness, anger, disbelief, and urgency. Everyone goes through the process of learning about this world – and unlearning the stories we have told ourselves to be complacent with it – in their own way. This process has become, wrongly so, deemed part of Antioch’s “toxic culture”. That is a misjudgment. In my opinion, it is a process of cultural detox – one that all Antiochians engage in so that they can become effective change agents, equipped with an understanding of this world and their responsibility to it.”

Archeology of Toxicity: From The Record’s Archives

I/Culture War is Waged

Fall 2006: Luke Brennan and Foster Neill are editors of the Antioch Record.

September:

Three first year students are expelled from campus. Read Record’s report: Part 1 Part 2

-Read letter from father of expelled student

-Record’s Question of the Week starts issue of Record censorship

October:

-Several alumni write open letters in Protest Part 1 Part 2

-Steve Lawry’s ambition to clean campus becomes clear to students

– Andrzej Bloch cease and desist letter to record editors (Satire issue version of Andrzej’s letter here!)

-Alumnus Matthew Baya receives cease and desist letter from Steve Lawry for hosting Record online (read Matt Baya’s answer here)

Part II/ Dealing with the Toxic Brand

December 2006

“Not My Antioch,” Debate with Ralph Keyes, author of “End Toxic Culture in Yellow Springs”In YS News: Part 1, Part 2

-Summer 2007, Antioch College to Close down

Alumnus Michael Goldfarb’s Op/Ed in NY Times: “When the arts were too liberal

Golfarb’s Interview with Record: “When the arts were liberal enough.”

Ralph Keyes: Present at the Demise

Letter from Jean Gregorek in response to Ralph Keyes August 23, 2007

Who Killed Antioch? Womyn (LA Times) and Antioch Student Paige Clifton-Steele’s Response

To the Antioch University Board of Trustees: What about me seems toxic to you? by Julian Sharp, August 31, 2007

From the Antioch Papers:

Culture War – Vision – Nov. 06

Culture War – Open & Closed Minutes – Nov 06

Back and Forth Between Theory and Practice: Women’s Studies in Europe

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Emily Mente, Lauren Soldano, and Iveta Jusova about their experiences on the Summer 08 Antioch Education Abroad Women’s Studies Program. Emily is a third year student at Antioch / Nonstop from Pittsburgh. Lauren is a second year Antioch / Nonstop student from Hamilton, Ohio. Iveta Jusova has led the Women’s Studies Abroad Program for the past five years, and currently teaches at Nonstop.

About the program:Iveta

Iveta: This program was created by Antioch College Women’s s Studies faculty in 1984. Marianne Welchel and Jean Gregorek are some of the College faculty who have been involved in developing and improving the WGSE program over the years. The structure of the program is wonderfully conducive to combining classroom academics and experiential learning. I love the constant back and forth between theory and practice on the program.

emily.jpg

Emily: It is a thirteen week program. You take four classes:
Situated Feminism, Feminist Methodologies, Feminist Theory, and an independent research project. This year, we started in Utrecht in the Netherlands. The program starts out wherever the NOISE Summer School conference is which is a two-week program on European Women’s Studies. From there we went to Krakow, Poland, and from there to Prague, then to Berlin, and back to Utrech for two weeks. Then we flew to Istanbul where we spent ten days, and then back to Utrech. It was quite a trip.

Iveta: In the Comparative Feminist Theory course I focus specifically on Continental Feminist Theory, which is different from what is studied here in the US.  The North American School of Feminism is rooted in the sex /gender division, and goes back to the idea that one is born with a specific sex, and based on what one’s sex is, one is then socialized into specific gender roles.  Of course, the distinction between presumably biological sex and socialized gender has been deconstructed by now, but the sex/gender is the main operational division in this school. Continental Feminism, on the other hand, is rooted in psychoanalysis, and the distinction examined here is one between sex and sexuality.  It works on more of a psychoanalytic plane, while Anglo-American feminism focuses on the sociological plane.  On the WGSE program, we look at the ways in which Continental feminism incorporates the argument of intersectionality that gender, race, sexuality, class are inter-knotted and mutually co-produced.  Race is theorized and experienced very differently in Europe than it is here in the US. Here, you have a long history of slavery, while in Europe you have an entirely different history of nationalism and Anti- Semitism. Race in Europe can never be discussed without talking about nationalism. It is often more a matter of ethnicity. So what I often try to do with this course is make students understand that theory is not just something abstract; that it goes back to your location, and it draws on that historical location and that current situation in a specific country. We talk about colonialism, what it means to have a colonial mind. Issues of post-colonialism and of immigration are very hot topics in Europe.

Emily: We had three lectures a week, that varied on the topics. In Krakow, we focused on birth control and abortion rights. It is such a Catholic country, so women don’t have access to many things. We heard from gynecologists, and women who were involved in visibility for women’s issues. We would have three or four seminars per week led by Iveta, and we would do two readings and discuss those readings. It was very structured.

Iveta: The students have lectures with specific local activists, artists, and scholars, but what I want to emphasis is the activists. We talk about queer issues, and then we talk to Trans-organizations [organizations dealing with trans-people’s issues]. It is interesting to hear from transgendered NGO people what their take is on queer theory. When we talk to Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of Women on Waves, a ship that goes where abortion is illegal, that reminds the students who are not interested in reproductive rights that this is a very important issue for a lot of women. How does this theory contribute to solving this problem? And this connection of theory and practice is of course absolutely Antiochian.

Lauren: Over the summer I was receiving emails about what we would be doing. I hardly read them, and it wouldn’t have gotten me prepared. But the NOISE Summer School! It is a Feminist Summer School! We were there for two weeks. When I got the email from NOISE -which was like Antioch recruitment materials -“Do you want to change the world”?, they asked “are you such and such kind of woman, do you want to write your own feminist manifesto?” I said Yeah! The Noise Summer School is for graduate students, and students getting their PhD’s, but we were allowed to participate, and it was one of those network things that would be lost if it was decided that the program was not profitable anymore. I really liked the structure at the University of Utrech, our home base. We were really involved with the Gender Studies Program there. I got a good idea of what it would look like if I was a Genders Studies student.. We were encouraged to apply to a two-year graduate program in Gender Studies.

Iveta: Students take a Feminist Methodology course, that focuses on ethical issues and issues of power, what it is to be an American person interviewing in a language that is not their own. These are issues that students encounter when they do their own research. Then they design an independent project.

Emily: I did my project on Cosmopolitan Magazine in all of the different countries, and how the advertising within the magazine portrayed the ideal feminine. I bought a magazine in each country and went through and did advertising analysis.

Lauren: I was living in a collective in Chicago this summer. Suddenly I am interpolated as a practicing lesbian, and I would see the gay community in Chicago or what had been endorsed as the gay community, and I saw shortcomings, compared to my own personal experience, not shortcomings…. gaps, discrepancies. My project is how the fable of the lesbian has been created. I am using Derrida, some Judith Butler. I made a Table of Contents. One of the chapters is Trends in Lesbianism and Trendy Lesbians. I was looking at different phenomena that has been set up as specifically lesbian phenomena. I was interviewing women who are lesbians or queer. (My subjects) were people on the program who had given us a lecture or a tour. It was a good environment to do this work. I had some pretty cool interviews.

Can you talk about traveling to Istanbul?

Iveta: We had to stop going to London, unfortunately. We were working with Nira Yuval Davis, one of the most famous feminist theorists, but it is just too expensive. We were looking for another place, and Istanbul was suggested because when we deal with immigration issues, both in the Netherlands and in Berlin, many of the immigrant population come from Turkey.

Lauren: . The first thing we did in Turkey was meet some Lambda activists. It was very cool at the Lambda headquarter. We all went to the Turkish bath house together (except Ethan, who is male bodied) and that brought us together in a strange new way.

Emily: I loved Istanbul. We had been in the Netherlands, it was one of my favorite places, but it rained every day, and it was cloudy and 45 degrees, and we went from there to Istanbul. The light is just different. It is just golden. It looks like sunset all of the time, so going from a grey place to this beautiful, golden, hot place where there was music and pomegranate juice everywhere. That was my favorite part, and we were also not having classes, so it was like a vacation.

Iveta: While we did not have theory/methodology seminars in Istanbul we did have plenty of lectures.

How was the dynamic of the group?

Emily: There were fourteen students and Olivia Leire, the Teaching Assistant. Eleven of us were from Antioch, and three were from other schools.
Since most of the students were from Antioch, a lot of the language was very similar. There was a lot of Antioch present. I had worked at a summer camp last summer which a hard experience for me, going from Antioch with Antiochian values, to this camp, where I do not really share their values, so it was very comforting coming back to a space where I felt good about what was going on and the conversations that we had. The dynamics were difficult because we were with these people all of the time. You are going to school with them and you are hanging out with them, and it is hard to make new good relationships with everyone. There was no schism in the group, which Iveta mentioned was very unusual. Usually something happens half way through, and you have two distinct groups.

Iveta: It was wonderful, partly because most of them were from Antioch. Our students are perfect for Women’s Studies. We click like that. I understand perfectly where their concerns are coming from. The group was cohesive, helpful, and appreciative about what the program had to offer. They wanted to help with any kinds of problems we had. They were not whiny at all. We didn’t have any big dramas. The group dynamic affects so much of what you can do in the classroom and in the program. A sense of humor makes such a difference.

How has the trip changed you?

Lauren: When I entered college, I entertained ideas that I would be a Creative Writing major. I like to imagine myself as a cartoonist. Now I feel like the trip has crystallized my Gender Studies major ambitions, so I guess things have shifted a little bit. I wonder what job I am going to get as a Gender Studies major? Something the program showed me is that maybe I will get a job as a professor or as an accountant for a gay rights organization. I am in this state of ever-constant change. Things were different when I got back home. One of the things is, I imagined myself to be more politicized, as usual, just like when I got back from Antioch. Things that I had never thought about have become pressing issues. Nationalism, and gender identity, and the way crimes against the gay community are used to perpetuate racism and anti- immigration, and to create panic, which are things I never thought before, but now I could talk about all day.

Emily:
I have a very clear idea about what I want to be studying. and a different appreciation for how big the world is. One of the things Olivia told me is this experience will make you worry about America, and I didn’t understand that until I came home. I am realizing that the world is very big and we are very focused on ourselves, and that is going to be a problem. How culturally and economically we are so focused on ourselves, and Europe is focused on us, and to be so far away, and to still be hearing about American news. It is a scary thing. At one point we were in Poland, and we were putting missiles in Poland, and everyone in Poland was talking about it, but we would go on line, and could find NOTHING about it in the US press, and that was so pertinent to my life!