By Molly Thornton
At this point in time, we are all coming to the realization that the rollercoaster of the last three months is still rolling, and there is no end in sight. We are all at wits ends, and reaching dates in the timelines of our lives at which decision making can not be prolonged. In this time, the fight for Antioch can feel futile and exhausting, and better left abandoned than lived through for another moment. In this time of great struggle, and want to give up hope, the only thing I can think to do is to share with you some of the thoughts I sort through when in extreme doubt, which give me the strength to fight for one more day. Continue reading Why I allow Antioch College to drag me across the floor on a daily basis
Tag: race
Breaking Point
By Kim-Jenna Jurriaans
Antioch shakes you to your core; it breaks you and puts you back together with pieces of the people around you becoming part of you. That is what the past four months have felt like for me. If anything diverts me from the disappointment over the resolution that was meant to be the moment of relief and reward, then it is holding on to the unexpected bonds I made since this summer. I do not feel relieved, I do feel rewarded.
Letter from Priscilla (Kip) Klein Zink ’63
I can’t remember when I’ve been prouder of being an Antiochian: proud of alumni who raised $18 million in 125 days, proud of students who refused to bail when the going got iffy and the pipes got leaky. I am grateful to faculty who so espoused the values of Horace Mann that they have hung in when salaries were cut, when names were black-listed during Joe McCarthy’s rampage…and now, when tenure is spelled “tenuous.” I bask in the reflected glory of past Antiochians… Stephen Jay Gould, Coretta Scott King, Eleanor Holmes Norton. Hey, I once grilled a hamburger in the C-Shop for Rod Serling and shared a chemistry class with Mario Capecchi! (I would be delighted to sign autographs.) An anti-bumper sticker person at heart, my little Honda now sports a sticker that proclaims “I ‘Heart’ Antioch College.”
There is much that I regret. Immature below my years, I did not march when we invaded Vietnam. I did not understand civil rights. “What difference does it really make what fountain they drink out of? where they sit in the bus?” (Until my date and I were refused service in a restaurant because we were a mixed couple.) I graduated third from the bottom of my class and had to make up those grades before I even dared apply to graduate school. I was accepted only because of the support of one professor (Dr. Bill John, who believed that nobody can be that hopeless!) and because of my Antioch degree. Some of us are really late bloomers!
I like to believe that I did eventually bloom because of my Antioch heritage.
I desperately need our current crop of students to make up for my shortcomings. They cannot do this if Antioch closes. Not understanding that Antioch was in difficult straits financially, I stopped contributing when I retired. Big mistake. Now I’m in, believing that even the modest contribution I can afford…multiplied by tens of thousands of alumni…can make a difference. When all of the hoop-la dies down, Antioch will still be struggling against financial difficulties. Anyway, understanding that ongoing financial support is critical to the survival of the values that shaped our lives, I am dedicated to spreading the guilt around.
I listened online to the whooping, hollaring, whistles and applause that greeted the announcement that the closing had been suspended. But within hours, the objections and suspicions had begun to emerge…and although they made good points, they may be premature. We were told that there is much to be worked out. I have learned that it pays immeasurably to first listen…and then listen some more. It is crucial that we continue to air our questions and doubts, but let’s give the new plan a chance. It can always be amended.
Priscilla (Kip) Klein Zink, 1963
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, How Say You?
This weekend, the future of Antioch College is sitting in the hot seat of a court room. Antiochians, Yellow Springers, Alumni, members of the Board of Trustees (BOT), and many reporters with pen at hand have come to witness a decision that could be either a death sentence or an Antiochian Renaissance. No one, not even BOT members, knows what the decision will be, yet everyone has strong feelings about the outcome. Some people think that the Board’s decision to close is unlikely to be reversed. Others believe that the Board will keep the college open. Gina Potestio, a first year, is, “trying to stay optimistic, and hearing the feedback from the upper-level students saying it’s going to close is a little hurtful after seeing … what everyone’s doing for us.” Many students are in denial about the possibility of Antioch closing. “I just really didn’t want to think about [the closing],” explains James Kutil, a second year student, “so, I’ve kind of been in a numb panic, because the school closing means a lot to me.” There is still a gut feeling that the college just can’t close.
Continue reading Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, How Say You?
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