Tag: retention

Antioch Panel Speaks at Wittenberg

“In my mind, Antioch has a soul,” mused Antioch College professor Scott Warren to a small audience gathered at Wittenberg University last Wednesday. Community members Jeanne Kay, Scott Warren, Scott Sanders, and Wittenberg professor and Yellow Springs resident Laurie Askland comprised the panel in order to openly discuss the circumstances regarding the closing of Antioch College.
The panel started off with college archivist Scott Sanders, presenting pieces of Antioch history to illuminate parallels between the college’s current financial situation and those of its past. According to Sanders, the year 1880 saw no graduates and concerned alumni and students met with the college’s Board of Trustees in order to prevent the closure of the college. Sanders also described the events of the summer that led to the announcement of closure as “surprising” and elaborated upon the efforts of friends and alumni of the College to prevent the suspension of operations that is planned for July 1, 2008.

Jeanne Kay, a second-year globalization major at the college, providing a student perspective to an intimate crowd in the Wittenberg auditorium, lamented the wave of “bad press” over the summer, following the announcement of suspension of operations. Kay stated her concerns about limited operations, facilities, and the number of students on campus, but she disputed the sentiment parlayed in newspapers across the country that campus culture has had a negative effect on the retention rate of the college. she pointed to the 100 percent retention rate of the incoming class and the fact that the second-year class has had half of its original students return to campus even after the news of suspension of operations as indicative of the environment of tolerance resplendent on campus.

Scott Warren reminded the audience of the economic implications of the college’s closure to the community of Yellow Springs and the Miami Valley. Laurie Askland, a town representative and professor of Women’s Studies at Wittenberg University described the college as the “heart” of the village. “It became clear to me how much the fabric the community I lived in was linked directly to the college,” she said.

Warren further described the measures currently undertaken by the campus community and Yellow Springs to prevent the suspension and panelists listed their favorite websites for news and background on everything Antioch.

A week after the event, it becomes evident the wave of direct action, generated by alumni and friends of Antioch college since this summer, has found its way to the Wittenberg community. Students that were present at the panel discussion have contacted Wittenberg faculty and facilitators to inquire after ways start campaigns to effective fundraise for Antioch College.

Fourth week, None Missing

On August 23rd, 66 new students* unpacked their luggage in North Hall. Four weeks later their rooms might be messier, but  none moved out. College Registrar Donna Evans confirmed that as of September 17th, no single drop-out had been registered among the entering class.
A 0% attrition rate has not been known since the days of Bob Devine’s presidency. Director of Institutional Research Doug Wamer stated that perfect retention had not been reached since the Fall of 1998.
In Fall 2005 the attrition rate was 12% for the same period, according to data from institutional research and the registrar’s. In Fall 2006, we had lost 9% of the entering class by fourth week.
Director of Admissions Angie Glukhov ventured several reasons to account for the resilience of the class of 2011. More accurate information was given to prospective students about Antioch as the new curriculum was more clearly defined, and there was better targeting of potential Antiochians. “The last two years, we have been working very hard in admissions to recruit students for whom Antioch is the absolute right choice,” recounted Glukhov. She also mentioned recent community efforts to improve retention; “campus visits, meetings with faculty, creating networks on campus to help retention really made a difference,” she declared. The fact that a preliminary screening process naturally took place after the June decision is also to take into account. “I think the announcement set everyone thinking very hard about Antioch and their educational options,” said Glukhov, “The Office of Transition made sure that everyone knew what to expect if they decided to come.”
Some might see an irony in achieving an exemplar retention rate in the current circumstances. But despite having to make it through their first term of college in an institution with a minimal operations budget, having to work their schedule around the limited open hours of most facilities, taking up to 22 academic credits with a library that is not fully functioning, having to deal with the anxiety caused by an uncertain future, and, last but not least, having to save their college, first years are hanging on. And we might come to ask ourselves, with Registrar Donna Evans, “If we hadn’t had the suspension of operations, how many students would we have retained?”

* degree seeking, full time students (not including exchange)

On Board with the Chair

20061215-zucker.jpgQ&A with BOT chair Art Zucker on College, Core and Common DNA

By Kim-Jenna Jurriaans

BOT, ULC, Toni Murdoch, Art Zucker, John Feinberg; these acronyms and names fl y around frequently, but largely remain an enigma to many residing on campus. Who are these people and what do they do? The Antioch Record sat down with chair of the Board of Trustees Art Zucker ‘55, to talk about the roles of the Board, his memories as an Alum and the future of the College.

Continue reading On Board with the Chair

Come Together: Fighting the ‘Purification’ of Antioch

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

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

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

–Excerpt from Fighting for our lives, CWC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Space: The Final Frontier

by Marjorie Jensen 

Recently, Antioch’s administration has pushed for marketing our radical institution to the rich, white, straight population. While I am not totally opposed to the concept of hegemony, I believe that mainstreaming Antioch will corrupt the integrity of the college. For me, and many other students, Antioch is a place where we can be queer, alternative and revolutionary. It is our space.

Why is the concept of exclusive space so important? With a few notable exceptions (like San Francisco, neighborhoods in New York and Miami, and, of course, Boystown in Chicago) most of America is run by and for the population that the administration is working to attract. Their privilege includes having the vast majority of the power and money. They take up most of the space.

Before we come to Antioch, and after we graduate, minorities of all kinds are caught in a world where we are condemned, segregated and threatened. All we are asking for are four years (actually less, because of the time spent on co-op) in a place just for us. A liberal haven where we don’t have be subjected to the kind of discrimination that has dominated our lives. We just want a little space. I’ll give you an example. After spending a wonderful afternoon in Boystown shopping for a new vibrator, I had to work the late shift at Jimmy John’s. At 4:30am, a group of young, drunk, white, rich men filled the store. Gathering by my register, they decided to call each other “gay,� throwing the term around in a derogatory manner, contaminating the space.

I’m not sure exactly when the phenomenon of using the term “gay� as synonymous with “stupid� or “lame� began. All I know for certain is that it is still prevalent among the demographic that the administration is trying to attract. Why bring people with this attitude to Antioch? We have more than enough experience with this brand of ignorance. Why can’t we keep our space?

Now, perhaps I am showing my escapist colors. The point of claiming space, however, is not an escapist concept. Giving us the opportunity to commiserate, empathize and discuss the problems we have encountered in the “real world� is a way for us to “win victories for humanity.� For a very limited amount of time, we can bond over our collective pain in a space that is safe and positive.

Another example: when I was working as a freelance journalist in California, I was covering the Marriage Equality Act passing in the Assembly and Senate (it was later vetoed by Arnold the “discriminator�). I contacted Equality California, a major player in the campaign. Not surprisingly, an Antioch alum worked there and got me an interview with the Deputy Director of Marriage Equality USA.

This speaks to the connections that can be formed at Antioch in the queer community (or any alternative community) that will help us improve the “real world.� Antioch has historically been a breeding ground for revolutionaries. This is, in large part, due to giving us the space to meet, study, play and work with likeminded people.

I feel peaceful hegemony is a utopia beyond Antioch’s reach. Asking for less confrontation and working for mainstreaming is counter-productive. Actively recruiting people with privilege is going to lead to more confrontation. They have more to deconstruct in themselves in order to recognize the problems in society. Antioch is going to be, inherently, a confrontational space.

The way to achieve a less confrontational atmosphere is to recruit more minorities. Most colleges offer a homogenized, mainstreamed culture. Antioch is unique in our population of “others.� We experience a freedom of expression that many have never encountered before, and may never again. For the first time (and possibly the last) we have a space where we can be ourselves.

I understand Antioch is struggling. I know we need higher enrollment numbers and a far greater retention rate. But we are not going to achieve these goals by disillusioning those who come to Antioch. People search for a place where they will “belong.� Antioch promises to be that space for the radicals, the outcasts, the revolutionaries and the minorities.

The desire for our own space is not intolerance. We are not discriminating against anyone. There is no such thing as reverse prejudice. Asking for a little liberal haven does not impinge on the privilege that the majority enjoys. They have the world. Please don’t take what little space we have away from us. Antioch is the final frontier.