www.aaup.org/AAUP/newsroom/2010Highlights/censure.htm

Noreen Dresser, one of the co-chairs of the Facilities committee, was recently in Yellow Springs for a couple of days to review the current situation on the ground. She has prepared a most enlightening a report, with constructive suggestions on moving forward in collaboration with the Village of Yellow Springs. As many of you know, Noreen has many years experience with facilities and building management, and is quite passionate about making sure the buildings on our historic campus are secure, undamaged, and ready for rehab as soon as we have secured an  agreement for the transfer of the campus to the College Board Pro Tem. After the Alumni Association Executive Committee and our Facilities Committee have an opportunity to digest the report, we will share her findings and suggestions for next steps with the community.

Intrepid alumni on the ground in Yellow Springs recently discovered that the University’s clean-up crew has been throwing out books and pamphlets. Many thanks to Gerry Bello ’97 and Tim Noble ’02 for making
this discovery, and to Gerry for calling me. As I said to him then, the idea of books being tossed is like a knife in my heart. These books are emphatically *not* subpar items, such as broken furniture or mold-covered mattresses, that would have to be discarded no matter what.  These books and papers, many of them irreplaceable, are a catalogued and erstwhile organized treasure trove of our shared history, and as such, are priceless. They are also part of the  legacy for future generations of Antiochians, some of whom are preparing to start classes right now with the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute. No Antioch alum can condone this action; it must stop.

The Alumni Board’s Facilities Committee had asked Milt Thompson for the chance to walk through campus and take an inventory.   Milt’s boss, Tom Faecke, has not authorized Milt to pursue this sensible, easily-achieved plan. We recognize that Mr. Faecke is working on a limited budget and is carrying out the task he was assigned of cleaning out and securing buildings, but we strongly urge him to permit the Alumni Board’s
authorized representatives to remove caches of paper and memorabilia rather than pitch books and records, regardless of their historic value.

The Alumni Board facilities committee offers to work with the University to halt this needless destruction, and to agree to the common-sense solution of having representatives of the alumni take inventory. Yes, we can avoid misunderstandings and still protect the campus against fire by letting authorized alumni representatives walk through the campus and take inventory. The University Board of Trustees, on which I sit, in its June 7th resolution to start the planning for separation of the College from the University, acknowledged that the future of Antioch College rests on the shoulders of its alumni. We cannot build a future without the incredible work and materials of alumni of past generations.

We are still ashamed to let it die!

–Nancy Crow, ’70
President, Antioch College Alumni Association

Last week more than half of the 350 students, faculty and staff members on the Antioch College campus passed a community referendum that included a vote of no confidence for Antioch University Chancellor Toni Murdock and an endorsement of establishing a self-governing college independent of the university.

The community-wide vote took place last Monday and Tuesday, following a similar vote of no confidence in Murdock by the faculty and union staff in September and a call from both faculty and staff for an independent college that same month. Several students said the vote, which followed a great deal of discussion and organizing on campus, gave the current campus a voice in the decision-making that is scheduled to take place this month at the meeting of the University Board of Trustees on Oct. 25.

“We hope these referendums put pressure on the board, that it pressures the minority to trust there are viable plans on the ground now for the college, and we cannot miss this opportunity,” fourth-year student Julian Sharp said last week.

Students also hoped the community action would give the campus a voice in a debate some feel they have been left out of, third-year student Erin-Aja Grant said.

“This is a chance for us to raise our voice because it has been so minimized, when we’re the ones who are being affected,” she said.

The referendum’s no-confidence vote cited Murdock with damaging the college by failing to involve the campus community, according to the college’s shared governance policies, in the decision in June to suspend operations at the college in 2008 and the decision in September to dismiss College President Steve Lawry.

The referendum also stated that the college should continue operations after 2008 and establish independence from a university system that has for many years damaged the college by removing the president’s authority to make budgetary decisions and report directly to the board of trustees, as well as mandating a curriculum renewal without consulting the campus community.

Further infuriating the college community were unproductive visits from both Murdock and Art Zucker, chair of the university board of trustees, to the college’s Administrative and Community Councils (AdCil and ComCil) to explain the events that lead to Lawry’s dismissal and his being replaced by a new leadership council. According to college professor Hassan Rahmanian, the responses were void of meaning and deeply unsatisfactory.

“Toni could have laid out the principles on which she based her decisions, but instead she exercised the Fifth Amendment, took the administrative privilege of silence and left us in the limbo of our imaginations,” Rahmanian said. “It all adds up and gives us a feeling that she has very little understanding of us and the value we place on the democratic process.”

These most recent votes of no confidence are not the first for Murdock, whose faculty when she was president of Antioch Seattle levied a no-confidence vote against her in 2000. One Seattle faculty member who did not wish to be named explained that Murdock listened to the faculty’s concern that her top-down administrative style was actually stymieing growth for the school’s programs, and she did manage to modify her policies. But the president who replaced Murdock has been a much better listener and by extension a better leader, according to the faculty member.

A request to speak to Murdock was referred to Vice-Chancellor Mary Lou LaPierre. Speaking for the university, LaPierre said that the college and university have the same goals, to create an academically vibrant and financially sustainable college, but the two groups disagree on how to get there. A new governance structure would help the college, she said, but the college still has enrollment and financial shortages due to increased competition and market changes that would still bog down a college with a minuscule $30 million endowment.

According to estimates from the Antioch College Alumni Association and the college’s institutional advancement office, $100 million in gifts could be raised if the college secured its independence from the university. The alumni have raised a little over $12 million in gifts and pledges since June. But LaPierre was doubtful of the college’s ability to attract much more.

“Why haven’t the alumni said in greater numbers ‘We’ll pledge $50 million if you’re independent’?” she asked on Tuesday. “With all the press they’ve gotten, why have the donors not stepped up? The power is in their hands.”

But the college has been so weakened by the budget cuts imposed each year by the university over the past decade, according to 2005 Antioch College graduate Rowan Kiser, that the fundraising office has had a lot of catching up to do. And the budget cuts were necessary to pay for facility maintenance costs that had been deferred during the years that the board of trustees were not adequately intimate with the college to be effective fundraisers and grow the endowment, he said. The system slowly crippled the college.

“The university’s 2001-02 financial consolidation and stabilization plan, a $1.5 million annual depreciation to build the structural repairs into the budget, delivered the knockout blow to the college budget,” he said. “Once a year the university CFO would come across the street and demand those cuts, which sent us on a brutal spiral downward.”

In response to the vote of no confidence, LaPierre stated that Murdock successfully administered her post in Seattle for several years following the no-confidence vote, and that as chancellor she has brought to the university system a realistic appraisal of the financial system which was lacking before her arrival.

The university board of trustees will consider a business plan for a self-governed and continuously operating college to be presented by the college alumni board at the trustees’ Oct. 25 meeting. The trustees will also consider a recommendation from the governance committee chaired by BOT vice-chairman Dan Fallon on how to improve the university’s governance system with respect to the college and also Antioch University McGregor.

College supporters hope the most recent resolution will help convince the board not to delay its vote for an independent college, because in order to be successful next year, the campus community needs to start planning now.

“This is a useful way for a campus that has been ignored to say this is our voice, we have strength and opinion — negotiate with us,” Kiser said. “This is a great way to show the college is still a politically and intellectually vibrant place that’s worth keeping open.”

To: Chairperson Art Zucker, Members of the Antioch University Board of Trustees and Members of the University Leadership Council

From: Nancy R. Crow, President of the Antioch College Alumni Association

Date: August 7, 2007

I write to you on behalf of the Antioch College Alumni Association Board, the elected representative body of the 17, 000 or so Antioch College alums. We are looking forward to the August 16th webcast and of course to the August 25th special Board of Trustees meeting. Many of us have received our notices and have responded and are making our travel plans. Like you, we want this meeting to be productive, to move the agenda of rebuilding our Antioch College forward, and to find ways to raise funds and other support for our alma mater. We also agree wholeheartedly with your statement published in the Yellow Springs News that “it is critical that we have the participation and support of Antioch College’s key stakeholders in this process.”

However, we believe in order to garner the support and participation of the “key stakeholders in this process,” “key stakeholders” have to be both invited and allowed to participate in every step of the process, and as of now this has not taken place. Therefore we propose the following:

1) A conference call should be scheduled between now and the 19th of August to review and refashion the agenda that the Antioch University Board of Trustees has proposed. In addition to the Antioch University Board of Trustees Executive Committee, which sets the University Board of Trustees agenda, both the Executive Committee of the Alumni Board and representatives from the key stakeholder groups you have identified, that is, faculty, staff and students and Yellow Springs Community, should be invited to this discussion. If you want stakeholders’ participation and support, the agenda must reflect the interests of all the stakeholders and not just one group.

2) In order for the August 25th meeting to have a positive outcome, we strongly urge you to rethink a number of your statements and agenda items:

a) It is not conducive for a productive meeting to begin by saying in advance that any position taken by this Board of Trustees is “irreversible,” and to warn invited participants that only certain discussions at this meeting will be allowed. Why not let all the stakeholders discuss the parameters of the Board agenda before the August meeting begins?

b) The two hour open mic does not seem likely to lead to a positive outcome. Two hours, with five-minute time limits allows for 24 speakers, that is, if there are no pauses, time between speakers, technical glitches, people going over their time allotment and so forth. An open mic, with board members listening to one speaker after another, with no organization and no coherence will just lead to greater frustration and alienation. Furthermore, Mary Lou LaPierre’s remarks about the possibility of “disruptive and disrespectful” participants did not set the best tone. Perhaps we could think of other ways to use this two-hour framework. For example, why not allow the alumni representatives to present their ideas? Why not allow a former board chair or former trustees to present a proposal? Why not allow the faculty and the student representatives some time to present their points of view as well? And if there are other stakeholders who have presented you with proposals, have them be invited as well. In this way there can be a range of proposals for all of us to discuss in the afternoon session.

c) Finally we urge you to rethink the idea of a closed meeting. It is our heartfelt belief that had this board notified all stakeholders, alums, major donors, faculty, staff, former college presidents, former trustees and board chairs, the Yellow Springs community last fall, when there was the first realization of the depth of the financial crisis, and called upon all of us to work together to find a solution, there would be greater unity, participation and most important solutions to solving the college’s problems. The more the University Board shrouds itself in secrecy, the greater the alienation from the very stakeholders it needs for the future of the college.

We look forward to working with you. We want a positive outcome at the August 25th meeting, as well as at the October joint University Board of Trustees and Antioch College Alumni Board meetings.

Antioch University has no immediate plans to sell or close its other Yellow Springs-based entities when it closes Antioch College in 2008, university chancellor Toni Murdock said.

WYSO not for sale

…A recent on-air pledge drive, on the heels of the closure announcement, asking for contributions to help WYSO become more independent stirred rumors the station was being sold.

“But it did not mean independence from the university,” Paul Maassen, WYSO general manager, said.

“Definitely, there are no plans to sell WYSO,” Murdock said.

…Special restrictions on the Glen, donated to Antioch in 1929 by Hugh Taylor Birch and named for his daughter Helen, require Antioch to turn the land over to the state if it is unable to fulfill its educational mission.

“So it will not be developed,” Murdock said.

‘Walkable community’

The rest of the college’s land in Yellow Springs, on which 30 campus buildings sit, will likely be condensed into a smaller campus and developed after the college closes in 2008, Murdock said.

Private institutions with land have turned entrepreneurial and are turning their assets into revenue streams, she said.

“I envision a walkable community that could enhance the economic potential of the community,” Murdock said. “Is it going to look like the same college? No. But it will be built on the same values.”

2. Alumni Board has asked College President Steve Lawry to take the lead in
forming a new Board of Trustees for Antioch College.

3. President Lawry, the new Board, and the Alumni Board will work on
the terms of College governance with the University.

4. Alumni Board has asked President Lawry on June 26, 2007 to:
a. Preserve core faculty
b. Preserve Development Office, Alumni Office and Admissions Office functioning
c. Develop Business Plan for college

In Other Committee News:
- More than 20 Chapters have been started across the country (and the
UK) in the past 10 days – get or give updates from these chapter
meetings at antiochians.org/forum/index.php

- The issue of College Governance is being handled by legal experts from
the Association in accordance with the mandate in the Alumni Association
Resolution. An appropriate document will be used in the negotiations with
the Board of Trustees… also exactly as mandated by the Resolution.

- Outreach to famous grads and wealthy sympathizers is in the very
capable hands of the Development-Individual (and in some cases,
Development-Foundations)
Subcommittees.

- The Legal Committee has a Chair, is activated and welcoming
volunteers, especially those licensed to practice in Ohio. Martin and
Nancy Crow are determining first priority projects now. Contact
mlfried@law.syr.edu if you want to be involved.

Counterpoint: Antioch Chancellor Responds

By Toni Murdock, Chancellor, Antioch University

Over the past few weeks there has been much writing, in many venues, about Antioch College and its suspension of operations in 2008, writing that has included for the most part only tangential references to the Antioch University campuses outside Yellow Springs. Such references have been not only brief but at times open to misconception at best. It is time to provide a closer look at these other campuses of Antioch University.

Over the years, Antioch College birthed a number of campuses to constitute a university now composed of the college and five other campuses — New England, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Seattle and McGregor. The five non-residential campuses comprise over 5,000 students, 400 faculty and staff members, and 18,000 alumni and constitute 92 percent of the total enrollments of Antioch University. Some 85 percent of the students in the non-residential colleges are enrolled in graduate programs — master’s and doctorates — in the professional fields of psychology, education, management, communication, leadership, creative writing, and environmental science.

The campuses are non-residential but not “virtual.” Students take classes in actual buildings on campus; instruction is delivered in a variety of formats (including some online components), but the substantive focus of all instruction is on reflective practice. Antioch University students aim
to bring the ways of knowledge and expertise to bear on the needs and changing realities of the community and larger society. On multiple campuses but with one overarching purpose, Antioch University embodies values that are the core components of effective leadership, education, and social activism — values which have been embedded in them by their mother campus, the college.

Indeed, the university mission statement reads “Antioch University is founded on principles of rigorous liberal arts education, innovative experiential learning and socially engaged citizenship. The multiple campuses of the university nurture in their students the knowledge, skills and habits of reflection to excel as lifelong learners, democratic leaders and global citizens who live lives of meaning and purpose.”

As is the case at some other progressive institutions, including Hampshire, Goddard, and Evergreen State (Editors’ note: Hampshire and Evergreen State have systems of long-term faculty employment that are in some ways equivalent to tenure.) Antioch chose not to establish tenure at these non-residential campuses. The campuses were intended to address a group of students whose needs would be ever changing — adult students, many of them in professions and with families, returning to higher education to get the knowledge and qualifications they need to be effective in their careers and their communities. And to meet those students’ needs, the campuses realized their own need for flexibility in curricular offerings, the ability to anticipate program requirements and to fulfill them in creative and adaptive ways, engaging a diverse and at times non-traditional faculty.

Over some 30 years, the “adult campuses” grew and thrived by addressing the demand for graduate professional programs that are innovative and ensure quality while adapting to the working adult’s schedule. To offer such programs took a group of faculty who are confident in the quality of their academic credentials and teaching ability in ways that enable them to be creative and flexible as they design programming and curriculum to stay current. It takes an amazing group of talented core faculty who spend hours on campus serving as instructors, faculty advisers, supervisors, and mentors while encouraging critical inquiry and challenging students to think in new and different ways. These core faculty hold doctorates and most are practitioners, researchers, and scholars.

Students at the Antioch University campuses do not receive a large portion of their education in courses taught by teaching assistants, as is often the case at many institutions. Rather, they are taught by these core faculty members, a significant number of whom have been with their campuses for over 20 years. In a practice that enhances the breadth and depth of their curricula, programs offered at the campuses often employ part-time faculty members who otherwise work as professional practitioners in their respective fields. These individuals, almost all of whom hold graduate degrees, many of them doctorates, commit to teaching at an Antioch campus over a period of time, providing students the opportunity to work with successful, often prominent figures in their fields of study and their professions.

The result of all of this is a faculty that brings multiple kinds of experience, expertise, and both theoretical and practical engagement with the knowledge, beliefs, and actions that are the hallmark of Antioch’s innovative and progressive education for change.

Across the years, students have responded enthusiastically — in word and in action — to this kind of educational process. “Antioch offers an opportunity to give yourself permission to think deeply about why you’re doing what you’re doing, then put it into practice,” wrote one. Another said, “Just a few years ago, if you talked about environmental or holistic sustainability, you were out on the edge or over the edge. Antioch has one foot in the mainstream and one foot not so.” And another: “Antioch is a school that did not seek to shape my voice, but rather helped me find and strengthen my own voice. My professors cared about how I thought; because that is the tool they taught me to sharpen.”

A few snapshots of programs and accomplishments will suggest something of the innovation, excellence, diversity, and commitment to the greater good that characterize Antioch University across its campuses:

* Antioch University Seattle is the leading institution in the nation in reforming the delivery of education to Native American youth. Its innovative program, supported by multimillion-dollar grants from the Gates, Lumina and Kellogg Foundations, has established over 10 Early College models in three states that have witnessed amazing results in increasing the Native American high school retention, graduation, and successful passing of state required testing, in some cases far above the rates of middle- and upper-class students. Antioch Seattle has just named as its new president Cassandra Manuelito-Kerkvliet, who is believed to be the first Native American woman to hold the presidency of an accredited university outside the tribal college system.
* Antioch University New England’s doctoral program in psychology is noted for its quality by receiving a 10-year accreditation from the American Psychological Association. The majority of the psychology master’s programs in Seattle and New England are accredited by their professional accrediting agencies.
* Antioch University Los Angeles’s Creative Writing program will be named in the forthcoming summer fiction issue of the Atlantic magazine as one of the top five low-residency MFA programs in the United States, in the company of the Bennington and Vermont College programs. The Los Angeles MFA has distinguished itself through the use of award-winning faculty in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction, and through innovative features such as field study, the translation seminar, the alumni weekend residency, and a student-edited online literary journal.
* Antioch University McGregor recently received accreditation from the National Council on Accreditation for Teacher Education (NCATE), which attests to its excellence, for its master’s in education program while many other large public institutions have lost their accreditation.
* The Antioch University Ph.D. in Leadership and Change has been recognized by the Ohio Board of Regents for its quality and innovation. In “Shift Happens” (published in the July/August issue of Educause), Bill Graves cites Antioch’s Ph.D. program as “a paradigm-shifting innovation in doctoral education” with positive implications for both graduate-level curriculum and delivery design and undergraduate applications.

These few glimpses of the campuses should confirm that Antioch University is a community of educators and learners – advocates, activists, risk-takers, mavericks, entrepreneurs, creative thinkers, and problem solvers. Those who teach and study at the non-residential campuses fully believe in and work to extend the values upon which Antioch College was founded and for which it has stood across the decades. Indeed, as one current student in the Ph.D. in Leadership and Change program wrote recently in a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Many of us in the doctoral program profoundly value our program’s connection with the undergraduate, historically significant, values-driven college. We signed on to study at Antioch, among other reasons, because we wanted a program connected with a deep history and values, a program with deep roots. We chose Antioch.”

The Board of Trustees of Antioch University is committed to ensuring the future of Antioch — across all its campuses and in a manner consonant with its proud history and accomplishments. The temporary suspension of operations at Antioch College was taken as a protective move to enable a time in which to regroup and revitalize the College. Its reopening is strongly advocated and anticipated. As that process moves forward, the five non-residential campuses of Antioch University continue to embody the Antioch vision of higher education, with its dedication to innovation and excellence.

Toni Murdock is chancellor of Antioch University.