"I am not going to Reunion this weekend, but I have hopes someone who does go will collect e-mail addresses, and set up an independent site -- otherwise I will try to learn how to do it."

A central site to coalesce all the different threads all over the net would be perfect. It would also be great to have a common room to gather all the grieving and outraged alumni I'm hearing from, who want to organize to take Antioch back from the University and try to save it. ARA, is this new central site a possibility?

Thanks!

P.S. I'm a former member of the Antioch University Board of Trustees, and at the risk of too long a p.s. and too long a message, I want to make some comments that I haven't seen on this thread so far about the College's demise. For the record, much of the education at the other Antioch campuses is impressive and in keeping with the legacy of Horace Mann. But the foundation of Antioch College’s problems is its expansion to a University.

Although the other campuses have been financially subsidizing the college’s deficit for some years now, this would not have been necessary if they had not drained the College’s resources at the time of their birth. The fiscal mismanagement at that time and continuing to the very recent past, and the fact that Antioch College has been frequently mismanaged by a Board that represents not the College but the University, are responsible for the College’s demise.

Antioch College does have other, very real problems (Why are so many graduating students so angry at the College? Would you describe the campus climate as tolerant and embracing of real discourse?) but in my view these are symptoms of the larger problem of poverty, created by the flawed structure. And despite these problems, during Antioch’s three decades of decline, there have been many heroes teaching and working at the College, and many graduates who’ve gone out into the world inspired to win victories for humanity.

How does the University structure create Antioch College’s poverty? First, the financial foundation never recovered from the College's resources being plundered to start the rest of the University. Second, it has dramatically discouraged alumni giving. Since the birth of the University, giving by Antioch alumni has dwindled to one of the lowest rates of alumni giving in the country. Third, Board members are simply overwhelmed and distracted by the weight of so many campuses. I was on the Board’s finance committee, and I saw what I can only call a lack of responsible oversight by some trustees. Fourth, the ULC –- the leadership of the campuses – runs the school day to day, and has only one College leader who is simply outvoted. The other members of the ULC may like Horace Mann, but as leaders of the Antioch grad schools they definitely do not like the College and its draining of their profits. Fifth, University administrators hired by the Board have too often been incompetent and/or openly hostile to the College, which has been seen as the problem child.

This positioning of the College as the problem child, I believe, is what eventually killed it. There are some good, hard-working people on the Board, but the power imbalance that has favored the University for decades now has left Antioch College floundering. It is hardly news that the lack of investment –- and let’s not just talk infrastructure, Antioch’s mostly terrific faculty are among the lowest paid in the country -– led to the declining enrollment and attrition problems. And yet the College was continuously criticized by the Board for not becoming more self-supporting, something small liberal arts colleges just can't do.

Finally, I believe the multiple campus structure kept the full University Board from feeling responsible for its failure to raise money to implement the Renewal Plan. It was always someone else’s problem. I know this fundraising was not an easy feat. But a responsible Board would have recognized that extraordinary measures were necessary two years ago, when the fundraising stalled. The Board made a commitment to raise the necessary investment, and, quite simply, the Board broke that commitment.

Does Antioch College have a chance of reopening in service to its historical mission? A slim one, but only if alumni ask the hard questions. I would start with this one: Can Antioch College take all its property, including the small endowment that legally belongs only to the College and the physical plant (including WYSO and the Glen) that legally belongs to the University, and find itself a new Board of Trustees – not subsidiary to the current Board -- with real power?

If the current Board is left in charge of the college, it will never reopen as the Antioch that inspired so many. The assets will be -- dare I say it? -- plundered for use by the rest of the University.

Antioch College has risen from the ashes before. Are there enough fearless and committed champions to help it do so again? Now that would be a victory for humanity.