antirecord.org - "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." (Antioch College, 1859, Baccalaureate Sermon)

1950's And 1960's Problem Administrative Decisions Leading To Antioch College Ohio Shutdown In 2008? Antioch History Reexamined

David Allen — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:08:03 -0500

August 22, 08 Hi from Tex (David) Allen, '66 (Email me directly at TexAllen@Hotmail.Com): The annual and very depressing list of "Best Colleges In America" was just released by the US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, and Antioch College Ohio is not there, sadly. Here's the link: http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/105598/Best-Colleges-2009 What happened to Antioch? LIFE Magazine ran a big photo article in 1960 when I was in high school dreaming about attending Antioch and going to NYC and Chicago on co-op jobs....the article was titled "America's Top 100 Colleges" and of course, Antioch College, Ohio, was part of the list....LIFE Magazine mentioned the co-op program not at all, stated the "scholarship program is very good," and that "some students are careless about their appearance," but otherwise, Antioch College Ohio was "up there" and without doubt, one of the WORLD'S best schools. And it was. Why the collapse? A book (many books) should be written about "What happened to and at Antioch College Ohio...the 'Ozymandias' of colleges, once mighty, but disappeared into dust, just like Milton's poem about Ozymandias." (I think it was Milton). I think the VERY start of Antioch's fall was caused when President Sam Gould (1954-59) doubled the college's student population without doubling the dorm space or other facilities for the students of those and later times. Plain old crowding became a crisis problem never really addressed, and the dominos fell from there. Antioch College Faculty may or may not have had a retirement/ pension system before the early 1960's, but the Antioch faculty were BOT part of the famous and widespread "TIAA-CREFF" retirement system used by most higher educuation schools which boasted good retirement plans. Then, in the early 1960's, Antioch College "bought into" the TIAA-CREFF Retirement Program at a cost of roughly $6 Million. This occurred in roughly 1962 under the then new Presidency of Dr. James Payson Dixon (1959-75), who wrote about the subject in his autobiographical history of his time at Antioch College as President titled ANTIOCH: THE DIXON ERA 1959-75 (1991 Bastillle Books). The move put Antioch College into major debt, and created financial anxieties for Antioch administrators and Trustees never known before. Buying the Antioch faculty a TIAA-CREFF pension kicked Antioch's tiny financial resources into reverse during the early years of President James Dixon (1959-75), and THAT led to more nervousness and bad decisions aimed at getting "more money in gimmicky ways" (e.g. taking Rockefeller Foundation money refused intelligently by other major colleges to invite inner-city kids to invade and criminalize Antioch in the late 60's/ early 70's, and the whole out of control "network" thing which in time resulted in the current crisis of satellite schools and small time big shots like Toni Murdock....a satellite school leader...raiding and destroying the founding Antioch College Ohio to feed the satellites.....ungrateful children murdering their parents for gain! And now.....alumni like me get mass email communications about Antioch "surviving via classes held in scattered locations in Yellow Springs, Ohio away from the campus....just like the Strike of 1973 (classes were held off campus during the strike when the strikers closed down the campus for 6 weeks). How the mighty have fallen...and maybe always do. Best, Tex (David) Allen, '66 , SAG Actor

WAS ANTIOCH COLLEGE ASSASSINATED BY RICH ANTIOCH TRUSTEES PAID OFF BY OUTSIDERS TO CLOSE DOWN A NOTED ENEMY OF RIGHT WING POWER

David Allen — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:35:25 -0500

July 31, 08 Hi from Tex Allen '66 (Email me directly at TexAllen@Hotmail.Com): The tragic Antioch College Ohio closedown is hard to explain, but Antioch College Ohio always had a lot of enemies, always was an embarrassing exception to the rule that cultural institutions agree with powerful political and economic leaders who seize power, as the right wing/ Wall Street people certainly did after Nixon was elected to office in 1968 (been 40 years of solid right wing Republican rule with the two Democrats in office since then, Carter and Clinton, lining up to support the right wing, and never seriously a problem the right wing/ Wall Street power people ever had). The Antioch closedown could be connected to bigger, darker issues like the fact politicos and power people want it gone.....military/industrial complex people in the Dayton area, old time Nixonites who got CoIntelPro chasing Antioch in the 1970's based at the Cincinnati OH FBI office, President Gerald Ford (who named Antioch as "America's enemy" from the floor of the House Of Representatives when he was Speaker before was USA President) ordering Antioch gone, and ordering his fed. govt. lawyer (HEW Dept) employee Larry Pearl '55 to disrupt Antioch College by publically humiliating the school (Larry Pearl '55 was the 1970's Chairman of the Antioch College Board of Trustees who fired long time Antioch College President Dr. James P. Dixon publically in 1975, the start of Anitioch's fall from prestige and prominance in American higher education...probably the worst PR thing to happen to Antioch ever...bigger than the Strike of '73...bigger than the Sex Permission Policy of '93...bigger than anything until the actual closedown of Antioch starting the first of the month, July 2008). Antioch has a lot of enemies, and the big money people on the AUBOT could simply be taking orders (and bribes) from big money Republicans/ Wall Streeters intent on cleaning up Amerika....finishing Reagon's promise to wipe out all traces and memory of the New Deal and it's ideals. Antioch is a symbol of all the crazy right wing ever hated, still hates and fears The death of Antioch could be an example of cultural warfare, pure and simple. Antioch just wouldn't go away, wouldn't stop marching to the beat of the different drummer. So....the right wing pays off the (rich people running) AUBOT and its leaders to assassinate the school......assassination from within is an old, old story. I'm currently screening (re-screening...I've watched it often) the Robert Graves I CLAUDIUS (1935) fiction account (BBC 1975 video of fame created based on the Graves' 1935 novel) of perfidy and back stabbing, assassinations by poison, hit-men, etc. in the Rome of Caesar Augustus, all "described" (fictionally) by Emporer Claudius, put on the Roman throne after Calligula was murdered by the Praetorian Guard, and the Guard put Claudius up to replace him to humilate the aristocrats and show up their degeneracy (Claudius was flawed physically, known as a famous fool and goof-ball type part of the aristocrats in Rome....grew up in Caesar Augustus' house, and watched the whole parade of relatives killing each other for power, etc.....Robert Graves wrote a book fictionally claiming Claudius' account of "what happened behind the scenes" was hidden, then discovered 1900 years later.) Anyway, ........ assassination by those in power to end the lives of OTHERS in power....old story....could well be part of the end of Antioch. Not all conspiracy theories are nutty and ridiculous, mainstream journalism and revisionist history notwithstanding.

Contribute to / Submit writing to ALL Antioch College Ohio cyberspace interest publications, including WWW.AntiRecord.Org

David Allen — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:35:34 -0500

July 17, 2008 Hi from Tex Allen, Antioch College Ohio alumnus (Email me directly at TexAllen@Hotmail.Com): Even though Antioch College Ohio is now closed down (as of June 30, 2008), several Antioch College Ohio interest websites continue to keep memories and discussion about Antioch College Ohio alive. The oldest is WWW.AntiRecord.Org (est. 1998) and other have followed. One other site called THE BLAZE was started by the BLAZE COLLECTIVE (contact information below) and that site has requested contributions and writing pieces for its site. What follows is a reply I wrote to the Antioch College Ohio alumni chatline to a message posted by THE BLAZE COLLECTIVE today, July 17, 2008, urging Antioch College Ohio supporters and others to provide writing contributions to ALL Antioch College Ohio cyberspace and other publications so discussion and memories of Antioch College Ohio will be kept alive, even though the school currently (July 2008) is closed down: ------------------------------- Support THE BLAZE cyberspace publication and other Antioch College Ohio watchdog/ interest websites, and non-cyberspace publications if / when they exist and arrive (cyberspace could disappear overnight if/ when the phone companies which connect the world's computers crash or end for any reason...this could happen, and it would be baaaaaaaaaaaaaack to mass produced paper communications of the sort which started with Gubenberg and dominated mass communications until the 1990's!...Never entirely abandon the "bombshelter mentality" or REALLY believe, with Dr. Pangloss from Voltaire's CANDIDE, that this is "the best of all possible worlds.") ALSO support OTHER Antioch College Ohio interest/ watchdog websites and communications efforts. Contribute writing, research, communications to 'em all! The OLDEST of these is WWW.AntiRecord.Org Antioch College Ohio interest/ watchdog website started in 1998 by Daniel Thomas "Yazz" Atlas, Antioch '97, who became a computer pro of great and high accomplishments after Antioch (see his impressive computer pro resume by searching WWW.Google.Com and hire him for well-paying computer comsulting jobs often!). The WWW.AntiRecord.Org site first had the controversial and dramatic title: WWW.AntiochSucks.Com and for a long time was the ONLY truly independent (i.e. NOT controlled by Antioch on-the-payroll workers/ officials) Antioch College Ohio website open to all commentators, friends or foes of Antioch College Ohio. Contribute to the WWW.AntiRecord.Org site and keep the memory and outrage about the wrong closing of Antioch College Ohio alive and out there in cyberspace. Articles which appear on the WWW.AntiRecord.Org site ALL get indexed and in time are available to search engines such as WWW.Google.Com sites available to researchers and others who want the truth about Antioch College Ohio unlikely to be provided by "official" voices controlling the school, or what remains of it. Subjects and personalities part of the Antioch College Ohio saga and story can be researched via WWW.Google.Com type search engines using only names or subject phrases as search terms once a substantial and well designed Antioch College Ohio interest/ watchdog website gets information, publishes it, and that information finds its way to search engines. All this keeps Antioch College Ohio ALIVE and REMEMBERED even though the bad guys have shut down the school, closed the buildings, kicked out the people, and turned the Antioch College Ohio campus we attended (alumni like me) and loved into a "has been" place. Again, good luck to and support THE BLAZE website and cyberspace publication, AND IN ADDITION support and never forget OTHER Antioch College Ohio interest websites available for YOUR words of wisdom and important information...including WWW.AntiRecord.Org Antioch College Ohio interest/ watchdog website, founded by and still managed by prominent California computer pro Daniel Thomas "Yazz" Atlas, Antioch '97 (site established in 1998...the oldest one!). Best wishes always, Tex Allen, Antioch alumnus and frequent contributor to WWW.AntiRecord.Org PS....The above was a reply to the Antioch Alumni Chatline publication of the following communication from the Antioch College Ohio interest/ watchdog group called "The Blaze Collective"....their communication was sent July 17, 08 to Antioch alumni and others, and appears below: > Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:58:38 -0400 > From: theblazecollective@blazenews.org > To: acan@antiochians.org; communications@antiochians.org; organizers@antiochians.org; alumni-chat@w3.antioch.edu > CC: > Subject: [Alumni-chat] Thanks Guys! > > Hey Y'all, > > We have had over 100 visit The Blaze since the last article "And the Oscar > Goes to…: Barbara Danley's Tenure: The Irreverent, Close-Enough, Razzie > Edition" (http://blazenews.org/47/and-the-oscar-goes-to). That's a new > record for us! > Here at The Blaze, we are very excited about all this attention! > > I just want to take a moment to remind everyone that we are always very > excited about getting more submissions. So if you have an article, or an > idea for an article, that seems appropriate for publishing in The Blaze please > drop us a line at submissions@blazenews.org we'd love to hear from you! > > Armed and Dangerous, > > The Blaze Editorial Collective > > -- > The Blaze Editorial Collective > > blaze@blazenews.org > http://blazenews.org > > "In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should > afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, > contentedly, even happily wrong." > > - John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006)

Antioch University Trustee Breaks Solidarity With Antioch College Ohio Closedown Supporters..Quits BOT...Tells Inside Facts!

David Allen — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:12:59 -0500

July 10, 08 Hi from Tex Allen (aka David Allen, aka Yazz Allen), Antich '66 (Email me directly at TexAllen@Hotmail.Com): Antioch University Board Of Trustee former member (until May 9....she quit very recently) Paula Treichler published the following in INSIDE HIGHER EDUCATION today, July 10, 2008, about the Antioch College Ohio closedown which took effect June 30, 2008. She provides much "inside information" about the Antioch U. BOT worth reading. Here's what she wrote: ------------------ Antioch: Report From Ground Zero By Paula Treichler Antioch University was given an advance copy of the following op-ed, with the permission of the author, and offered the chance to respond with its own statement that would have appeared simultaneously with the publication of this piece, so that the university could offer its views and analysis of the issues discussed. After initially indicating that it would do so, and confirming as late as Wednesday afternoon that it would do so, the university stopped returning calls or responding to e-mails about the op-ed piece and indicated through an outside public relations official that it would not respond at this time. At the same time, the university’s lawyers sent a letter objecting to any use of the phrase “NonStop Antioch,” the former name of an effort mentioned in this op-ed. ------------------------------------------------------ Hundreds of Antioch College alumni returned to Yellow Springs, Ohio for a reunion in June, and they packed Kelly Hall for the Alumni Board’s update on talks to save the college. Even as the Antioch University administration was proceeding with its plan to close the college at the end of the month, Antioch faculty took the stage to tell the audience about what was then being called “NonStop Antioch,” an ambitious and indeed inspiring enterprise that will keep the Antioch spirit alive and in the village of Yellow Springs for the next two years: Without campus classrooms, dorms, or services, faculty will nevertheless design and teach courses in which students as well as community members will enroll while fund-raising staff work intensively with alumni to raise the money needed to reopen the college and begin its restoration to health. Several professors from surrounding colleges will teach NonStop courses and seminars gratis and individuals and organizations in Yellow Springs will provide teaching and study locations — which they aren’t calling “classroom space” but “sanctuary.” Longtime Antioch faculty member Hassan Rachmanian captured the spirit of the effort when he told the Kelly Hall audience that the university administration “may have taken the college’s body but we have its soul.” Ironically, the creators of this initiative cannot utter the words “NonStop Antioch” because the university has threatened legal action against any unauthorized use of the name “Antioch.” So old-fashioned call-and-response filled Kelly Hall: those on the stage shouted “NonStop!” and the audience, not subject to the university’s legal threats, roared back “Antioch!” Some professors will offer their favorite courses. Others will create new courses designed to capitalize on Antioch’s co-op tradition as well as the town/gown relationship. In one such course, combining political science with investigative journalism, students will track the presidential election by conducting videotaped interviews in traditionally liberal Yellow Springs as well as in nearby Clark County, long considered a bellwether district in nationwide voting. Inspiring as this weekend was, and brave as NonStop is, we have to ask: How did it come to this? How could the university’s Board of Trustees have decided to turn down three reasonable deals with great potential to save the college — and at considerably less cost and effort than will now be required? As a board member from October 2001 until last month, I can offer my perspective on events since June 2007 and on what’s happening now. As those who’ve been following the Antioch story know, the Antioch University Board of Trustees voted a year ago both to declare financial exigency at Antioch College and to suspend operations at the end of June 2008. Presented to the board by Toni Murdock, the university chancellor, the exigency and suspension recommendations were accompanied by a bleak financial analysis. I opposed both decisions, but an overwhelming majority of the board found the financial presentation indisputable. The chancellor’s presentation also included a sweetener — a plan to re-open the college in 2012. The plan had a couple of hitches: the chancellor would have to find corporate funding, and she and her “team” would direct the design of this “new Antioch College.” A lot of alums were skeptical the minute they heard “corporate funding” and “Antioch College” in the same sentence. And college faculty saw at once that the plan’s target date of 2012 would enable the university to terminate tenured appointments without violating AAUP requirements that faculty be rehired if the institution reopens within three years. (An earlier draft suggests that the plan’s original target date was 2011. If Murdock made the strategic change to evade AAUP censure, it would make sense. In her prior position as president of Antioch-Seattle, which like all of Antioch’s regional campuses operates without tenure, she had advocated eliminating tenure at the college and tried to ignore AAUP concerns about the dismissal of several Seattle faculty members.) Last year’s reunion took place just two weeks after the board’s closure bombshell and elicited from alumni on behalf of their alma mater an outpouring of love and commitment that university administrators and board members had claimed did not exist. With 250 alums scheduled to attend, more than 600 showed up and turned the reunion into an old fashioned revival meeting that raised hearts, hopes, and more than $8 million dollars. Over the following year, alumni submitted a series of proposals to the trustees that sought to keep the college open, establish its autonomy from the university, and create an independent board. The critical argument was that alumni and other significant donors would support the college under conditions of independence but not when it remained within the university structure. Then on May 8 of 2008, the board rejected the last of these proposals, a move that most trustees must have hoped would finally bring this fraught and exhausting year to an end. But this wasn’t to be. When the board convened on June 5 in Keene, New Hampshire, trustees found campus advocates awaiting them with statements, arguments, petitions, and media packets, and promises of more to come. Unexpectedly, at the end of the meeting, the board voted unanimously to direct the Antioch Alumni Association to develop a plan to save the college that would include taking over its operations for good. Thus this year’s reunion, too, came hard on the heels of a startling announcement from the Board of Trustees, and no one knew exactly what to think. While the June 2007 decision was the frustrated outcome of decades of heartache and hand-wringing by a series of boards about the college’s financial problems, this board’s vote in May 2008 to reject the last of the proposals not only acknowledged its own failure to solve those problems but also its stubborn determination to “stay the course” despite the massive re-engagement of alumni, the commitment of significant funds, and ongoing publicity critical of the university and the board. Though the board leadership spent incalculable hours and travel dollars in negotiations and acknowledged the college’s materially changed outlook, they treated the June 30, 2008 closure deadline like a holy grail. I joined the board in October of 2001. I resigned on May 7 this year, the day before that final negative vote, because I had violated the board’s cult-like oath of confidentiality that by then we were each required to renew at the beginning of every meeting and conference call. A number of trustees during the past year objected to the board’s secrecy, but largely in vain, and this helped doom all three plans to save the college. “Secrecy is for losers,” said Daniel Patrick Moynihan, but secrecy was a winner in the decision to close Antioch. Of course, just about every board that hasn’t adopted radical sunshine laws conducts some of its business in confidence, notably personnel matters and especially the hiring or firing of chief executive officers. But our board, as the year proceeded, enlarged the cone of silence to encompass just about everything we did short of picking turkey or veggies for lunch. Was this destructive? Yes. It helped isolate board members at a time when we badly needed outside voices and independent expertise. Information technology, for example, was a fairly large line item in the university’s reckoning of college expenditures, but many campus community members said IT was a joke: Faculty, students, and even administrative staff told me that they often had to leave campus to find a functioning computer and Internet connection, and there seemed to be only one working copy machine available to the whole campus. A more serious discrepancy involved the role of the college’s assets in providing security for the university’s capital expenditures. Professors charged that the assets — including the endowment — were used as loan and bond collateral for buildings on the adult campuses, including Antioch-McGregor’s controversial building in Yellow Springs. The university administration and the board categorically denied this charge. Ironically, the board’s commitment to “transparency” served to obscure such discrepancies. True transparency, if such a thing can be achieved, is fine: It aims to illuminate what is not readily visible, acknowledge and articulate competing interests, identify the historical and cultural contexts that have shaped divergent positions, and vigorously articulate counter-arguments and interpretations. True transparency means less control, more contradiction, more openness. The board and administrative leadership and the university’s legal counsel repeatedly espoused and asserted transparency, with Exhibit A being the chancellor’s PowerPoint forecast of financial doom in June 2007. But as negotiations continued and pressures mounted, presentations became dogmatically non-transparent. They had their version of the truth and selected facts, arguments, and documentation to support it. Sometimes the efforts were laughable: With hundreds of alumni and others loudly protesting Antioch’s closure each week in letters, e-mails, and national media, and with Google Alert making updates immediately accessible, board members would be forwarded only expressions of support for their decision: An e-mail complaining about the college from an embittered 1980 alum, a letter from the pissed-off mom of a recent college drop-out, a George Will column. More disturbing were the memoranda prepared for us by the university’s lawyers with their relentlessly narrow and corporate interpretations of our fiduciary responsibility and duty of care, the nature of trusteeship, and our risk of personal liability. The chancellor at one point characterized the college’s alumni as “chaotic” because they do not speak with a uniform or unified voice. These cautionary directives from the university’s legal counsel, in contrast, were designed to promote a unified voice on the board. In part as a result of this controlled information flow, most board members have known little of the chancellor’s behind-the-scenes aggressions against the college this past year. She would no doubt say she was just doing the job we told her to do: closing down the campus. At first it just seemed like coincidence that when events took a pro-college turn, the chancellor would scorch some campus earth. But after awhile these actions began to look deliberately and unnecessarily hostile. Or, at least with regard to the first example, just callous. Just after the June 2007 announcement of closure and the negative outcry in the local and national press, a homeland security simulation had been scheduled by one of the chancellor’s minions. To be held in beloved Olive Kettering Library on the Antioch campus, the scenario called for several Antioch students to simulate being dead; even the Yellow Springs cops thought that under the circumstances this was a tad insensitive and offered alternative space. No, said the minion, the SWAT team wanted to practice in the library stacks, so — as documented in the film “Antioch Confidential” — the simulation went forward. At the end of August, the board, together with the university administration, scheduled two days in Cincinnati to hear testimony from most of the college’s constituencies. By the end of the meeting the board, quite moved by the presentations, voted all but unanimously to step onto the slippery slope and support the Alumni Association’s efforts to keep the college open. So that the alumni could assemble a proper proposal with fund-raising targets and a business plan, the chancellor was directed to share all necessary financial data and to help. I left that meeting optimistic and full of respect for my fellow board members who, it seemed to me, genuinely wanted this initiative to succeed. And Steve Lawry, president of the college, said he was satisfied with this turn of events and would now be able wholeheartedly to resume his visits to potential donors. Within days came frantic phone calls and emails from Yellow Springs: the chancellor had returned from Cincinnati to campus, fired Steve Lawry, and prohibited contact with alumni and donors. She also, via the minions, sent home staff members in Alumni Development and Institutional Advancement, changed the locks on their office doors, and put automatic reply messages on their computers: “I am out of the office ‘til after Labor Day!” In other words, the chancellor took the steps that would most immediately and directly impede communication, development, and fund-raising activities, precisely the activities most urgently needed to complete the plan and save the college. The minions then created a management-sanctioned alumni newsletter, as though the professional alumni development staff were irresponsible cranks: In place of the familiar graphic of the Antioch towers, alumni opened their e-mails to the inaugural issue of “Good News!” with its upbeat account of the “positive” and “collaborative” meeting in Cincinnati. Alumni, also receiving the “real” alumni newsletter from the college development staff as well as the Yellow Springs News and the Antioch Record online — all with reports of what had already been dubbed the Labor Day Massacre — were understandably astonished and outraged. Yet when they, and I myself as a board member, asked Art Zucker, the board chair, to account for these actions, he denied their significance and impact. He characterized Steve Lawry’s dismissal as the decision any responsible CEO might make, changing the locks as “standard operating procedure,” and campus reactions as “over-reactions.” A member of the board’s executive committee chided me privately for questioning the chancellor’s actions; she was “following our mandated process” and was quite in order to take control over an unruly college staff. Whenever you shut down a division, he added, “you gotta expect anxiety and fallout.” In this instance, and thereafter, “fallout” was rarely discussed formally by the board, but the leadership did start issuing regular statements of praise for the chancellor, while “the board’s mandated process” became a familiar mantra. Then in November, following a regular board meeting in Yellow Springs that seemed to last forever, the board voted to lift the suspension of operations. Students rang bells in the campus towers, but the vote turned out to have changed nothing: With financial exigency still in place, the chancellor argued, there could be no student recruitment, no renegotiation with the Ohio Board of Regents of the college’s degree-granting and accreditation status, no extension of faculty positions or student graduation dates. The chancellor had her marching orders and it was her legal and fiduciary duty to honor the timeline, no matter how many bells were ringing. Legal counsel chimed in. In a 2006 essay on communication at Antioch University (posted on the Antioch Papers Web site), the chancellor clearly expressed her preference for top-down, fully controlled communication, with everything authorized or supervised by the chancellor. So when the alumni leaders scheduled an open meeting to talk with the campus community, the chancellor wanted to close the campus to them, and to outsiders in general — anyone who might foster the free flow of information and specifically deliver misleadingly hopeful messages about the college’s future. As one of the minions said, “Hope is creating the problem.” Trying to close the campus to the alumni leaders also reflected the university’s position that they were not a group of alumni but a rival corporation seeking to engineer a hostile takeover of the college. In the same spirit, the university even forced the Alumni Association to rent back its own campus buildings for this June’s reunion and, with dorms already shut down, alumni had to sleep in tents or off campus; there was no cafeteria service because the university is suing the village over its chiller unit. Such ways of thinking are common in corporate culture and most of the board seemed familiar and comfortable with them, but they’re at odds with academic principles and practices. While the university is, indeed, a corporation and the chancellor is its CEO and the members of the board are its directors, an academic institution is distinct in many ways from other corporate bodies. Not only Antioch but most American colleges and universities subscribe to principles advocated by the American Association of University Professors, widely regarded as a leading authority on sound academic practices. Most famous is the AAUP’s 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which the Antioch College faculty references in their lawsuit against the university. Like other academics who’ve served on the board (sadly, a shrinking constituency), I’m an AAUP member who’s raised issues about academic practices, including “shared governance,” the association’s principle that the administration, board, and faculty of an academic institution should work together to shape its life and future. But the board and chancellor appear to have rejected shared governance, declaring financial exigency without prior or subsequent faculty consultation and even stating at one point that “shared governance may apply to the Antioch campus but does not apply to the relationship between the campus, the university administration, and the board.” I believe the AAUP would consider this interpretation incorrect. As the scorched earth campaign continued, the chancellor found new ways to disrupt fund raising and alumni relations, and board deadlines came and went. College support staff would find their corporate credit cards canceled, so they couldn’t schedule fund-raising trips or meet with alumni chapters (in June 2007, eight alumni chapters existed; today there are nearly 50). Or they would be told that as college employees they couldn’t raise money for an outside corporation, or their reservations for meeting rooms would be canceled without notification, or they’d be prohibited from contacting certain donors or accessing certain records, or a minion would be installed as their supervisor, or they’d be threatened with being audited or fired. Alumni leaders were regularly summoned to mediate conflicts, further delaying progress. And the campus grew dimmer and grimmer. Housekeeping and security services on campus were sharply curtailed, buildings were closed, long-time faculty and staff members were fired. The Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom, opened in March 2007, was closed, and a funding proposal from its director was rejected. When the chancellor learned that many of the confidential documents posted on the Antioch Papers Web site had not been leaked by insiders but legitimately acquired by members of the public from Antiochiana, the institution’s archive, where board materials were routinely sent for storage, she changed the archives’ locks and restricted its hours and access to the public, including the alumni who have donated many of its holdings. Some actions were taken without full board notification, consultation, or approval. Although many of them will radically increase the financial and administrative burden of re-opening the college and its campus, the full board never directed her to explore putting off the deadline for closure. They just let her run out the clock. So now it’s July 2008. Students, faculty, and staff have left, retired, taken other jobs, or moved to the NonStop campaign, while the physical plant is on a forced march to oblivion. Historic G. Stanley Hall Hall has been razed along with the huge trees that surrounded it. Heat and air conditioning have been turned off. Furniture, equipment, curtains, and carpeting will be discarded. The buildings will accumulate moisture all summer and be subjected to a hard freeze when cold weather comes. The minions found algae in the campus pool and drained it, depriving the Yellow Springs community of a long-shared facility. Next year zero-occupancy rules apply. If, or when, the Alumni Association’s plans for the college come to fruition, the buildings may not be permitted to reopen unless they meet current construction codes. Of course we’re joyful that we still might get our college back. But are we like Charlie Brown, eternally wooed by Lucy’s promise that this time will be different — this time she won’t pull the football out from under him, this time she’s on his/our side? Or is the chancellor determined to wreck the college by any means necessary? As one of my Antioch friends channels her, in a screech, from the Wizard of Oz: “I’ll have your college — and your little dog too!” Some alumni believe that if they can raise enough money, the board will now cooperate. I agree about the money. And I agree that the board has moved in a significantly different direction. But the reign of terror against the campus and its ongoing human cost, which I have sketched briefly here, are significant realities as well. Scholars of conflict, like anthropologist Victor Turner, tell us that during prolonged conflicts, especially under conditions of structural inequity or ambiguity, the less powerful are likely to paint the more powerful in apocalyptic terms. In writing here about Antioch, I have likened the chancellor to the wicked witch, hinted that the board and university leadership share qualities with the George W. Bush administration, and even used “ground zero” in my title. But when I look coldly at the outcomes of this past year, I see something more mundane: a failure of imagination, an aversion to risk, a regime fixated on management instead of governance, and ultimately an overall pattern of incompetence. “The chancellor calls the alumni chaotic,” said one community member recently: “This is a woman who can’t even change a lock without throwing the whole campus into chaos.” Whether apocalyptic or mundane, the college struggle has not unfolded on the flat playing field trumpeted by Toni Murdock’s idol Thomas Friedman. The chancellor is still the CEO of this corporation. The board is still the decider. The university is still the entity its legal counsel prioritizes and protects. Against such odds, alumni and Antioch’s other friends must continue financially and politically to support the activities and organizations that can still provide direction and leverage: Direct action, legal services, NonStop, the Alumni Association and the College Revival Fund, the Antioch Papers, and the many creative projects that help document the Antioch story. Even as we hope for a happy ending, we have to stay vigilant. In the largest sense, this means we all have to be involved, NonStop. ------------------------------ Paula Treichler, who graduated as a philosophy major from Antioch College in 1965, grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio; her parents served on the Antioch faculty for 34 years. With a Ph.D. in linguistics and psycholinguistics, she has held faculty and administrative positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1972. She has published numerous essays on higher education.

Antioch College Ohio History: Part Two.....The Prosecution Makes Its Case...The Sexual Offense Policy details. SAT. NITE LIVE

David Allen — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:23:05 -0500

July 6, 08 Hi from Tex Allen, Antioch College Ohio alumnus (Email me directly at TexAllen@Hotmail.Com): Attacks on Antioch College Ohio by media personalities who themselves were Antioch College alumni were used as ammunition by naysayers anxious to support the Antioch College Ohio closedown which finally (and tragically) occured last June 30, 2008 (7 days ago!). People part of the Antioch alumni community dissatisfied with events and power personalities part of Antioch College voiced objections, and this was used by Antioch College Ohio critics and enemies to justify support of the Antioch College Ohio closedown. Antioch College Ohio was closed down importantly due to media attacks supporting the closedown (national right wing political writer George Will wrote an infamous attack in Fall of 2008, and there were many others by right wing writers and personalities of both fame and obscurity). Understanding the history of Antioch College Ohio, why it was shut down, and what part recollections of controversies part of Antioch College Ohio's past played, requires a knowledge and review of "Anti-Antioch public writing." What follows is a dredging up of the infamous Sexual Offense Prevention Policy of 1993 by a radio talk show host and journalist named David Benzion, who was (and is) an Antioch alumnus, class of 1994. He recounts the spoof of the Antioch SOPP on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, the famous national TV comedy show, which used and named Antioch College in a now famous comedy skit. The point of the skit was to ridicule and defame Antioch College, and Mr. Benzion's writing about the subject is an example of public writing by Antioch alumni of media fame whose disapproval of parts of Antioch's past were used to justify the Antioch College Ohio closedown which occurred on June 30, 2008. Antioch College Ohio history can only be understood if the attacks on it (selective and self-interested) are studied carefully and also understood. What follows is a recent example which appeared in national media during the Fall of 2008, after the announcement of the Antioch University Board Of Trustees to close down Antioch College Ohio in 2008 was made, but before the final event occurred. Read it carefully. Students of Antioch College Ohio history must know how attacks on the school worked, what ideas were presented to support the attack in major media. --------------------------------- David Benzion, Antioch '94, now works in Texas as a radio talk show personality and also as a journalist. He responded to the Antioch Closedown crisis last Fall 2007 by providing readers with a transcript of the 1993 famous SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE comedy show spoof about the then new Antioch College "SOPP" policy which dealt with date rape and efforts to stop it. Benzion also recalled particulars about events and campus politics which led up to the policy achieving status and national notoriety, and recalled his own (failed) efforts to challenge the policy while he was an Antioch student. Below is a transcript of the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE show about the Antioch SOPP (stands for "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy"), followed by David Benzion's recollections about his time as a student at Antioch and effort to challenge the policy. ------------------ Transcript of the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (1993) TV broadcast skit about Antioch College's then new widely publicized rules about sex between students: -------------- Is It Date Rape Dean Frederick Whitcomb.....Phil Hartman Ariel Helpern-Strauss.....Shannen Doherty Mark Strobel.....Chris Farley Male Date Rape Player #1.....Mike Myers Female Date Rape Player #1.....Melanie Hutsell Male Date Rape Player #2.....Tim Meadows Female Date Rape Player #2.....Ellen Cleghorne [ open with the theme from "Casino Royale" ] Announcer: Live, from Antioch College in Antioch, Ohio.. it's time to play.. Audience: Is.. It.. Date Rape?! Announcer: ..with your host, the dean of intergender relations - Dean Frederick Whitcomb! [ Dean Frederick Whitcomb enters the game show stage ] Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright, ladies and gentlemen, students and faculty! We've got an exciting show! Back with us is our defending champion, she's a Junior and a major in Victimization Studies. Say hello to Ariel Helpern-Strauss! [ show Ariel at her podium ] And our challenger - he's a nose tackle and a Sigma Alpha Epsilon brother. Say hello to Mark Strobel! Mark Strobel: S! A! E! Yeah, yeah! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Welcome, players. Let's take a look at our board. The categories are: "Halter Top"; "She Was Drunk"; "I Was Drunk"; "Kegger"; "Off-Campus Kegger"; "She Led Me On"; "I Paid For Dinner": and "Ragin' Kegger". Alright. Ariel, you're our champion, the board is yours. [ lights bounce across the board squares, until Ariel presses her buzzer and stops the light on one of the squares ] Dean Frederick Whitcomb: "She Led Me On"! [ reading card ] "It is the last day of school, a female student asks a male student to help her move her futon-" [ Ariel buzzes ] Helpern-Strauss? Ariel Helpern-Strauss: Date Rape! [ sound effect dings for a correct answer ] Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Well! [ laughs ] I didn't even finish the question.. but it is Date Rape! Okay, for those of you not familiar with the rules to our game, it's quite simple. Antioch College defines date rape as: any sexual contact or conduct between two or more persons, in which consent of such contact, which includes: the touching of thighs, genitals, buttocks, or the breast/chest area is not expressly obtained in a verbal manner. If the level of sexual intimacy increases during an interaction: ie. if two people move from kissing while fully clothed to undressing for direct physical contact, and the people involved do not express their clear verbal consent before moving to that level, that too is.. date rape." Alright! Mark.. you get the board! Mark Strobel: Come on, "Halter Top".. [ hits buzzer, lighting up one of the squares ] Dean Frederick Whitcomb: "I Paid For Dinner"! [ reading card ] "She orders a steak and a shrimp cocktail.." Strobel? Mark Strobel: Not Date Rape. Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Ohhh.. sorry! Helpern-Strauss, would you like me to finish the question? Ariel Helpern-Strauss: Date Rape! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Correct! Mark Strobel: Come on! Surf 'n Turf?! That's like forty BUCKS, man! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright, let's move on.. Helpern-Strauss. [ Ariel hits her buzzer, lighting one of the squares ] Dean Frederick Whitcomb: "Halter Top"! [ siren sounds ] Oh.. that siren means one thing. Here to help us with the question are the Antioch College Date Rape Players. [ curtain parts to reveal the two players in a scene together ] Male Date Rape Player #1: May I compliment you on your halter top? Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. You may. Male Date Rape Player #1: It's very nice. May I kiss you on the mouth. Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. I would like you to kiss me on the mouth. [ they kiss on the mouth ] Male Date Rape Player #1: May I elevate the level of sexual intimacy by feeling your buttocks? Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. You have my permission. [ Male touches Female's buttocks ] Male Date Rape Player #1: May I raise the level yet again, and take my clothes off so that we could have intercourse? Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. I am granting your request to have intercourse. [ scene ends ] Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Contestants? Ariel Helpern-Strauss: [ buzzes in ] Date Rape! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Ohhhh.. sorry! Mark, what do you say? Is it date rape? Mark Strobel: Uhhh.. oh, man! [ beats himself up ] Uhhh.. Date Rape? Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Ohhhh.. sorry! We were looking for "It is not date rape.." Not Date Rape. Mark Strobel: [ pounds his podium ] Oh! Man! I KNEW IT!! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright.. let's meet our contestants. Mark Strobel, you have been charged in three hazing deaths.. with two counts of hate speech, and one instance of sexual harrassment when you referred to the women's field hockey teams as, "a bunch of lezbos." Mark Strobel: [ smiling ] Glad to be here, Dean! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright! And over here, our lovely young champion. Ariel Helpern-Strauss: [ pounds her buzzer ] Take your hands off me! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Very good! That's good for 10 points, Ariel! And.. you've got the board! [ Mark hits his buzzer, lighting one of the squares ] Dean Frederick Whitcomb: "Ragin' Kegger"! [ siren sounds ] Alright.. once again, the Date Rape Players. [ curtain parts to reveal the two players in a scene together ] Male Date Rape Player #2: I sure had a nice time at that ragin' kegger. May I kiss you on the mouth. Female Date Rape Player #2: Yes. Kissing me on the mouth.. is sometihng I feel.. com-fort-a-ble with. [ they kiss on the mouth ] Mmmm.. that.. was nice! Male Date Rape Player #2: Would you mind if we had sexual intercourse? Female Date Rape Player #2: No.. [ Ariel buzzes in ] Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Helpern-Strauss? Ariel Helpern-Strauss: Date Rape! No always means no! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: That's correct! Good job, Ariel! A bit of a trick question there! [ final game buzzer sounds ] Well.. it looks like the round is over, and, Ariel, you are still our champion! Now, it's time for our Bonus Round. You know how it works, Mark. You have thirty seconds to win Ariel's consent. Are you ready, Mark? Mark Strobel: Okay.. Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Go! [ timer plays down, as Mark tries to win Ariel's consent ] Mark Strobel: I was wondering if, uh.. you're not busy, uh- Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No! Mark Strobel: There's gonna be a party at the frat house- Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No! Mark Strobel: Can I.. kiss you..? Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No! Mark Strobel: Can I put my hands on your buttocks..? Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No! Mark Strobel: Do you wanna do it, or what..? Ariel Helpern-Strauss: NO!! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright! Ariel! Congratulations! You win a trip.. for you and Mark to.. Acapulco! Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No-oh! Mark Strobel: Whoooooo!! Yeah! Hah hah hah! Whoo! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: You will spend two nights in Acapulco, at the Lover's Hideaway Beach Hotel! Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No! This is so wrong! Dean Frederick Whitcomb: I want to thank our contestants and the Date Rape Players. Come on, everybody! Let's give them a big kiss goodbye! Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No... no.. please.. [ fade ] ----------------------------------- Here is David Benzion's (Antioch '94) account of his time at Antioch College Ohio as un undergrad and connection with and opinions about the SOPP policy.....other aspects of Antioch College Ohio, it's history and its troubles, were ALSO included in his writing done in Fall 2007: ------------ The widely-publicized date-rape policy that catapulted Antioch onto Saturday Night Live and into nationwide ridicule in 1993 was a kind of object lesson in what can happen when demographic implosion (reducing the student body to its most radical core) unites with a laissez-faire administration philosophy that consists of giving even the most extreme factions everything they want. The extremists in this case consisted of a group of student feminists who called themselves “Womyn of Antioch” (a title that might have sent up a red flag to administrators elsewhere) and claimed to be reacting to two incidents of date rape on the Yellow Springs campus in 1991, which they said the administration had ignored. No Antioch students were ever charged with those offenses either formally or informally, much less found by a college tribunal to have committed them, much less prosecuted for any crime by outside authorities. Antioch’s archivist Sanders said that the alleged rapes might have been more a matter of “perception” than reality. Nonetheless, when the Womyn “stormed” (the word comes from Antioch’s website) an Antioch community meeting and insisted on pushing through the policy they had drafted regardless of parliamentary niceties, the administrators and faculty who were supposed to be on at least an equal footing with the students at those meetings, if not their superiors on the basis of maturity and experience, said, oh, okay. I have the distinct honor of having been booed and hissed (hyssed?) by the “Womyn of Antioch” at that exact meeting– my sins consisting of … Being a man; Speaking out in favor of due process and civil liberties; In the course of my comments using the phrase “don’t want to open a ‘Pandora’s Box’” (“BOOOO!! HISSSS! How dare you employ a patriarchal, misogynistic trope!”) The Womyn-drafted sexual-offense policy read: “Verbal consent should be obtained with each new level of physical and/or sexual contact/conduct in any given interaction, regardless of who initiates it. Asking ‘Do you want to have sex with me?’ is not enough. The request for consent must be specific to each act.” The penalty for even being accused of failing to obtain consent for one of the “levels” was immediate expulsion without a hearing or any other rights. Not surprisingly, when word leaked out (it took a while) that Antioch’s board of trustees had actually approved the policy and made it official, the reaction of the non-Antioch general public was . . . laughter all around. One wag estimated that Antioch required a student seeking a home run in the baseball game of sex to ask for the consent of his beloved a total of 150 times. A few years later, after much media mockery and several threatened legal challenges over the lack of due process, Antioch modified the policy to bring it into line with other colleges’ procedures for handling accusations of date rape and related sexual offenses. One of those “threatened legal challenges” was from a foreign exchange student who was accused of rape by a woman whose romantic interest he had earlier declined… and who had a self-admitted history (sorry, “herstory”) of false rape allegations. Self. Admitted. The night she was supposedly wrestled, pinned-down and violated, the man in question was in fact recovering from an accident that kept him (in full-neck brace) in bed and being fed a steady supply of high-octane pain-killers from the school nurse (an honorable woman, classic Vermont liberal, who insisted on telling the administration that the accusations against the man were “complete crap”). Could a Hollywood screenwriter even contrive a scenario in which it was more clear that a man was being falsely accused of rape? And yet, the p.c.-bureaucracy at Antioch allowed this psychologically-agonizing farce to grind on for months, afraid of staring down the Womyn who ideologically had them by… well, I’m just going to say it, by the balls.