[Alumni-chat] Legal Fund Needs - by Yazz Allen '66

[bdevine (bdevine at antioch-college.edu)]

This is beginning to sound more and more like the Terry Schaivo melodrama.
The patient is a death's door and may be brain dead, the person with legal
authority says "pull the plug", and there is a chorus of others saying "Save
Terry." Raising money. Trying to get judicial relief. And Bob playing the
part of Tom DeLay.

We all know what happened in the end.


David,

This analogy gets a D-.  The College is not brain dead, and is fully capable of sustaining all vital functions, as demonstrated by the engagement of some of the brightest and most capable students that Antioch has had, the faculty's delivery of a complex and labor-intensive curriculum in spite of not having the resources promised to do so, the desire of a couple hundred students to return to and to attend Antioch this fall, in spite of its announced closing, three Fulbrights last year, etc.  Those with the legal authority to say "pull the plug" have done so as the outcome of a protracted set of strategies to remove fiscal and programmatic control from the campus, to create a permanent deficit and concomitant dependency, to undermine and restrain leadership, and to "cleanse the ghosts".  Those working to save the College are seeking (to build on the analogy) to reverse the iatrogenic diseases born of its institutional context (read that "governance").  As for playing the part of Tom
DeLay, I'm not sure that it's entirely clear that the faculty as a whole is the driving force in seeking judicial relief. I have very little to do with it.  So it's a two-fer -- you disrespect me, AND you disrespect the faculty and its leadership. The price paid for cleverness, I suppose.  

Meanwhile, those who sincerely want to believe the worst about Antioch College, who have for decades wanted to believe the worst, are happily engaged in gloating about the difficulties and inventing clever analogies of decline and demise.  Wouldn't a crossword puzzle be more satisfying, David? 
 
Bob