[Alumni-chat] small colleges

[alanbenard (alanbenard at pobox.com)]

I applaud this conversation. It inspired this thought:

Why has the "ownership" class of Antioch -- from President Al Guskin of my time (soon to crown himself chancelor) on up through the university administration and Board of Trustees -- been so seemingly at odds with and ashamed of the radical traditions of Antioch College? Those being participant-directed education, educating to foster social justice, direct action to answer injustice and ongoing pressure for bottom-up decision making?

(In my opinion, few notions are more radical than giving young people a choice and a voice. Clearly, the "generation gap" never closed, and America still hates and fears her young. The joke is, the boomers are in charge this time. Send Steve Lawry and email and see what he thinks.)

I know this is a sweeping generalization, especially when it comes to 15 years of BoT members. But today we are faced with overwhelming evidence that our institutional leaders' culture and politics are at odds with those traditions. 

Those were the traditions that the director of my alternative high school -- founded by families of public high-school kids expelled for commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Kent State massacre -- presented to me when selling me on Antioch College. (She was ready to go to Antioch herself in the late '50s when her father became ill, making it necessary for her to pick an east-coast school at a time when a trip from NYC to Yellow Springs took three days.) 

And when I got to Antioch in 1989, belief in those traditions were the norm. Hearing stories about life on campus in the mid-2000s I don't hear anything that tells me that much has changed. What HAS changed is the venom and attempts at behavioral modification and ham-fisted control tactics from the college administration, apparently insisted upon by the ULC and BoT.

I'm not saying that young people don't need guidance. That's what faculty and student-services staff do, in the best of circumstances. That's what older students do for younger students, when they aren't being separated from one another. The whole point of the endeavor is education, right?

We questioned authority back in the day and asked Al Guskin some pointed questions. He answered honestly and we didn't always like the answers, but we -- students and administrators -- treated one another with basic respect, and peer pressure _on either side_ enforced this. 

Today, Al Guskin advises the chancellor to stonewall and dismantle Antioch College, and build something alien to Antioch College's traditions in its place, with its capital. The president smears the students and alumni and the Board of Trustees members whose opinions I have heard regard the Antioch College student body to be some sort of pit of snakes.

What we're seeing today is not a struggle by liberals to reign in radicals. This is reactionaries purging radicals. 

Alan Benard