[Alumni-chat] [Why are we always poor?

[J. David Coldren]

Travis,

This has to be relatively brief because I still have to prepare for the NW
Indiana/SW Michigan Alumni Chapter meeting I'm hosting this weekend.

1) Yes. Whose perception? Most people I know have never heard of the College
and don't care. Of the 17,000 Alumni less than 1,000 have been very vocal
and some of them don't share that perception. I'm not being argumentative;
but I'd like to get to specifics where possible.

2) Like not allowing one unit to poach on another unit's donor lists or
prospects. Like making sure that fund-raising events in the same locale
don't clash. Antioch College is a national or international institution, so
there is every possibility that one development office won't know what the
other development offices are doing. The ULC, with less delegated power, is
a useful thing as would be a University Trustees' Council. In unity there is
power.

3) I don't know about you, but when I watch CNN and PBS and see Reed,
Swarthmore, Bennington, and Earlham professors and administrators comment on
world events, I wonder why Antioch isn't represented except when there's an
SOPP or closing wire story. Antioch College is an international institution
because its catchment area is international. The satellites are more
provincial as they should be. You say the locals have done a very good job.
I say the College has done an absolutely terrible job of public relations
and promotion for a couple of decades because it's underfinanced and doesn't
seem to know how to get the right finances in place. As this thread hints,
people at Antioch are too comfortable with poverty; living from year to year
with no confidence that there is a bright future ahead. That is just plain
nuts. And self-defeating.

4) I think that raising money for the College should be the College
Trustees' responsibility. Not the University Trustees'. I think that's what
I said in my message. The University Trustees should fund the central
administration, University adventurism (launch more experimental
satellites), and more global opportunities. They will undoubtedly raise
money for specific new programs or new endowed chairs for the College, but
the College should be weaned from the University's teats for continued
sustenance.

5) In point of fact, it's not that I see the University as a locus of the
Antioch enterprise. My heart is--and always will be--in YSO. But I think the
College's destiny was to establish the "beachheads," centers, and satellites
because more people than can fit into YSO or who can afford a 5-year
residential college program can benefit from an Antioch values education and
it should have direct benefits to the College's students and faculty. I once
talked about opening up a center in conjunction with the Wood's Hole
Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Massachusetts so that our students in
biology and other science areas could have access to their submarines(!). I
also thought it would be neat if their scientists and scholars--when they're
on land--could give lectures at the College and vice versa. For the life of
me, I can't understand--except for the tenure and AAUP restrictions--why
there isn't more interaction between the satellites and the College. Do we
claim to have some sort of exclusive patent on knowledge in YSO? I've heard
that some YSO faculty end up teaching at the satellites. I don't know if the
College sees the University units as recruitment opportunities for new
faculty. 

After 9/11 the CIA was criticized not for not trying hard enough or having
enough resources, but for a lack of imagination. Exactly how I would
describe the College's plodding leadership for some time now. 

As to your other points, briefly:

The College IS elitist, old world-based, inefficient and expensive. That's
the nature of a General Education (Liberal Arts College). (As an aside,
there is a terrific article in today's Chronicle about the state of liberal
arts education by Robert Weisbuch, president of Drew University and the
former president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/08/2007082401c/careers.html). And there
is no reason whatsoever that the College and the slick, more affordable,
more efficient, and more modern units can't work together. The Antioch brand
doesn't have to be one or the other. Both institutional types have enormous
value and Antioch has always been on the bleeding edge of educational
change. Why draw back now? If you're saying that the PhD's the University is
awarding through the other centers are somehow not worthy of the Antioch
logo and brand, then that's a problem for the University brand police to
deal with although I expect that the other units would take umbrage at that
suggestion and ask the College to look in the mirror.

Finally--and I know I am not replying to each of your points--I think that
the AAABT efforts at fundraising have been stellar. But I think Alumni who
thought the College was in stable shape for the future, weren't getting the
frantic letters and student calls for pledges that I've been getting. As
Laura has amply demonstrated, the information about the College's imminent
peril has been available all along but nobody was digging for it. There is
cross membership between the two Boards as I understand it. What happened?
But I take your point: so far the Alumni, when the College is in extremis,
has raised $6 million in cash and pledges. Unless we are graduating more
millionaires and successful entrepreneurs that I'm aware of, there may not
be that much more to tap because I know the AAABT has scoured the country
with a passion you couldn't possibly get from a professional Development
Office and they have made the case most effectively, I'm told. That is still
not enough to make an academic year possible under the present
circumstances. And then, don't forget, this can't be a one-time emergency
process. It has to happen each year and it has to get substantially bigger
each year until we reach a breakeven point of FTE student enrollment.  Can
the AAABT really commit to that level of support to pay for the tenured
positions and benefits we now have? I just wish the Alumni had been as
concerned and informed about the situation years ago when something less
drastic could have happened. Why, for instance, does the AAABT allow the
College to control its communications (The Antiochian, for instance) with
its constituencies? It obviously could have raised the money to pay for its
own propaganda office. 

Both of us engage in a lot of "if" speculations. From my point of view the
past is both the past and prologue. We need to be about the business of
planning for the College's future for at least a decade if not five decades.
Sistersara and others should absolutely be objective historians and tell the
story of the last 40 years. Others can hang effigies of the Board members if
they have to. But the rest of us want to move on.

We'll see what the weekend brings in Cincinnati. I hope Tim gets his video
although I know the lawyers--for good reason--will try to stop it.

Thanks for a rational discussion, Travis.


J. David Coldren '65






-----Original Message-----
From: alumni-chat-bounces at w3.antioch.edu
[mailto:alumni-chat-bounces at w3.antioch.edu] On Behalf Of Travis Sanford
(travissanford at msn.com)
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 5:48 PM
To: alumni-chat at w3.antioch.edu
Subject: Re: [Alumni-chat] [Why are we always poor?


>Getting back on topic, my judgment is that the Antioch enterprise needs
>something like the University structure to (1) protect the Antioch brand
and
>uphold its values globally; (2) coordinate activities between and amongst
>the independent units; (3) provide a vigorous marketing and public
relations
>presence for all institutions and the University as a whole; (4) educate
and
>recruit persons of wealth to join the various Boards or the University
>Board; and (5) set policies to be followed by all the independent units
with
>regard to the legal and financial laws and regulations that govern a
>far-flung enterprise like Antioch. That leaves each unit with its own Board
>of Trustees, President, and Administration with all the powers and
>authorities not vested by the units themselves in the University. (The key
>power, in my view, is the absolute power to grant the use of the Antioch
>"brand" and to withdraw it for cause.)
David:
1) Well the university has done a terrible job in that regard so far.
Whatever the merit of the satellite campuses the perception is not rising
like a phoenix but rather Pheonix Edu Inc.
2) Like what activities?
3) Again, lousy at the national level very good at the local level. The
campuses draw mostly from their locales, except the college. Administrators
in each market know their target better than administrators in Ohio.
4) Again, since most of the Trustees now are alumni of the college once
argue that the University/College relationship hinders the recruitment of
Trustees dedicated to raising money for the whole university. Again specific
alumni in specific geographic locations will donate to their local campus.
5) It is not that you are missing the point it is that you believe the point
is the university as a whole, not the college as loci. If the units were
given the option to start over again I am fairly certain that they would
cede almost nothing to a central administration. This brings back the
question I keep asking and no one has ever been able to answer (and maybe
they can't, to my satisfaction anyway) why does any one unit need the
University as a whole. Other than the fact that the other campuses relies on
the Big O for their acreditation (though Seattle looks to be moving towards
their own if that 2012 $25MM capital expenditure means anything) and the
University relies on the college's endowment growth to stay in the black. As
for the name Antioch, I wonder what the legal protections there are as there
at least a couple of other Antioch's that are either in Antioch Ca. or are
religious schools, it is actually a relatively common biblical (and once
personal and geographic n
 ame).
They could be the University of Antioch Seattle etc or the Antioch Seattle
Gradute Studies program etc, just not Antioch College. All the campuses
could sighn an agreement regarding the names allowed.

>I haven't followed what transpired at Antioch when it morphed into the
>present University structure. I agree with the critics that the present
>structure is dysfunctional. I don't, however, believe there was some
>malevolent plot by the Trustees to kill the College and pick the skeleton
>clean. I believe that the University Trustees have the opportunity--and
will
>take it--to help Antioch College in Yellow Springs arise like the Phoenix
>fully prepared and endowed for the 21st Century with a national and
>international University structure that derives its powers from the
>independent units and follows the real federalism theory more closely.
>
>
>J. David Coldren '65
I do not believe there was a malevolent plan on the part of the Trustees.
Rather, as Laura and others have argued, the Administration of the
University has been moving further and further away from a traditional
liberal arts college administration (and the accompanying view of expense vs
revenue) to a pay as you go approach that works fine for non-residential
campuses that may not generate donations down the road. They do not see the
value in the education you got at Antioch David. They think it is elitist
and old world, inefficient, expensive etc. Ask Ormond Smythe, why would you
spend 36K per student when you can do a nice non-residential degree for
9-12K per student. Its about philosophy and the leadership of the university
does not share the philosophy that made our education. They do not believe
in community governance, they do not believe in co-op and they certainly
don't care about ossified academic classifications when they can get people
to pay for PhD's in Fields th
 at used
to be Topics for thesises in those old classifications.

Where the AUBoT has been... at fault, has been in fund raising and
micromanagement combined with periods of indifference. The failure to raise
a large endowment has been a systemic problem and I am sure you know there
seem to be a lot of folks who will not give to the College so long as it is
essentially managed by the U (I would like to see these people come forward
with their pledges just like I want to see where the AUBoT is going to raise
the money they say they need for 2012).

I think, David, that we all agree that the College needs to be improved. No
one wants to stay with the status quo for long and we probably should not go
back to the most immediate status quo ante. I believe that a beautified
campus will help the students who are already there feel more secure and may
just attract those new students that we so deserately need. We have talked a
lot about how the college brand is not selling and I think the fact that
even with all of this that we got 60 students to show up for the last year
is remarkable. Imagine what we could have done if the University had told us
seven months ago that a financial, close-down scenario was unfolding, could
we have raised $10MM maybe $20MM before the fall class arrives? I don't
think it unreasonable (of course that also supposes that anything less than
a combatative authoritarian takeover would have sparked the backlash we have
now. How many more young people could we have recuited? 100? 120? You see
David the c
 ollege
in the midst of collapse is still attracting students at the rate that the
renewal plan thought was going to be the case. If the AUBoT has spent the
years since the renewal plan bringing in more money and allowed the college
the same kind of borrowing opportunities as McGregor got, we would not be
having this converstation.


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