[Alumni-chat] Antioch future vision

[Sistersara at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/7/2007 9:30:16 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
Imabused at aol.com writes:

Sistersara,

You are not saying anything new here. Without doubt  Antioch has not had the 
income, has not maintained buildings, and has not  had a flourishing support 
of 
the school. I agree.

** I would HOPE my saying things are in very poor shape is not  new.  I 
however don't ascribe all the sin in the Antioch World to the evil  BoT.  Yes, they 
failed to recognize serious problems over time, and in many  cases when they 
did see them, they failed to act.  Remember -- I am one of  that older set, I 
was a Freshman at Antioch 50 years ago, and through family  connections had 
known about the school, and planned to apply for some years  before that.  The 
advantage of this is that you can see patterns of  decisions that led to the 
current situation in all their complexity and with  their deep roots.  The BoT 
changes over time, people serve a term or two  and then they leave.  
Administrative leadership changes (at Antioch, very  frequently).  But there are 
patterns of decisions that persist, and for the  most part at Antioch they have been 
driven by a culture of crisis, and not by a  proper culture of institution 
building and institution maintenance over the  long haul.   Last June that 
reality finally caught up with us.   



Perhaps you misunderstood my meaning. Maybe you thought I was  saying, we 
simply need to increase the number of students and academic  offerings. Of 
course I 
am not saying that at this juncture. The people who  were supposed to be the 
stewards of the school have failed at preserving  the critical aspects of the 
school. Now we do not *simply* need more  students and academic offerings.

**No, what we need is a workable business plan that allows for building a  
strong academic program that will attract an appropriate student body that will  
buy in for the most part for the full degree program.  There is no single  
silver bullet that solves any problem -- all that is wrong is  interconnected.  
We need competent leadership that can deal with all this  complexity.  What 
pleased me about the Agreement in Principle is the  agreement to form an interim 
College BoT, expected to evolve into a College  Board of Trustees, with its 
own President.  I liked the references at the  community meeting I heard last 
Saturday to the University Board as a Board of  Governors.  It is going to be a 
long slog to negotiate all this, and make  it operational, but guess what, 
that is essentially what AIF was about  ten-fifteen years or so ago.  A Board of 
Trustees, and core Administrative  appointments responsible ONLY for the 
health and welfare of the College.   Once the financial base is in place to 
support this, I think it is much more  likely renewal and restoration will succeed.  
The key thing will be how it  evolves, and whether the College BoT will have 
the powers to act in the priority  interests of the college.  The Alumni Board 
has already executed a critical  part of this -- they achieved agreement that 
some of the key Development Staff  would work on the College Campus, and in 
collaboration with the Alumni Board now  taking the leadership that an eventual 
College BoT would take.  This is a  huge and fundamental achievement.  There 
will be many more "next steps" as  this process moves along.  One can see 
everyone is concerned with  recruitment and admissions.  Fine.  But as was 
explained last  Saturday, when you accept a Freshman, you become party to a kind of 
contract  that the promised College Program will be around for four years so 
that a new  student can assume they are buying into a degree plan, supported by 
the  necessary resources.  One of these is clearly a Faculty that can indeed  
offer that degree plan.  For that, you need an integrated outline of the  
Curriculum, and the resources to hire to staff it properly.  So who hires  core 
Faculty, and what are the terms of contract?  What powers does Faculty  have in 
design and execution of the Academic Program?  These things are  still all 
unsettled, and it is going to take much work to hash it all out and  come to 
agreements that look forward for several generations, and are not just  be 
play-toy interest groups in a culture of crisis.  Likewise, rebuilding  and/or 
renovating the campus needs to be integrated with the vision of  curriculum.  The 
Buildings are there for many reasons, but the most  important is the Academic 
Enterprise.  The infrastructure, the IT and the  Heating System, and much else 
is basic in support of this -- to some extent you  can do Heat and AC as a 
generally given -- but you need purpose designated  buildings to put it in.  In 
other words it all has to be knit together,  costed out, given priority.  And 
the Financial Resources need to be in  place to "do it."  Until all such 
planning is accomplished, and the means  for executing plans in place -- we are still 
just a step back from the Canyon of  "going out of business."

But where I beg to differ with you is this "visioning" thing. The  visioning 
needs to be in school bureaucrats learning how to first A)  maintain the 
great 
quality and reputation of this fine school so that then  B) the school can 
learn 
to find financial donors who will invest and then C)  learn to do effective 
outreach to high school students who are considering  and *not considering* 
going 
on to college. And none of this can be done  without a change in the 
underlying structure of the College -a-vis Antioch  university. The College 
strives 
for some participatory government. The  university has no such interest. 


** As to A) -- right now the college has a terrible reputation in Higher  
Education Circles.  This is why over the past couple of decades Alumni  Support 
has been poor.  I am not taking this statement from any ranking  system, rather 
from people whom I respect in Higher Education, and who have had  
interactions with the college or students from the last decade or so.  The  College had a 
well deserved reputation for excellence forty years ago -- and for  a number 
of years after the beginnings of demise in the 70's, the college milked  that 
for all it was worth.  But it has come to the end of the line.   If you can't 
maintain a Faculty that includes, among other things, a Historian  (perhaps 
several), a proper spread of Science Faculty, Art instructors, a  Theatre 
Program, economics and business programs -- you are living on past  glory, and 
eventually that runs out.  
 
Most people who are looking to donate to "good causes" don't throw their  
money down black holes.  The college hasn't been successful in raising  money 
because in all too many instances, this is the perception of the  situation.  
That perception has to be profoundly changed.  People can  argue all they want 
that the perceptions are wrong -- but that really is  disrespectful of those who 
tried to inform themselves, and came away with the  sense that without a 
solid renewal plan, donations did go into a black  hole.  The college doesn't need 
to learn how to raise money -- it needs to  learn how to be organized, and 
responsible to donors.  To keep  promises.  It needs to swear off the kind of PR 
that requires viewing  reality through self-deceit and rose colored glasses.  
Part of that is  realizing that the string has run out on Antioch's past 
reputation, and any new  reputation has to be reality based.  I frankly think 
raising money for an  institution that has been through the dark night of the 
soul, and restored  itself, will be reasonably easy.  Lots of people don't want 
the  college to go out of business.  
 
As to your C) -- failure of recruitment being dependent on the lack of  
support by the University BoT -- I think that is something of a stretch.  I  doubt 
if many students looking for "an Antioch" pay all that much attention to  any 
BoT.  No, it is all about the discourse among and between High School  
Advisors, the prospective student, and the student's family and perhaps other  adult 
friends.  Choice of a College is a major life decision, and it is a  huge and 
expensive financial investment.  The key is going to be developing  a real 
strategy for getting Antioch on the table when such decisions are  made.  I 
believe eventually we may be able to do this well.  I believe  buying into a true 
restoration may be far more attractive to a broader range of  potential 
students than buying into a cycle of crisis.   


When you have kids you learn "don't fix what ain't broke." Personally I  feel 
that it is a complete waste of time to look at replacing the  curriculum. 
Restore it, yes.
 
**Well, it is pretty broken in my opinion.  I don't think they would  have 
decided to close if that were not the case.  And I would hope we would  not try 
to re-create precisely a curriculum from the past.  All the parts  of the 
various pasts need to be evaluated carefully -- and we need to look  carefully at 
what future we can reasonably predict, and build something that is  new, but 
incorporates what seemingly worked well in the past.  For  instance, I find 
David Apter's suggestion of a planned field work Junior Year as  a substitute for 
our co-op traditions, a very interesting proposition, worth  exploring.  
Taking Juniors off campus replicates at least one aspect of  Arthur Morgan's 
economics -- which was to maintain a Campus Facility that was  about 2/5ths smaller 
that would be required if the whole student body were on  campus full time -- 
you have the income stream from non-resident students, and  that helps your 
bottom line.  I agree with him that virtually all colleges  today promote 
internships, travel-study plans, community service.  It no  longer makes Antioch 
unique.  Co-op as it is done today no longer is a  means of earning money to pay 
for college.  Co-op savings no longer make  much of a dent in tuition when it 
is posted at 36 thousand per year.  But  the interface between the practical 
demands of the world, and the more abstract  Academic classroom centered work 
still does make sense.  So it is a  question of redesign taking into account 
many realities quite different from the  past when Antioch's co-op plan was 
unique, and worked reasonably smoothly.  
 
When people talk of this visioning, they essentially are saying the College  
"failed" and therein place blame on the College for this phony exigency and  
potential closure. The College did not fail. Where the College is at fault  
is in 
not bringing attention to the crappy structure of the university which  gave 
essentially no power to the College. Where the alumni are at fault is  in not 
coming together in a collaborative manner to enlist and engage this  great 
mass of 
creative and powerful people to fortify the school in ways  other than 
financial support. I personally feel at fault for leaving the job  to the 
alumni board 
and not finding support for a separate effort. 
 
**Yes, the College has failed.  When several hundred Antiochians put  
together AIE some years back, this is precisely what was being said -- and yes,  part 
of that was about the dysfunctional governance in the University  Structure.  
We have all these reports of people being fired because they  wanted to talk 
with members of the University BoT personally and individually --  What was 
all that about?  And it isn't just recently, it is years  ago.  Free flow of 
information, openness to contradictory ideas, decisions  that represent a 
consensus of community -- that should be the Antioch Way.   No -- we evolved a top 
down Authoritarian Structure and then rules as to who  could talk with whom.  We 
put distance between decision makers who were "up  there" and the people who 
were trying to execute an academic program, who were  "down there" and we put 
blinders on and did not understand the  consequences.  Then we had a public 
relations practice that was little more  than spin.  It caught up with us, just 
as much as Bush/Cheney's notions of  cherry-picking fake intelligence in order 
to gin up support for a war, and then  sacrificing Intelligence Professionals 
on the bonfire of their own ego and power  needs have finally (it seems) 
caught up with them.  

Did I make  myself clear this time?


**yes, but I don't agree with some of your assumptions, and out of respect  
for all of this, I thought I would state an argument.  
 
Sistersara

Respectfully,

Jane Slater
Class of '80
Ashland,  OR






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