[Alumni-chat] RE: [Chapters] Chapters Newsletter No. 10
Scott Warren
warren at antioch-college.edu
Wed Nov 7 18:15:16 EST 2007
Dear Laurie,
Well, yes. That's certainly my take on things. I may be wrong, but we've
got to start moving or we are dead in the water! Thanks so much for your
concern and your assistance.
my best,
Scott Warren
Philosophy & Politics
Alumni Chat List <alumni-chat at w3.antioch.edu> writes:
>The college is not allowed to recruit new students, but they will
>accept
>"opportunistic" students, right? We (alumni) are not the
>college, so can't
>we informally (without the college's permission) encourage high school
>students to apply? I don't see how Antioch is going to get it's head above
>water without an incoming freshman class.
>
>Laurie '83
>lrpjak at verizon.net
>
>3) Help find new students for Antioch -- but NOT YET, not until
>authorized to do this!
>
>But we have to be very careful. Right now we can talk with and
>encourage potential transfers. But while the faculty is ready and
>eager to admit also a whole new Freshman class, for the minute we
>cannot reach out to prospective Freshman and try to recruit them We
>can certainly answer any questions that come our way about Antioch.
>But we cannot reach out to High Schools, we cannot engage in active
>enrollment right now - until we are given the green light that the
>Accrediting Organizations are giving Antioch the approval to continue
>granting degrees beyond December 2008. I am sure we will get that,
>and we must be preparing ourselves NOW to move fast when so
>authorized. But for now, we must wait for information from, and
>authorization from, our Director of Alumni Relations, Aimiee
>Maruyama. Very soon Aimee will start sending out these Newsletters
>to Chapter leaders (see below) and she will inform us of what we can
>and cannot do, when. For now, it is Okay to talk with prospies, but
>not to recruit them.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: chapters-bounces at antiochians.org
>[mailto:chapters-bounces at antiochians.org] On Behalf Of Michael Brower
>Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2007 12:59 AM
>To: Chapters
>
>Antioch Alumni Chapters Newsletter No. 10
>
>Today, November 3, 2007 is a truly historic day. Today the Antioch
>University Board of Trustees announced at 2 PM at an Antioch
>Community Meeting its decision to reverse the June decision to
>suspend the operations of Antioch College. Instead, they have stated
>that the College will remain open after July 1, 2008, and not close
>or suspend. The declaration of Financial Exigency, however, will
>remain in effect for some time longer, until the conditions are in
>place to remove it.
>
>The two key Documents, the "Resolution," and the
>"Agreement in
>Principle," both dated November 2, have been emailed to all Alums
>with known emails as Antioch Update VIII. If you didn't get that,
>or lost it, or want to become accustomed to getting info up-to-date,
>go to our Alumni Board website, antiochians.org, and read there these
>and other documents and statements. See, for example the statement
>posted there by Alumni Chair Nancy Crow. And check there every day or
>two. Lots of new news goes up there.
>
>We have gained our two main objectives - or a least large parts of
>them -- with the Board of Trustees. Keeping Antioch open, and an
>Agreement in Principle to establish a separate Board of Trustees for
>Antioch College (and for all of the other campuses too).
>
>These agreements are far from complete. In fact they are only
>beginnings, estalishing a path forward and processes. When you read
>them, you wil find, like most Alums do, that there are parts that are
>not completely satisfying. We still have a long way to go, a lot of
>work to do, a lot of funds to raise. But we are now working
>cooperatively with the Trustees, we have earned a solid foundation of
>respect from them, we have made enormous progress already, and we are
>on a path forward to regenerate Antioch College to again become a
>world-class path-breaking College to serve humanity another century
>or two or more.
>
>Now on to some of the urgent work we Alumni need to do. In my brief
>Interim Newsletter No. 9 I listed 5 kinds of important activites
>Chapters need to undertake.
>
>1) Keep their own membership informed and involved and attract new
>members.
>2) Help us find Alums to organize new Chapters in another 2-3-4 dozen
>cities.
>3) Help find new students for Antioch -- but NOT YET, not until
>authorized to do this!
>4) Continue Helping Raise significant donations and pledges for
>Antioch College.
>5) Find Co-op jobs and support Co-op students in our communities -
>as authorized.
>
>In Newsletter No. 9 I addresed Item 1 above and sent you as an ideas
>source a long list of Boston events in recent years. Later I sent an
>Addendum with an offer by Richard Couto to travel to Chapter meetings
>and talk about his book Courses in Courage which is about Antiochians
>(faculty and students) from 50 years ago. If any of you did not get
>either of these documets, just let me know and I will send them again
>to you alone.
>
>Now it is urgent for Chapters to work fast on all 5 of these items,
>especially the first four - but with an important proviso in No. 3
>about new Freshmen. Let me address this list, one by one, although
>they are indeed inter-related and mutually supportive.
>
>1) Keep your own membership informed and involved and attract new
>members.
>
>This is essential. Now is the time for your leadership or planning
>team to meet and plan and then hold soon a full membership meeting
>before Thanksgiving, or no later than the first week of December. We
>need to keep people informed, to answer their questions, to recruit
>additional members, to keep our spirits up, and to roll into further
>actions. AND to plan for several meetings of our Chapter in 2009.
>After all, thie College is going to stay open! We need to stay in
>high gear and do all we can to make that permanent, to create the
>support and requirementes to enable removal of "financial
>exigency" and to really let the faculty know we are fully supporting
>
>them. To attract new members, how about using a telephone tree?
>Each of three of you call 3-4 others, and if there are enough names
>on your lists, each of those call another 3-4, etc. etc. Or 2 call
>20 each?
>
>To do this, get an updated list of Names and addresses and phone
>numers from our Alumni Director, Aimee Maruyama. She can give these
>to you, after you sign a Confidentiality Agreement, by city or zip
>code. And, if you don't already have one, and can afford to buy
>it, buy a new 2007 Alumni Directory, either a printed book, or a CD
>version, or both, Two Problems: They are VERY expensive, over $90
>each. So, to buy printed or CD you may want to take up a
>collection. And, they are almost sold out of both. If you want to
>help us start other new Chapters (see #2 below), it will be almost.
>essential for you to buy a Directory. If they are out of both
>printed and CD versions when you call, ask if they will soon
>duplicate CDs, which they have told me they are likely to do soon, as
>their supplies run down to or close to zero and duplication is ot too
>expensive. Printed versions? Since these are much more expensive,
>it is unlikely that they will ever reprint this 2007 edition! To
>buy, write to:
>PCI the data company, Heritage Square, 4835 LBJ Freeway, Suite
>1100 Dallas, TX 75244. Or better, since they may soon be out, call
>their Customer Service at 1-800-982-1590.
>
>2) Help us find Alums to organize and join new Chapters in another
>several dozen cities.
>
>We now have over 40 Chapters, with new ones being organized every
>week. But we also have over 15,000 known Alums (out of a total of
>17,000). There must be several dozen other cities in the US and
>Canada, not to mention other countries, where there are enough Alums
>to support a Chapter. Just to take a few examples out of many,
>
>Madison Wisonsin has 50 Alums, but no Chapter (unless I am behind a
>bit!). And Alumna Kristen Muir '05 (kkaramuir at gmail.com) is ready
>to organize Madison. I'm sure she could use some help. Milwaukee,
>Wisconsin has about 21 Alums, but in my lists (hopefully outdated) it
>is listed as Minneapolis - Milwaukee! Well Minneapolis has an
>energetic Chapter, but Milwaukee is a huge drive from there! How
>about Ann Arbor, MI, with 75 or more Alums, or Kalamzoo with 18.
>Or Sacramento, CA with about 30 Alums and no Chapter. I think Joel
>Elinwood <jellinwood at aklandlaw.com> is ready to help organize a
>Sacramento Chapter, but he will need some help. We have only one
>single combined YS - Dayton Chapter. Yet YS alone has about 250
>Alums and Dayton has its own 110 or so. Don Wallace '60 strongly
>believes we should have a separate Chapter in large and thriving
>Dayton, and is willing to help in organzing there, although he does
>not live there. "Don Wallace" w420 at earthlink.net . I am sure
>that
>Alumni Board member Miguel Santiago ("'Miguel Santiago'"
>masantiago75 at yahoo.com) ), would help, but Miguel is packing up his
>young newly expanded family and moving to Columbus for a new job in a
>couple of months or three. Who will step forward and get Dayton
>going? And how about Xenia with 20 Alums and Springfield with 46?
>Who do you know there?
>
>Now let's look to the South. Except for Texas and North Carolina,
>where are our Southern Chapters? Atlanta has abouit 65 Alums, but
>no Chapter! Back in July Louise Meller '67 (770) 993-9380
>louisemeller at bellsouth.net ) wrote me that she is (was?) willing to
>organize an Atlanta chapter. But I was leaving on family vacation
>that day and lost her email and did not find it and get back to her
>until yesterday. Shame on me! I hope she is still willing and able,
>but she'll need help. Ben Drake '56 in suburb Peachtree city is
>willing to help. (Ben Drake drakeben at bellsouth.net ) And who do
>YOU know in or near Atlanta?
>
>Or what about Florida? Hundreds of Alums in Florida, but no Chapter
>yet. Start in Southeast Florida. Michael Olenick, '90
>olenick at valueinnovation.net has offered himself as a contact for Southeast
>Florida. And Ginger Lines '81, now Virginia Prodanova, a Teacher at
>Palm
>Beach County
>Community College, has also offered to help.
>Millhaven28 at hotmail.com. I suggest that the two of you get in touch
>right away, and that the rest of us send you names and contacts for
>our friends. West Palm Beach has onliy 5 Alums listed. But Miami
>has 31 and Miami Beach has 7. And there are a whole bunch of other
>cities on that Southeast Coast.
>
>Then there are all thos cities on the other side, the southwest
>Coast. Who do we know, or who can we find in Naples (21 Alums),
>Fort Myers (15) and Fort Myers Beach (4). And going north a bit
>Sarasota has 25 Alums and nearby are Bradenton (15) and Bradenton
>Beach (5). Hey, shout out to my classmates Lee ('55) and Shirley
>('58) Cass. lcass at tampabay.rr.com How are you. Are you up for
>organizing an Antioch Alumni Chapter in your area? I would love to
>hear from you, and could offer my help.
>
>And I haven't even offered info on father north on either the East
>or the West Coasts of Florida, nor the interior, nor the panhandle.
>
>But I hope you all get the idea. What am I suggesting that you do,
>asking you to do? Either alone in your Living Room, or in a small
>group, or in your next Chapter meeting, try to think of half a dozen
>or more of your classmates and friends at Antioch. Do you know where
>they live and have their email or phone number? Good. Call them up,
>or email them. Tell them about how we just saved Antioch from
>closing and how we are regenerating Antioch to become again a famous
>leader in American education. Ask them to join their local Chapter,
>and if there is no local Chapter, to organize one! Tell them Aimee
>Maruyama and Mike Brower will help them get going. Or, say you each
>remember 6-12 friends from your Antioch years. But have no idea
>where they are now. Look them up in the 2007 Directory. See above.
>That is why you need at least one Directory in each group. As a last
>resort, find out which friends in which chapters have these Alumni
>Directories and contact them with your names and ask their help to
>check in their Directory to find the old friends. Or as a very last
>resort, pester Aimee Maruyama or Director of Research Fred Kraus at
>Antioch to get you the addresses and phone numbers and emails of your
>old friends. fkraus at antioch-college.edu
>
>Why is contacting these old friends so important? Because we are
>still reaching only a tiny fraction of our Alums, since most have
>been ignored and cut off from Antioch for too long. First we find
>them, then we invite them back in with us, then we inform and engage
>them and interest them - and then they become active AND they make a
>contributioin and help in other ways. Maybe become organizers or
>leaders! Or major donors? (See below.) THAT is how we will save
>our beloved Antioch and make sure it is still around winning
>victories for humanity, and our planet, for another 155 years.
>
>3) One of the most important things we can do for Antioch is to help
>find more students who would fit with Antioch's history and values
>and future. Both transfers and entering Freshman. Our Admissions
>office has always been understaffed, and now that is even more true.
>They need help in staffing College Fairs and talking with High School
>Counselors and with graduating seniors and other prospects about
>Antioch. Etc., etc. Our Boston Chapter has a whole Team focussed on
>this, and I wouild like to see EVERY OTHER Chapter quickly organize
>such an Alumni team or Committee.
>
>But we have to be very careful. Right now we can talk with and
>encourage potential transfers. But while the faculty is ready and
>eager to admit also a whole new Freshman class, for the minute we
>cannot reach out to prospective Freshman and try to recruit them We
>can certainly answer any questions that come our way about Antioch.
>But we cannot reach out to High Schools, we cannot engage in active
>enrollment right now - until we are given the green light that the
>Accrediting Organizations are giving Antioch the approval to continue
>granting degrees beyond December 2008. I am sure we will get that,
>and we must be preparing ourselves NOW to move fast when so
>authorized. But for now, we must wait for information from, and
>authorization from, our Director of Alumni Relations, Aimiee
>Maruyama. Very soon Aimee will start sending out these Newsletters
>to Chapter leaders (see below) and she will inform us of what we can
>and cannot do, when. For now, it is Okay to talk with prospies, but
>not to recruit them.
>
>4) Continue Helping Raise significant donations and pledges for
>Antioch College.
>
>In the short run - and long run - this is the most significant
>thing we can do for Antioch.
>
>Many of us recently made cash contributions or pledges. And it was
>that cash and those pledges that convinced the Board of Trustees that
>the Alumni are determined to keep Antioch open and that we could
>raise significant dollars to cover the deficits for the next few
>years. Since we have now obtained from the Trustees commitments on
>our two main requirements to fulfill those pledges (keep Antioch open
>and estalish our own separate Board of Trustees) it is now time to
>send in the cash to honor our pledges. Monday morning I am honoring
>my pledge and sending in a Check. Made out to "Antioch College
>Alumni Association." And I will put "Account
>#130110698524" on
>the Memo Line. And I will send it to US Bank, 266 Xenia Ave., Yellow
>Springs, OH 45387. This info is from the bottom of the Pledge Form.
>Copies available at antiochians.org, under "Donate". I would
>ask
>that you do the same thing, and ask your members to.
>
>It is time we all honored our pledges. Our Alumni Association leaders
>will transfer these funds on a promised timetable to an Antioch
>College (NOT University) account which will pay for our Antioch
>Alumni Office and our Development Office, and the Admissions office,
>and cover the current deficit for faculty salaries, and keep Antioch
>open.
>
>Next, we must go out and solicit still more pledges. We have to
>keep raising money and pledges to cover all of the current and
>projected deficites for several more years. Then we have to keep
>raising funds until we have developed a break-even sized studemt
>enrollment, which will take several years. And THEN we should keep
>working and raising bucks until we have finally built up a
>respectable solid endowment, so that our beloved Antioch can never
>again be threatened with closure.
>
>So, we should all donate and pledge as much as we possibly can, and
>then a bit more! And encourage all our friends to do so too. And,
>if we cannot give any significant amount of dollars, or we have
>friends who cannot, we should still contribute SOMETHING and urge
>them to. We need many millions of dollars beyond the $18 million
>that we raised in a couple of months. This REALLY impressed the
>Trustees and helped get them to agree to keep Antioch open. AND we
>also need to dramatically raise the number and percentages of our
>Alums that contribute anything, anything at all. Even $50. Even
>$25!! Why? Because rich potential donors and foundations look at
>both figures. How much, in dollars, have your Alums contributed?
>Each year? And HOW MANY, what percentage, of Alums, contribute to
>Antioch College each year?
>
>Let me tell you what we are up against. EVERY YEAR Williams College
>gets donations from about 80% of its Alums! But Antioch, which has
>ignored its Alumni for so long (a stupid trend that we, you and I,
>are finally turning aournd), gets donations from only a bit over 20%
>of its Alums. Well, we are going to dramatically change that, year
>by year. Let's double that to 40%, and then get over 50%! And
>then the Foundations will begin to wake up and say "What is
>happening with Antioch?" "We thought it was dead, and now it is
>
>bursting with new buds and leaves and ideas and energies!" And if
>you have saved a big chunk of money, or know some Alum who is
>wealthy, please immediately contact our Antioch major gifts officer
>Wendy Ernst or our Director of Research, Fred. Kraus. Quickly!
>wernst at antioch-college.edu, or fkraus at antioch-college.edu
>
>5) Find Co-op jobs and support Co-op students in our communities -
>as authorized.
>
>Well, this is another way we can help. But probably not right now,
>as plans for the Co-op periods and the Co-op office are going through
>transitions. It would do no harm if you want to email our Co-op
>office and let them know if you are interested, now or in the future,
>in heliping place one or miore Co-op student in your area. Might be a
>year or two.
>
>Okay. Enough already. Too much? This may be the last Newsletter
>you get from me. Our Alumni Director, Aimee Maruyama, has told me
>she is ready to start writing and editing and sending regular Chapter
>Newsletters to come out once or twice a month. So send her your
>ideas and needs and you will soon start getting Newsletters from
>her. And by all means, continue to contact me with ideas and
>requests for how I might help.
>
>Congratulations! We did not let it die!! W:e will win more
>Victories for HumanIty, and Planet Earth for another 133 years!
>
>-- Mike Brower '55. Member, Alumni Board. Chair, Chapters Committee.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Alumni-chat mailing list
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>
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