[Alumni-chat] Facilities Committee

[Sistersara at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/8/2007 9:36:09 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
duffy at antioch-college.edu writes:

Hello  Ms. Debra and all my other friends...please be hyper-vigilant and
active  when it comes to the library's (and Joe's) legacy.

As Joe might have  said...."The idea boys are working overtime"...I am
afraid this is the case  even in through here.

So SisterSara and others......please be concerned  and active.

sisterSara....I know you have some old local roots...so  when the great
north becomes frigid maybe you will go over

the river  and through the woods to Fairmont. Maybe we can have a lunch
date...I know  we met once but thousands

of folks have come down the instutitional  river...with your email moniker
I will just have to imagine you  looking

like Sally Field for now.

The Library needs external and  internal care and protection from folks
with their own agendas.

And  really to be correct The Big Olive's legacy even predates  Joe.....Paul
Bixler and Bruce Thomas were also

extraordinary  directors.....many folks have taken great care over decades
with  us.....

Sometimes consultants and new folks are so interested in their  own
innovative ideas they trample on the

real legacy here...and then  folks wonder why there is alienation. from the
legacy  crowd.


Eventhough we are a little tattered...we are  marvelous...during freshmen
week parents meandered in and out...of the  library.

and one parent said...feels homey.    (not homely,  eh?  I made sure thare
wasn't wax in my ears and I heard it  right)   

And I know that this isn't the future vision thread  but I would hope that
some new curriculum would include

seminars in  conflict resolution and small and larger group interaction.  
Truth  is...when you are always looking

at the world and looking at yourself  and when folks program you to try to
win that victory for  humanity.....well..

when you discover all the things wrong with the  world and yourself...anger
and frustration are some of the  hardest

and most paralyzing emotions that seem to surface.  and do  trickle down
into the culture...

A re-invented Antioch would  hopefully still have folks running around the
planet and then back home to  recover

or regroup.        My theory is that anger  at ourselves (internal and
external) is a major force in preventing us  from

thriving.  Just as many places might have mandatory  composition
classes...well...our composition classes look at the

way  the world is made.....how to deal with anger.....and frustration.

How  to speak, how to write, how to resolve issues.....we need lotsa  Jay
Rothmans.

and it is interesting to see a name like David Apter  in the
conversation..I have often had "you" behind the desk on

2hr  reserve and can't count the number of times you have been in  students'
hands throughout the decades.

It's like hearing from a  celeb.

Don't forget to keep on talking and  networking....

check all those antiochian  websites...including the College one...and
please make sure that it is up  to snuff...
and contact the alumni board committees...and  come see us some time.

The newest folks floating down the river are  called millenials.    When
Jimmy Williams (former Dean) started  telling me what the next generation

was spozed to be like I was  skeptical(as all Antiochians are) ...turns out
that that research is sorta  right.

The millenials have certain positive traits that folks  from the last
four decades seemed to have lacked.
They do  like to work in teams and are exceptionally altruistic.

Imagine ...that  at the Community Meeting before the BOT and Homecoming
the tallk was about  cleaning and policing
the place  before company might arrive....and  about good behaviors when 
the elders returned.

Some  alums from the nineties said who were here (in advance of the
masses) said  " Gee, my generation wasn't

that way..we would have been obstinate or  contrary on purpose"....  well
the institutional river has taken a  turn or

the water has a new clarity.

Gotta go......thanks to all  for your care......take a hint from  the
millenials........teamwork......

>From the river..at the Big  Olive (Kettering Library).

Duffy '77 and the years  since





Duffy, you have one of the greatest "seminars" in Conflict Resolution going  
on in the rough on Campus right now.  All you need is a really good  moderator 
who can work with it, and has something of a more generalized and  broader 
view of the situations, to frequently summarize and focus some of the  
discourse.  
 
As I have said from my "baseless" historical point of view on these  matters, 
Way back When -- perhaps 1940's through the perhaps 1965 date point,  Antioch 
Councils such as AdCil, ComCil, and Faculty Senate all operated more or  less 
on Quakerly decision making processes -- We are not a Quaker School, but we  
have a Quaker Meeting House, and lots of Quaker tradition after all.   
Essentially, Quaker meetings for Business do not follow Roberts Rules of Order,  
instead, they just keep talking around and about points of disagreement, and at  
the right time the moderator or clerk re-states or re-frames the areas of  
agreement and disagreement, trying to narrow the discussion so as to get to  
consensus, a consensus that keeps all parts of a meeting engaged.  The  point is 
less any individual's point of view as to the resolution of a  difference of 
opinion or way to proceed on the way forward, it is all about  resolution that 
keeps the meeting together, and ready to take up the next agenda  matter when it 
should be necessary.  
 
Strange to think, we used to run the college that way more or less.   And 
anyone who has been involved in mediation or arbitration of a conflict knows  all 
about the process -- though they may not link it to having a Quaker Meeting  
House around the Corner.  At any rate, listening to the reports and  
commentary on line of the Community Meeting receiving the results of the BoT and  AB 
meetings, I suddenly had a flash -- it appeared to me that the Agreement  
"might" have been reached with something of the olde Antioch Tradition behind  how 
they did the process.  Of course the lack of transparency would be  something 
of a violation of that tradition -- we still need to work on that --  but in 
the end the agreement was the needed opening to keep the College around,  and 
plan how to rebuilt it.  One reason I felt positive about it was  because I 
sniffed that old tradition in the decision process.  
 
Duffy -- I certainly support having a good plan for bringing the Library up  
to snuff for the 21st Century.  But it all has to be done, in my opinion,  in 
line with whatever master plan is prepared for the whole "New Antioch" as it  
has to serve the whole various purposes in that plan.  Because I had a  friend 
who was somewhat engaged in the process -- we might want to take a good  look 
at how Macalaster College went about it about ten years ago.  Mac was  very 
fortunate -- way back in the 1920's they had a college drop-out around  their 
St. Paul Campus, a guy who had a bright idea about a new kind of  magazine.  
They let him have a room, and a little job tending to some coal  fired heating 
boilers.  The upshot was Wallace's "Readers' Digest"  (something I rarely 
read), and about sixty years later the guy died, the  Magazine was a "big media 
center" and he left most of his estate to Mac.   Upshot -- they had endowment 
income to shoot the moon in rebuilding their  library.  (we probably won't be so 
lucky).  Moral of the above Story  -- Readers' Digest Style -- never ignore 
your drop-outs.  
 
Anyhow, Mac set a process that created planning committees -- I think there  
were six or seven of them -- that involved Faculty, Students, Alumni, Library  
Pro's, Consultants, Architects, Trustees and some others, and they took about 
a  year to hash out all the elements of planning aspects of the new Library 
-- and  then they merged all those committees, and their task was to merge the 
plans and  come up with a master plan.  It was a long process -- everyone had 
to learn  the details of each segment of Mac as it then existed, and as 
planning projected  it out into the future -- everyone had to study all the new IT 
technologies  existent and likely to appear in the reasonable future.  Everyone 
had to  look at all functions in terms of futures, and the built in 
flexibility to take  advantage of all possible new developments.  It was long hard work 
for  anyone who participated -- but out of it they got a hell of a Library.   
Because they put their consultants at the committee working level, what they 
had  to offer went in on the ground floor, not as a top down plan.  Of course  
eventually the Architects and Engineers took over and drew up the actual  
construction plans, and calculated the tolerances necessary for supporting tons  
and tons of books, making everything fireproof, and all that, but the planning 
 of the new Library was one of those processes that brought everyone to the  
table.  
 
I would hope that all of the Antioch Facilities Projects -- certainly  
including the Library, would figure out how to create a similar sort of "all in"  
planning process.  Likewise, I hope all this stuff gets done in a fairly  
transparent fashion.  The point is to at least try to herd all us Antioch  Chickens 
to follow the same road, even if some insist on walking in the wrong  lane 
against oncoming traffic.  
 
But yes -- I totally support either major reconstruction or a total  re-build 
of the Library.  I particularly believe that the planning needs to  seriously 
engage with the IT of the future -- both what is predictable, and what  is 
blue sky thinking at this point -- and seriously address how to build all  this 
into the plans -- both the soon to be real, and the needed flexibility to  
absorb the future.  And it needs to be built with an eye to curriculum --  the 
immediate future curriculum, and that of perhaps what might be twenty five  
years from now.  Right now I see the Library-IT world at a situation much  like 
the kind of debate one might have had in the 1500's, are you on the side of  
Monks Copying Ancient Manuscripts? or are you on the side of the guy who mass  
produces copies on a privately owned but likely government or church regulated  
and censored and taxed printing press?  We might understand a good deal of  
the present challenge if we seriously revisit that old debate, and understand  
that the "Enlightenment" was a product of the winners of the debate.  (Aah,  
the uses of "baseless" history.)
 
More later...
 
 



************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com