[Alumni-chat] Facilities Committee

[Sistersara at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/9/2007 9:56:40 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
pas0705 at yahoo.com writes:

One of  the things that jumped out at me from some of
the pre '92 history was that  Adcil at the College
decided on the budget, including target  enrollment
levels, then handed over to Comcil the responsibility
for  getting enrollment to that level. (Keep in mind
this was prior to the  establishment of an official
office like 'admissions' and 'recruitment').  So in
that era they HAD to collaborate. The committees were
jointly  responsible for the health and operations of
the College. 

Now Adcil  is 'advisory' to the president, and only a
throwaway line in the  Chancellor's addresses to the
campus..

-laura
(for anyone keeping  count, this is two). 




Laura, as AdCil functioned from the time of its establishment until the  late 
1960's, it worked like this.  AdCil had nine members -- Six were  nominated 
by the Faculty, Three by the Student Body.  Of course many more  ran for these 
positions, and the whole community voted in both categories at the  elections, 
but the decision as to who met the qualification line (petition  signatures) 
was in the hands of the Faculty Senate for the six seats, and  ComCil for the 
three seats.  The College President sat on AdCil ex-officio,  with no vote.  
Any agenda items from Administration had to be laid before  AdCil as an agenda 
item by the President.  
 
All items dealing with curriculum, tenure, and the College Budget  originated 
outside AdCil -- but came to AdCil as full proposals.   Curriculum, and 
tenure matters came from the Faculty Senate -- building a new  building might come 
from Administration, Budget as a full proposal with options  came from 
Administration, and what one might call student and community life  would come out of 
ComCil.  There were other organizations directly  reporting to AdCil -- Pub 
Board, for instance, that published the Record,  Antioch Notes, and the Antioch 
Review.  WYSO reported to AdCil, there was a  very active Civil Liberties 
Committee -The Bookstore was operated by an AdCil  appointed Business Manager, as 
was WYSO,  at any rate, AdCil was where many  of these elements of the 
community came together.  Except for all personnel  decisions, all meetings were 
open.  Debates or summaries of them were  published in the Record.  You can go 
back to that period, and read most of  the debates.  
 
As I said, taking votes was downplayed -- the object was to reach  consensus. 
 Normally business was presented at one meeting, it would be  reported in the 
Record, if it interested people, it would be debated, the  subject of Record 
Editorials and letters to the Editor (two sometimes three  editions of the 
Record per week in those days), thus the members of AdCil had a  quite direct 
means of assessing community response.  Then it would be put  on the AdCil agenda 
for debate -- frequently with non-members invited to present  alternative 
perspectives, and eventually AdCil would work out a resolution that  represented 
their consensus, and that would be agreed to.  The College  Budget would be 
handled that way -- Administration would present it, it might be  the Faculty or 
others had objections, this would all be in the Record, and  eventually AdCil 
would have the debate, and agree on a resolution.  Budget  then went to the 
Trustees for consideration and adoption.  In effect, AdCil  was a creation of 
the Trustees, and responsible to it.  It was by no means  advisory to the 
President, but it was structured to give Faculty 66%  representation, and students 
33%.  But the BiLaws gave Administration  responsibility for structuring 
proposals, which as things worked, was  considerable informal influence.  
 
The structure began to come apart in the 60's.  Many reasons, but I  will 
just name two.  First, Foundation Grants that "overempowered"  administrators.  
The first perhaps was the Danforth supported "First Year  Program" which 
created an "experimental" curriculum for new students that was  NOT supported by the 
faculty.  In fact, it eliminated Faculty Control of  Level One General 
Education Courses, and placed it in the hands of the  Administrator whose position 
was funded by the Danforth Grant, and who could  select those who worked in the 
program, (Preceptors, usually upper class  students).  In effect, this was 
the first matter that led to the Faculty's  loss of control of curriculum.  But 
AdCil went along because the Danforth  Grant was significant money, and 
because many upper-class students liked the job  opportunities as Preceptors.  
Danforth did not want to engage itself with  the normal mode of curriculum 
development and control, which was through the  Faculty and then through proposal, to 
AdCil.  In the end, this had a very  serious negative outcomes -- the Danforth 
Grant lasted only a few years, but in  the process the Faculty lost a 
significant piece of control over curriculum, and  it never was able to get it back.  
Ruth Churchill's office ran a quite  significant evaluation of the new First 
Year Program, and it had serious  outcomes problems. meaning that the 
"Experiment" was of no real value to the  students to whom it was intended to benefit. 
 And in the long run it  started the process of derailing Antioch's tradition 
of shared governance.   In effect it put control over the introductory 
curriculum in the hands of  Administration in the sense that the President appointed 
the director of the  program, who only reported to him, and it cut out the 
Faculty and AdCil.  
 
Second example -- I recommend looking at the conflict between John Sparks,  
Professor of Government who was frequently an AdCil member, and Jim Dixon, that 
 came to a head in 1967.  It involved the question of finance for the Units  
-- (that is what our satellite colleges and programs were once called), and  
whether the Faculty Senate would have a major say in their curriculum, 
staffing,  budget, and degree awards.  This played out over a couple of years, years  
when many new non-tenured hires were made by the Faculty (the student body was 
 growing at a sharp rate in those days), and in the end Dixon was able to get 
the  Faculty to outvote Sparks and the Tenured Faculty.  At the time, Dixon 
had  personal control over considerable Foundation funds for specific programs 
(the  pattern established with the First Year Program continued, even though 
the  program ended), and because it was also Great Society Days, there was  
considerable Federal Grant money that College Administrators quite successfully  
tapped.  I suggest this had real implications for the health of AdCil --  
essentially it gave up its powers, as did the Faculty Senate, and they fell to  
the President and his cabinet.  I do not consider any of the people  involved in 
this as evil people -- instead I see many of them as wrapped up in  the ethos 
of that late 1960's period, the rhetoric about "institutional  relevance" and 
all that, and in a sense seeing the longer serving Tenured  Faculty as the 
symbolic and judged irrelevant social enemy.  Winning small  victories within 
our own little structure substituted for winning all that much  in the larger 
arena, for instance stopping the Vietnam War, or making additional  progress on 
Civil Rights, or instant reform of the Democratic Party in the sense  of 
getting it out of the Military Industrial Complex business.  But the  upshot was to 
end the role that AdCil had played for more than twenty-five years  in shared 
governance, and what you encountered as a student in the 90's is  a 
consequence of these decisions.  
 
There were obviously many other issues that contributed to the demise of  
true shared governance, I only name these two as suggestive of the  process.  For 
a number of years the idea of shared governance has been a  shadow of its 
former self, really a fiction.  It worked for several decades  because the ethos 
on campus was not so much about winning individual arguments,  but it was 
about building community consensus, which in the end means holding  the community 
together is more important than winning on one or another  issue.  You can't 
have versions of the politics of personal destruction, or  authoritarian 
systems -- which is what we have had in recent years alongside  informal systems 
that are less about winning, and more about consensus.   Part of our problem is 
that we have not been honest, and given up the old  Consensus and shared 
governance language as a true reflection of what is  reality.  
 
I don't think we can go back to the old form.  It was evolved in  earlier tim
es out of different circumstances.  For instance, among other  things, it was 
much more likely that you could hire students through AdCil as  business 
managers of parts of the AdCil domain, because we had a strong Business  Major in 
those years, we had 4th and 5th year students who were experienced in  previous 
co-op's and able to seek advice from several Business Professors, so as  to 
run community businesses in the black, and frequently at a profit.  We  really 
don't have that now.  But I do think that some of that is reflected  in the 
manner in which old time Alumni and the BoT approached their negotiations  -- I 
saw it in the outcome, and I think as things get re-thought it is useful to  
consider the conditions that undergirded shared governance, and to be sensitive 
 to all opportunities to grow back in that direction.  
 
This is behind my constant question, "What Went Wrong?"  I am not so  much 
about blaming individuals, rather I want an analysis of past experience  that 
helps us all become much more sensitive to the consequences of decisions --  to 
the fact that many have quite unintended consequences, and the way to  
minimize that is to know enough of the past to approach things with more  wisdom.  



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