[Alumni-chat] Facilities Committee

[dl bahr]

"To know enough of the past so that we can approach things with more wisdom."  This sounds very sensible, Sistersara.   I do hope we can tolerate such wisdom.  

Lesley AP Bahr


> From: Sistersara at aol.com
> Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 18:40:52 -0500
> Subject: Re: [Alumni-chat] Facilities Committee
> To: alumni-chat at w3.antioch.edu
> 
>  
> 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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