[Alumni-chat] Recent Visit to YS

[dl bahr]

We have recently returned from a visit to Ohio which included a brief stop in Yellow Springs.  We did not have much time to visit but we saw what we needed to see.

I want to strongly encourage any Antioch College alumni who are visiting Yellow Springs for the BoT meeting and reunion in October to first stop at the new MacGregor "campus"--Antioch University's newest addition to the Antioch network.  The building is open and the classes are in full swing.  It was our last stop before we left town.  

When I pulled into the parking lot and saw the white columns it was enough for me.  I was ready to go.  There was a man mowing the new sod sloping to the pond who was having some trouble with the angle (we can't remember if there was a fountain yet or if we imagined it)  As I was turning around in the ample and full parking lot, my husband was insistent that we get out and walk the hallways.  Everything was very well coordinated orange, gold, purple, green...the tiles, the walls, the furniture...very slick.  The bookstore had plenty of racks of T-Shirts and Sweatshirts with Antioch University over a boldly worded MacGregor.  There were plaques next to some of the rooms with corporate sponsors--the one I read was made possible by Bank One.  Yes, it is beginning to feel like a very Mc sorta world out there on the edge of Yellow Springs.

Dana seemed able to summarize better than me.  "If I took a bank and a bunch of classrooms and combined them we would have Antioch MacGregor."  or "Corporatized Liberalism."  As he read MacGregor's offerings proudly displayed in the lobby next to a wall with a catchy phrase overlayed across a "mural" (wallpaper?) of silhouetted leaves;  he noted there was very little in hard science.  I can't remember the phrase but I am sure it was meant to convey the spirit of an Antioch University education.  

Clearly it is evident where the money has been directed.  What I do not understand is how a board of trustees--many with Antioch College diplomas--could have approved of this development while the College becomes a ghost town.  How is this stewardship?  

We arrive home to the announcement that an Antioch College alumnus has won the Nobel Prize in  science.  I guarantee you Antioch MacGregor will not be producing any Nobel Prize  laureates especially in science.  Although I am sure Antioch University will use Mario Capecchi as another poster boy as they have with other Antioch College alumni and founders.

My first stop when I arrived in town was at Horace Mann monument out in the Glen.  It is Founders Day after all.  His platform is crumbling and weeds are growing in the cracks.  Most of the spray paint has been removed except for the red boots.  It has lost the feeling it must have had when it was built in 1936.  I no longer feel the same as I circumambulate its parameter.  There is sorrow and an apology in my footsteps.

We also attended Jim Malarky's Founders Day talk. What we heard were words of Mann and Morgan that still had a message for our time.  They were not archaic ideals of a bygone era.  Antioch College was not built on empty rhetoric--it lost its way but it was not because of a poor foundation.  

We also had some birthday cake at a community gathering later in the evening.  Good to see your face again, Duffy.  We do not forget your words that the "Time is now, if nothing is done Now there will not be another chance."  

Lesley A. Pownall Bahr
Minnesota



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