[Alumni-chat] Antiochiana (more)

[Sonia Jaffe Robbins]

From: YAZZ ALLEN <davidallenusa at yahoo.com>
   "The very first commencement ceremony for Antioch College occurred 
in 1857.  Among the grads were 15 students from Oberlin College in 
Ohio who had transferred to Antioch (following St. Olympia Brown's 
wonderful example...she transferred from Mt. Holyoke College, 
Massachusetts USA) to protest the unequal treatment of women at 
Oberlin College."

	For those who don't know, that unequal treatment consisted of 
not allowing women to take the same courses or curriculum as the men. 
Women had their own, less strenuous program of courses.

>From: YAZZ ALLEN <davidallenusa at yahoo.com>
>
>  "On July 3, 1912, Elbert Hubbard (then a very widely read and 
>respected commentator on the American cultural scene), stated that 
>"Antioch College Ohio was to be the Harvard College (Mass. USA) of 
>the West...only it was to be an IMPROVED Harvard, a Harvard with all 
>the world's flummery omitted...."  (from the Antioch College 
>mid-year calendar of 1975)."

	Hmmmm, what was this based on? According to Burton Clark's 
"The Distinctive College" (1970), by 1910, the college was in worse 
shape than it is today. Enrollment was 169 and there were only 22 
graduates that year, the president was paid only $1,000 a year (Mann 
got $3,000 a year when the school first opened 60 years earlier), and 
there were only 13 staff and faculty. In 1911 enrollment fell to 126, 
and in 1913 there were only 10 graduating students. By 1917 the 
president was not getting paid at all, which may explain why he 
decided to run for Congress (and got elected), and finally resigned 
as Antioch's president.

	In early 1919, the board was approached by some men connected 
with the YMCA, who said the Y was interested in starting a national 
college and could take over Antioch. The college board actually 
approved the idea "in principle," and a couple of members resigned 
and were replaced by YMCA men, one of whom was elected president of 
the college! But the project fell through when it turned out there 
wasn't official backing from the Y and the new president admitted 
that he couldn't raise the needed money for endowment. (Half-baked 
idea sound familiar?)

	So who was Elbert Hubbard and what was behind his "Antioch 
was to be the Harvard of the West"? I'm beginning to see the value of 
Louis Filler's weird ID quizzes.
-- 
Sonia Jaffe Robbins
Antioch College, '60-'62, '64
sjr5 at nyu.edu		srobbins at reedbusiness.com
http://www.neww.org.pl       http://www.nyu.edu/classes/copyXediting

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"If you do not let the tie run come to the plate, you can never lose."
--Mark Harris, in one of the Southpaw novels