My alma mater, a once famous center for progressive learning, is closing down after more than 150 years of challenging tradition.
It kinda sucks. I feel somehow less educated and valid now than I did yesterday. My college couldn't hack it enough to stay open--surely that must reflect on the academics.
Well, maybe. Antioch wasn't known for forcing students to learn calculus. But so what. That wasn't the point. The point was to offer opportunities and challenge students in other ways. Antioch had the first female professor in the US whose rank and salary matched her male counterparts. Race and gender issues were tackled head-on. In the fifties, the school wouldn't play along with the Commie-hunters. In the sixties, Antioch was in its heyday as a center for war protests and black power.
Antioch's cooperative education program sent me on jobs around the country--the Staten Island Advance newspaper, Associated Press on Capitol Hill, the Austin Chronicle, WYSO community radio, American Friends Service Committee, and Marvel Comics in New York. The last determined the course of the next two decades of my life, though they seem to have forgotten me on the Wikipedia alumni list.
Antioch had its share of problems. Students without self-discipline didn't last long. Neither did people who experimented a bit too freely and too often. Some people drove me nuts with their inflated senses of drama. I didn't even bother going back for the second half of my senior year. Nor did I pay my library fines. I got an empty diploma case at graduation. Not totally empty. There was a bill inside.
I guess I wasn't the only one ignoring my bills. The school is closing due to lack of funding.
I guess I should get a copy of my transcript in case I ever want to go to graduate school.
8 comments:
Oh man. I thought you were kidding. But no.
Antioch changed my life completely, although I got my degree elsewhere. I feel kind of sick knowing it's gone, or mostly gone.
On the other hand, the joke I remember back in the mid-80's was that Antioch's admission standards were so low that you were sure to get in so long as you weren't currently incarcerated in a mental institution. Getting out with a degree, on the other hand, wasn't so simple. So there were academic standards.
Oh, and Wikipedia doesn't even mention the Strike, which I think of as the cause of all of this, so clearly the entry needs a bit of work.
Jeez, and some of those campus buildings are architecturally important, too. Wonder what'll happen to it all. Not to mention the economy of the town of Yellow Springs.
This is such a bummer. Antioch was basically the only place on earth I never felt like a freak.
Interesting. It says they will reopen the college in 2012. Hmmm. I have a student with them in India this fall.
Probably are trying to let loose all their tenured faculty... the most expensive kind.. then rebuild. I wonder if there is anything in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Very interesting. The Skidmore RD in Spain is an Antioch Grad too!
The other Marie
Sara, I don't think that being incarcerated would stop someone from getting into Antioch.
Nancy, inexplicably I always felt like a freak at Antioch too, and took refuge in the indie rock scenes of Dayton and Cincinnati. Not sure what that's about, but there is some kind of line that can be traced as I deliberately place myself just outside the bounds of normal society over and over, regardless of the part of the world or how supportive and abnormal that society is to start with. In other words, I seem to have a little alienation problem.
Marie, that is an astute observation. Me and my alumni pal in Greece were wondering what was different this time, as Antioch has financial crises every 40 minutes. But you may well be right, this is the equivalent of reorganizing under bankruptcy and all commitments and contracts are then thrown out. Very astute.
"Bucking authority starts at home."
Antioch is its own worst enemy. Just realized, the values they taught us also teach students to strike, argue, and withhold payments.
Wouldn't have it any other way, of course, but it does encourage students to fight the power. In this case, the power being the school they are paying to teach them to fight the power. Bit of a conundrum.
That's an interesting theory about the tenured faculty, but I think Antioch's financial problems run so deep -- many of their buildings need serious work, and their whole infrastructure is collapsing -- that getting rid of 20 expensive professors wouldn't make all that much of a dent. Their polls show that the main reason students don't return after their first year is the condition of the facilities. Besides, shutting down for four years is such a radical step, and would be so hard to recover from, that it must be a last ditch effort prompted by desperation.
Where I work about 50% of the budget is salaries and benefits. So if they can stop that for four years they can put all that money into infrastructure. Many colleges like Antioch deferred maintenance in the 80s, 90s. They are in big trouble now as they rely so heavily on tuition and fees that there isn't room in the budget to take a dorm out of service to renovate it (= expenses and loss revenue.) Many institutions didn't make it out of the 80s and 90s. Many schools are still struggling since the new student body has much higher expectations for services. Got to run. We are on vacation and I'm holding up the pool brigade!
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