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→The late 20th Century: added the reference to Phillip Roth; and, especially, I found that the discussion of the sexual offense prevention policy was inaccurate and harshly biased
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→The late 20th Century: further clarification
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In the late 1970s, the University system partially collapsed, leaving Antioch College and Antioch University in dire financial straits by the beginning of the [[1980s]]. During the [[1980s]], Antioch experienced persistent financial troubles, with the student body shrinking to several hundred students. Several buildings on campus were either condemned or boarded up, and the rest of the campus and grounds fell into disrepair. The faculty roster also suffered from financial constraints.
In the late 1970s, the University system partially collapsed, leaving Antioch College and Antioch University in dire financial straits by the beginning of the [[1980s]]. During the [[1980s]], Antioch experienced persistent financial troubles, with the student body shrinking to several hundred students. Several buildings on campus were either condemned or boarded up, and the rest of the campus and grounds fell into disrepair. The faculty roster also suffered from financial constraints.


In 1993 Antioch became the focus of national attention with its "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy." This student-created educational process was initiated after two date rapes reportedly occured on the Antioch College campus during the 1990-91 school year. A group of students formed under the name "Womyn of Antioch" to address their concern that sexual offenses in general were not being taken seriously enough by the administration or some on the campus community.<ref>[http://www.antioch-college.edu/Campus/sopp/adda.html "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy, Addendum A: Herstory, 1990-1996"]</ref> Advocates of the policy explain that the original "Sexual Offense Policy," as it was then called, was created during a couple of late-night meetings in the campus Womyn's Center, and they admit that "This original policy was quite questionable. It was not legally binding, no rights were given to the accused, and it called for immediate expulsion of the accused with no formal process." <ref>[http://www.antioch-college.edu/Campus/sopp/adda.html "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy, Addendum A: Herstory, 1990-1996"]</ref> The policy uniquely viewed any sexual offense as not simply a violation of the victim's rights, but as an offense against the entire campus community. It was revised and clarified in a series of Community Meetings in 1991-92, and it became the official policy of the college that year.
In 1993 Antioch became the focus of national attention with its "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy." This student-created educational process was initiated after two date rapes reportedly occured on the Antioch College campus during the 1990-91 school year. A group of students formed under the name "Womyn of Antioch" to address their concern that sexual offenses in general were not being taken seriously enough by the administration or some on the campus community.<ref>[http://www.antioch-college.edu/Campus/sopp/adda.html "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy, Addendum A: Herstory, 1990-1996"]</ref> Advocates of the policy explain that the original "Sexual Offense Policy," as it was then called, was created during a couple of late-night meetings in the campus Womyn's Center, and they admit that "This original policy was quite questionable. It was not legally binding, no rights were given to the accused, and it called for immediate expulsion of the accused with no formal process." <ref>[http://www.antioch-college.edu/Campus/sopp/adda.html "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy, Addendum A: Herstory, 1990-1996"]</ref> The policy, both as it then stood and as revised, uniquely viewed any sexual offense as not simply a violation of the victim's rights, but as an offense against the entire campus community. It was revised, focused more on education and less on punishment, and clarified in a series of Community Meetings in 1991-92. Once revised, it was endorsed by the entire campus and the Board of Trustess, and thus became the official policy of the college that year.


It only attracted national publicity in 1993, allegedly when a student doing a co-op on the west coast mentioned the policy to a [[California]] campus newspaper reporter, and an [[AP]] reporter picked up the story in the early days of the fall, 1993, term. At this point, a media frenzy ensued, arguably garnering more attention to Antioch than anything since the [[student strike]] of 1973. Although the policy was often ridiculed, and distorted, by the mainstream American news media--even becoming the butt of a [[Saturday Night Live]] sketch that fall--in the intervening years it has become a model for sexual offense policies at several other progressive colleges and institutions. Indeed, even at the time, a few journalists and pundits offered more measured assessments. Syndicated Op-Ed columnist [[Ellen Goodman]], for example, asserted that most "Sexual policy makers write like lawyers in love," and that, likewise, "[a]t Antioch the authors could use some poetry, and passion." But, she said "they have the plot line just about right."<ref>"The struggle on college campuses to create a standard of sexual equality," "The Boston Globe", Sunday, September 19, 1993, Op-Ed, p. 75.</ref>
This revised policy only attracted national publicity two years later, in the fall of the 1993-94 year, allegedly when a student doing a co-op on the west coast mentioned the policy to a [[California]] campus newspaper reporter. An [[AP]] reporter picked up the story in the early days of the fall, 1993, term, and a media frenzy ensued, one that arguably garnered more attention to Antioch than anything since the [[student strike]] of 1973. Although the policy was often ridiculed, and distorted, by the mainstream American news media that fall--even becoming the butt of a [[Saturday Night Live]] sketch--in the intervening years it has become a model for sexual offense policies at several other progressive colleges and institutions. Indeed, even at the time, a few journalists and pundits offered more measured assessments of the policy. Syndicated Op-Ed columnist [[Ellen Goodman]], for example, asserted that most "Sexual policy makers write like lawyers in love," and that, likewise, "[a]t Antioch the authors could use some poetry, and passion." But, she was ultimately sympathetic to their goals of leveling the sexual playing field and making students think about what consent means, saying that the Antioch campus "ha[d] the plot line just about right."<ref>"The struggle on college campuses to create a standard of sexual equality," "The Boston Globe", Sunday, September 19, 1993, Op-Ed, p. 75.</ref>


Beginning in the [[1990s]], the college began the first of several revival pushes by the student body, alumni, faculty and third-party donors. Though financial problems continue, in the early [[2000s]], Antioch trustees, administration and donors founded the "Plan for Antioch College", a multi-million dollar renewal commission that has altered the college's investment and marketing strategy, as well as the basic structure of the curriculum. This new "Plan" was met by much resistance on the part of the student body as well as a large number of faculty.
Beginning in the [[1990s]], the college began the first of several revival pushes by the student body, alumni, faculty and third-party donors. Though financial problems continue, in the early [[2000s]], Antioch trustees, administration and donors founded the "Plan for Antioch College", a multi-million dollar renewal commission that has altered the college's investment and marketing strategy, as well as the basic structure of the curriculum. This new "Plan" was met by much resistance on the part of the student body as well as a large number of faculty.

Revision as of 06:48, 3 July 2007

Antioch College
File:AntiochCollegeLogo.gif
MottoBe ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
TypePrivate undergraduate
Active1853–2008 (announced)
Endowment$30 million[1]
PresidentSteve Lawry
Location
Yellow Springs, Ohio
,
United States
Websitehttp://www.antioch-college.edu/

Antioch College is a private, independent liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, one of six campuses of the Antioch University system. In June 2007, the University’s Board of Trustees announced that the college would be suspending operations as of July 2008, and would try to reopen in 2012. [2]

Founded in 1852 by the Christian Connection[3], the college began operating in 1853 with Horace Mann as its first president. Its current educational approach blends practical work experience with classroom learning and participatory community governance. By the 1960s, the college enrolled over 2,000 students; the 2007 enrollment was about 400.[1]

Antioch College is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association, the Eco League, and the North American Alliance for Green Education.

History

On October 5, 1850, the General Convention of the Christian Church passed a resolution stating "that our responsibility to the community, and the advancement of our interests as a denomination, demand of us the establishing of a College." This resolution was passed unanimously by the 82 delegates, who represented 521 ordained ministers. The delegates further pledged "the sum of one hundred thousand dollars as the standard by which to measure our zeal and our effort in raising the means for establishing the contemplated College." The Committee on the Plan for a College was formed to undertake the founding of a college, and make decisions regarding the name of the school, the endowment, fundraising, faculty, and administration. Most notably, the committee decided that the college "shall afford equal privileges to students of both sexes." The Christian Connection sect wanted the new college to be sectarian, but the planning committee decided otherwise.

Early years

Horace Mann, Antioch's first president, ran the college from its founding in 1853 until his death in 1859. The young college had relatively high academic standards, and also emphasized good health, co-operation, and sound ethical and moral principles. The first curriculum focused on Latin, Greek, mathematics, history, philosophy and science, and offered electives in art, botany, pedagogy, and modern languages. Tuition was $24 a year, and the first graduating class consisted of 28 students. Although the founders planned for approximately 1,000 students, enrollment only exceeded 500 once in the 19th century, in 1857.

One notable character in Antioch's history is Rebecca Pennell, who was one of the college's ten original faculty members. She was the first female college professor in the United States to have the same rank and pay as her male colleagues. Her home, now part of the Antioch campus and called Pennell House, currently serves as community space.

In 1859, Mann gave his final commencement speech, which contained the sentence that has become the college's motto: "Be ashamed to die until you win some victory for humanity." Mann died in August and was initially interred on the Antioch College grounds. The next year, he was reinterred in Providence, Rhode Island, next to his first wife.

In the 1850s, two African American girls, residents of Yellow Springs, enrolled at Antioch Preparatory School, which was then an official part of the College. A member of the board of trustees quit in protest and removed his own children from the school, but the Hunster sisters stayed at Antioch. In 1863, Antioch trustee John Phillips proposed a resolution stating "the Trustees of Antioch College cannot, according to the Charter, reject persons on account of color." The resolution passed with nine trustees in favor and four opposed.

The college faced financial difficulties early on. From 1857 to 1859, Antioch ran an annual deficit of $5,000, out of a total budget of $13,000. In 1858, Antioch was bankrupt. Mann died in 1859 and the college was reorganized, but deficits continued. Mann's successor, Thomas Hill, took Antioch's presidency on the condition that faculty salaries be paid despite deficits. Despite this stipulation, his salary was often not paid, and he supported his family with loans. Hill resigned in 1862 due to increasing financial troubles, sectarian conflict between Christian Connection and Unitarian trustees, and his election as president of Harvard. In 1862, the college was closed until finances improved and remained closed until after the end of the Civil War.

In 1865, the college reopened, now administered by the Unitarian church. Financial troubles continued, and the college closed again from 1881–1882. In 1899, finances were so restricted that faculty made between $500–$700 a year, very low for the time, and the president was paid $1,500 a year. In contrast, Horace Mann's salary was $3,000 a year more than forty years prior.

The early 20th century

In 1919, Arthur Morgan was elected to Antioch's board of trustees. An engineer, he had been involved in planning a college in upstate New York that would have included work-study along with a more traditional curriculum. Morgan presented his plan for "practical industrial education" to the Antioch board and was authorized to develop it. He was unanimously elected president the next year and in 1921, the cooperative education, or co-op, program began.

Students initially studied for eight-week-long terms alternating with eight-week-long work experiences. Male students generally took apprenticeships with craftsmen or jobs in factories; female students often served as nursing or teaching assistants. The college had no black students from 1899–1929 and only two from 1929–1936 (neither graduated), so it is unknown how racial discrimination among employers affected the co-op program. While Antioch itself had no religious quotas (elsewhere common until the 1940s), many employers discriminated against Jews, a fact that limited the number of Jewish students at Antioch.

In 1926, the college's Administrative Council was formed as an advisory body to the president. It was chartered in 1930. The Administrative Council was originally a faculty-only body, though a student seat was added in 1941. Over time, the Administrative Council became the primary policy-making body of the College (its role having been brought into question under the Lawry Presidency). The Community Council was established a short time later, to advise on and manage what at other college campuses would be considered "student concerns". At Antioch, these matters, such as campus artistic and cultural life, have been regarded as community-wide issues, affecting students, staff, faculty members and administrators equally.

The late 20th Century

Beginning in the 1950s, Antioch was considered an early bastion of student activism and liberal thought. Antioch faced pressure from the powerful House Un-American Activities Committee and faced criticism from many area newspapers, because it did not expel students and faculty accused of having Communist leanings. College officials stood firm, insisting that freedom begins not in suppressing unpopular ideas but in holding all ideas up to the light. The school, including professors and administration, was also involved in the early stages of the American Civil Rights Movement and remains a supporter of free speech.

The 1960s were considered by many to be Antioch's 20th-century heyday, a period of health and vibrancy. The student body topped out around 2,000, the college owned property all over Yellow Springs and beyond, and the college grew throughout the decade to became one of the most respected liberal arts institutions in the country. It began to show up in pop-culture as an icon of youth culture, serving, for example, as the setting for a portion of Philip Roth's most popular novel, "Portnoy's Complaint".

At this time, Antioch became one of the primary sources of student radicalism, the New Left, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and, to a lesser extent, the Black Power movement. The town of Yellow Springs itself became an island of liberal and progressive activism in southern Ohio.

In many instances, the environment of the school spurred its students to activism. Eleanor Holmes Norton, future congressional delegate for Washington, D.C., recalled her time at Antioch as one "when the first real action that could be called movement action was ignited", according to an interview now available in the National Security Archives.[4]

The 1970s saw the college continue to develop its reputation as a source of activism and often controversial political thought. Several graduate satellite schools around the country, under the Antioch University name (with the college as a base), were established as well, including the McGregor School (now known as Antioch University McGregor), located adjacent to the original Yellow Springs campus. Antioch University New England was the first graduate school offshoot in 1964. The university campuses are located in Keene, New Hampshire; Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California; and Santa Barbara, California.

In the late 1970s, the University system partially collapsed, leaving Antioch College and Antioch University in dire financial straits by the beginning of the 1980s. During the 1980s, Antioch experienced persistent financial troubles, with the student body shrinking to several hundred students. Several buildings on campus were either condemned or boarded up, and the rest of the campus and grounds fell into disrepair. The faculty roster also suffered from financial constraints.

In 1993 Antioch became the focus of national attention with its "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy." This student-created educational process was initiated after two date rapes reportedly occured on the Antioch College campus during the 1990-91 school year. A group of students formed under the name "Womyn of Antioch" to address their concern that sexual offenses in general were not being taken seriously enough by the administration or some on the campus community.[5] Advocates of the policy explain that the original "Sexual Offense Policy," as it was then called, was created during a couple of late-night meetings in the campus Womyn's Center, and they admit that "This original policy was quite questionable. It was not legally binding, no rights were given to the accused, and it called for immediate expulsion of the accused with no formal process." [6] The policy, both as it then stood and as revised, uniquely viewed any sexual offense as not simply a violation of the victim's rights, but as an offense against the entire campus community. It was revised, focused more on education and less on punishment, and clarified in a series of Community Meetings in 1991-92. Once revised, it was endorsed by the entire campus and the Board of Trustess, and thus became the official policy of the college that year.

This revised policy only attracted national publicity two years later, in the fall of the 1993-94 year, allegedly when a student doing a co-op on the west coast mentioned the policy to a California campus newspaper reporter. An AP reporter picked up the story in the early days of the fall, 1993, term, and a media frenzy ensued, one that arguably garnered more attention to Antioch than anything since the student strike of 1973. Although the policy was often ridiculed, and distorted, by the mainstream American news media that fall--even becoming the butt of a Saturday Night Live sketch--in the intervening years it has become a model for sexual offense policies at several other progressive colleges and institutions. Indeed, even at the time, a few journalists and pundits offered more measured assessments of the policy. Syndicated Op-Ed columnist Ellen Goodman, for example, asserted that most "Sexual policy makers write like lawyers in love," and that, likewise, "[a]t Antioch the authors could use some poetry, and passion." But, she was ultimately sympathetic to their goals of leveling the sexual playing field and making students think about what consent means, saying that the Antioch campus "ha[d] the plot line just about right."[7]

Beginning in the 1990s, the college began the first of several revival pushes by the student body, alumni, faculty and third-party donors. Though financial problems continue, in the early 2000s, Antioch trustees, administration and donors founded the "Plan for Antioch College", a multi-million dollar renewal commission that has altered the college's investment and marketing strategy, as well as the basic structure of the curriculum. This new "Plan" was met by much resistance on the part of the student body as well as a large number of faculty.

A continued problem with structural inequities regarding people of color and low-income students led to a student-initiated protest entitled "People of Color Takeover". This highly-controversial event triggered the creation of the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom.[citation needed]

21st century and closure

In June 2007, Antioch University’s Board of Trustees announced that the college would be suspending operations at the campus in Yellow Springs in July 2008. This was due to declining enrollment and the school's reliance on tuition as their primary source of revenue, with an insufficent $30 million endowment.

Enrollment dropped from 650 students to 370 in 2 years as a direct result of the curriculum change mandated by the Board of Trustees. This forced curriculum plan was to have a 5 year funding commitment from the University. [citation needed][unbalanced opinion?]

The Board of Trustees stated they would continue to work on raising the needed money, with the intention of reopening in 2012, with new facilities, curriculum, and technology. Members of the Board were not certain that the planned re-opening would actually happen.[8] President Steven Lawry stated that re-opening the college would be contingent on raising adequate funds.[9]

As of 2007, many Antioch alumni and faculty, upset at the prospect of the loss of the college's legacy, are organizing and raising funds in an effort to save the college and to gain a greater voice in its governance. Some hope the college can become more independent from Antioch University, and some blame the university's board of trustees for the problems leading to the college's closure. The college's faculty has voiced the possbility of a lawsuit. [10]

The other campuses of Antioch University were expected to continue normal operations.[2]

Profiles and other recognition

The U.S. News & World Report college and university rankings classify Antioch College as a third-tier Liberal Arts College.[11] The best-selling guidebook Colleges That Change Lives' by Loren Pope says of Antioch, "There is no college or university in the country that makes a more profound difference in a young person's life or that creates more effective adults."[12]

In its September 2000 issue the periodical Men's Health named Antioch as one of the 10 most anti-male schools in America. The magazine cited Antioch's sex code, and opposition to fraternities.

Noteworthy alumni

Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, graduated from Antioch in 1950. The episode of his show entitled "The Changing of the Guard" is considered the "Antioch episode" by alumni for its references to Antioch that include Horace Mann and the school motto.

Other alumni include:

References

  1. ^ a b Antioch College to close in hopes of reopening, Associated Press, June 15, 2007.
  2. ^ a b "Antioch College Suspends Operations to Design 21st Century Campus: State-of-the-Art Campus projected to open in 2012, press release, June 12, 2007.
  3. ^ "Christian Connection" was sometimes spelled "Christian Connexion".
  4. ^ Interview with Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes, July 11, 1996.
  5. ^ "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy, Addendum A: Herstory, 1990-1996"
  6. ^ "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy, Addendum A: Herstory, 1990-1996"
  7. ^ "The struggle on college campuses to create a standard of sexual equality," "The Boston Globe", Sunday, September 19, 1993, Op-Ed, p. 75.
  8. ^ Paul Fain, "Antioch College to Close; Board Hopes to Reopen in 2012", Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2007
  9. ^ Letter from President Steve Lawry, June 12, 2007, posted at http://saveantioch.org/, retrieved June 17, 2007
  10. ^ Schemo, Diana Jean. "It's Anger, Not Nostalgia, at Antioch Reunion". New York Times 23 June 2007.
  11. ^ America's Best Colleges, 2007: Liberal Arts Colleges - Tier 3, U.S. News & World Report, accessed June 17, 2007/
  12. ^ Profile of Antioch from Colleges That Change Lives.

Websites affiliated with Antioch:

Unaffiliated websites:


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