Antioch College Closing?

Local stakeholders selected for Antioch trustee meeting

By Diane Chiddister

Since Antioch University officials announced recently that some villagers had been invited to represent Yellow Springs as stakeholders in the Aug. 25 special trustees meeting but that the names of those villagers would not be disclosed, the village has been abuzz with these questions: who are these stakeholders, anyway? And how were they chosen?

Last week Antioch University spokesperson Mary Lou LaPierre stated that Yellow Springs will be represented by “four or five” stakeholders and that those people will be identified after the Aug. 10 deadline for invitees to respond.

According to phone calls made by the News last week, local persons who received invitations to the trustee meeting include Village Manager Eric Swansen, Village Council Acting President Karen Wintrow, Dan Young of Community Resources, Miami Township Trustrees President Mark Crockett and Jane Baker, of the Arts Center steering committee. School board president Angela Wright said that, while he had not received an invitation, board member Richard Lapedes, a former Antioch College trustee, hoped to be invited to represent the school board.

These people will join about 25 others from a variety of stakeholder groups, including college faculty, staff, students and alumni. The stakeholder groups will meet with the trustees for a four-hour afternoon session on Aug. 25 at a so-far undisclosed Cincinnati location; following a two-hour “town hall” style morning meeting that is open to the public. While the morning meeting is open, the afternoon meeting is closed to the press.

Two weeks ago Antioch University Board of Trustees President Art Zucker announced that the board would hold the special meeting to address concerns and questions that have arisen since the June 12 announcement that Antioch College would close in a year, due to financial exigency, and possibly reopen in four years. According to Zucker’s statement, the meeting’s purpose is to identify ways for the college’s stakeholders to work together and move ahead with the trustees’ plan to rebuild the college. University officials have stated that efforts to keep the college open, championed by faculty, the alumni board and many villagers, would not be on the meeting’s agenda.

While the News reported last week that LaPierre stated the stakeholders would be chosen by the groups they represent, she said this week that was a misunderstanding. Rather, she said, some stakeholders were chosen by their groups and others were invited as individuals by the university to attend.

All of the Yellow Springs representatives were invited as individuals rather than elected by a group. According to Antioch College Director of Public Relations Lynda Sirk, the criteria for choosing local stakeholders was that they “looked for representatives who crossed different segments of the community and brought different perspectives to the table.”

Altogether, the process for choosing stakeholders was “a complicated and multi-faceted process,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of strategic planning in my career and this is an appropriate process.”

Sirk said she was not able to identify a specific person responsible for choosing the local representatives because many people were involved. According to LaPierre, the overall plan was devised by the university management team, which includes University Chancellor Toni Murdock and university vice-chancellors. She said the group asked Swansen to identify appropriate local representatives, but Swansen stated he declined to do so.

Asking local groups to elect representatives would have been too cumbersome a process, Sirk said. She also stated that the group of villagers who have organized in support of the alumni efforts to save the college was not invited because that is not a recognized group and is only temporary.

The Antioch College faculty stakeholder representatives are Dean of Faculty Andrzej Bloch and Faculty Steering Committee Co-chairs Jill Becker and Pat Mische. The representatives were selected in conjunction with Bloch, according to a document on the selection process provided by LaPierre. Associate Professor Dennie Eagleson will attend the event as a photographer but not as a participant.

Antioch faculty feel that they should have chosen their own representatives, according to spokesperson Anne Bohlen, who said last week that not being given the option of doing so has deepened faculty’s feelings that they are considered inconsequential to the fate of the college.

According to the document provided by LaPierre, the president of the Antioch alumni association was invited to submit the names of 15 representatives, of which the first 10 were invited. To represent students, several former community managers were invited, and were asked to submit names of two current students.

The college union staff has devised its own selection process to choose a representative, and the non-union staff has done the same, according to the document. The president of Antioch University McGregor was asked to submit three names, of which one person was invited.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com