Antioch College Closing?

College votes no for Murdock,endorses self-governance

By Lauren Heaton

Last week more than half of the 350 students, faculty and staff members on the Antioch College campus passed a community referendum that included a vote of no confidence for Antioch University Chancellor Toni Murdock and an endorsement of establishing a self-governing college independent of the university.

The community-wide vote took place last Monday and Tuesday, following a similar vote of no confidence in Murdock by the faculty and union staff in September and a call from both faculty and staff for an independent college that same month. Several students said the vote, which followed a great deal of discussion and organizing on campus, gave the current campus a voice in the decision-making that is scheduled to take place this month at the meeting of the University Board of Trustees on Oct. 25.

“We hope these referendums put pressure on the board, that it pressures the minority to trust there are viable plans on the ground now for the college, and we cannot miss this opportunity,” fourth-year student Julian Sharp said last week.

Students also hoped the community action would give the campus a voice in a debate some feel they have been left out of, third-year student Erin-Aja Grant said.

“This is a chance for us to raise our voice because it has been so minimized, when we’re the ones who are being affected,” she said.

The referendum’s no-confidence vote cited Murdock with damaging the college by failing to involve the campus community, according to the college’s shared governance policies, in the decision in June to suspend operations at the college in 2008 and the decision in September to dismiss College President Steve Lawry.

The referendum also stated that the college should continue operations after 2008 and establish independence from a university system that has for many years damaged the college by removing the president’s authority to make budgetary decisions and report directly to the board of trustees, as well as mandating a curriculum renewal without consulting the campus community.

Further infuriating the college community were unproductive visits from both Murdock and Art Zucker, chair of the university board of trustees, to the college’s Administrative and Community Councils (AdCil and ComCil) to explain the events that lead to Lawry’s dismissal and his being replaced by a new leadership council. According to college professor Hassan Rahmanian, the responses were void of meaning and deeply unsatisfactory.

“Toni could have laid out the principles on which she based her decisions, but instead she exercised the Fifth Amendment, took the administrative privilege of silence and left us in the limbo of our imaginations,” Rahmanian said. “It all adds up and gives us a feeling that she has very little understanding of us and the value we place on the democratic process.”

These most recent votes of no confidence are not the first for Murdock, whose faculty when she was president of Antioch Seattle levied a no-confidence vote against her in 2000. One Seattle faculty member who did not wish to be named explained that Murdock listened to the faculty’s concern that her top-down administrative style was actually stymieing growth for the school’s programs, and she did manage to modify her policies. But the president who replaced Murdock has been a much better listener and by extension a better leader, according to the faculty member.

A request to speak to Murdock was referred to Vice-Chancellor Mary Lou LaPierre. Speaking for the university, LaPierre said that the college and university have the same goals, to create an academically vibrant and financially sustainable college, but the two groups disagree on how to get there. A new governance structure would help the college, she said, but the college still has enrollment and financial shortages due to increased competition and market changes that would still bog down a college with a minuscule $30 million endowment.

According to estimates from the Antioch College Alumni Association and the college’s institutional advancement office, $100 million in gifts could be raised if the college secured its independence from the university. The alumni have raised a little over $12 million in gifts and pledges since June. But LaPierre was doubtful of the college’s ability to attract much more.

“Why haven’t the alumni said in greater numbers ‘We’ll pledge $50 million if you’re independent’?” she asked on Tuesday. “With all the press they’ve gotten, why have the donors not stepped up? The power is in their hands.”

But the college has been so weakened by the budget cuts imposed each year by the university over the past decade, according to 2005 Antioch College graduate Rowan Kiser, that the fundraising office has had a lot of catching up to do. And the budget cuts were necessary to pay for facility maintenance costs that had been deferred during the years that the board of trustees were not adequately intimate with the college to be effective fundraisers and grow the endowment, he said. The system slowly crippled the college.

“The university’s 2001-02 financial consolidation and stabilization plan, a $1.5 million annual depreciation to build the structural repairs into the budget, delivered the knockout blow to the college budget,” he said. “Once a year the university CFO would come across the street and demand those cuts, which sent us on a brutal spiral downward.”

In response to the vote of no confidence, LaPierre stated that Murdock successfully administered her post in Seattle for several years following the no-confidence vote, and that as chancellor she has brought to the university system a realistic appraisal of the financial system which was lacking before her arrival.

The university board of trustees will consider a business plan for a self-governed and continuously operating college to be presented by the college alumni board at the trustees’ Oct. 25 meeting. The trustees will also consider a recommendation from the governance committee chaired by BOT vice-chairman Dan Fallon on how to improve the university’s governance system with respect to the college and also Antioch University McGregor.

College supporters hope the most recent resolution will help convince the board not to delay its vote for an independent college, because in order to be successful next year, the campus community needs to start planning now.

“This is a useful way for a campus that has been ignored to say this is our voice, we have strength and opinion — negotiate with us,” Kiser said. “This is a great way to show the college is still a politically and intellectually vibrant place that’s worth keeping open.”

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com