Antioch College Closing?

No decision yet from trustees on future of Antioch College

By Diane Chiddister

At the end of more than two days of tough negotiations with leaders of the Antioch College Alumni Board, the Antioch University Board of Trustees left town Saturday without making a decision on the future of the college. However, the trustees and alumni board leaders are continuing their conversation this week in hopes of reaching an agreement.

“It was our hope that the Board of Trustees and the Alumni Board would successfully resolve these issues,” Antioch Board of Trustees Chair Art Zucker said to a downcast gathering at the Bryan Center Saturday afternoon. “However, we are dealing with very complex, long-standing matters of critical importance and we simply need more time to deliberate. We are negotiating collaboratively and we are optimistic of a positive resolution in as rapid a manner as possible, but there was not enough time to resolve the issues by the conclusion of this board meeting.”

The trustees and alumni board resumed their deliberations in an hour and a half conference call late Tuesday afternoon, but that call did not result in an agreement. However, “progress is being made,” according to someone involved in the conversation. The parties have scheduled another conference call for Friday.

The Saturday afternoon meeting dashed the hopes of many Antioch alumni, students and villagers who had hoped, after the trustees and alumni met for two long days in negotiations, that the suspension on their beloved college might actually be lifted that day.

On Monday morning, Antioch University Trustee Paula Treichler said she believes the trustees will soon decide to keep the college open.

“I think the various parties got closer over the past three days than ever before,” she said. “But there were a number of issues that we didn’t have time to work through.”

These issues are significant and complicated, Treichler said, because many constituencies with long histories are involved.

“I’m pretty encouraged,” Treichler said Monday. “I think everyone wants this to succeed. But there are various interpretations about what that means.”

Jordan, who had returned home to Minneapolis on Monday after spending three days in Yellow Springs, said that she felt “there is reason to be hopeful.”

“This is a very complicated situation,” she said. “I can assure everyone that there have been no stalling techniques. It’s been hard, detailed negotiations.”

$18 million gets a cheer
The trustees meeting started out on a high note Thursday afternoon after hundreds of villagers, Antioch College faculty, staff and alumni met at the Bryan Center. Just as the meeting was about to begin, a mass of Antioch students came marching inside, having commandeered Xenia Avenue with an impromptu parade during which they waved yellow signs and shouted, “Antioch, non-stop,” Upon entering the Bryan gym, the students sat quietly and expectantly, still holding their signs.

The meeting’s emotional high point came early on, when alumni board leaders Rick Daily and Matt Derr announced that the alumni group — told last month by university officials that they needed to raise $6.5 million in this fiscal year to keep the college open — announced that they had raised $18 million in gifts and pledges, of which $10.2 million would be available this fiscal year. That news brought the alumni a standing ovation.

In the 125 days since the alumni board took on the effort to save the college — following the trustees’ June 12 announcement that they would shut it down next year due to a financial crisis — the alums raised an average of $144,000 a day, according to Derr, a professional fundraiser from Massachusetts who planned the fundraising effort.

About 1,000 donors contributed to the $18 million, Derr said, and about half of those donors did not give to the college a year ago. Many who offered pledges to the college did so at considerable personal cost, Derr said.

“It has been a distinct pleasure to sit in restaurants and living rooms and talk to people who are willing to meet the crisis at this time,” he said.

However, the donations require that Antioch College must not close and that the trustees must lift the suspension they imposed on June 12, according to Daily, an attorney from Denver.

“If it reopens, the college will not reopen as anything recognizable as this college,” Daily said. “The survival of the college is predicated on a core faculty and staff who can run the college, and they are already here. We don’t have the ability to reengage, retrain this human capital once it’s lost.”

The trustees must lift the suspension now, Daily said, or the college loses the ability to recruit students for next year.

The donations are also dependent on the college having an independent board of trustees and no longer being governed by the university trustees.

“It was resounding. It was clear. We must have a change of governance,” Daily said of his contacts with donors, and the preferences they stated.

The alumni fundraising goals are ambitious, Derr said, and include launching a five-year $100 million development campaign. While many people have suggested that he might contact Oprah or Phil Donahue for donations, those celebrities are all busy, he said.

“We have to do this. There is no silver bullet,” Derr said. “We as alumni have to step forward.”

All they need
That the $100 million goal is doable has been confirmed by private studies of Antioch alumni, along with the size (17,000) of the alumni population and the “enormous potential for transformational giving,” Derr said.

One trait of successful fundraising campaigns is a sense of urgency which, Derr said, “we have in abundance.”

Shutting the college down, or “going dark,” would come with significant costs, Daily said, including the loss of human capital, the cost of shutting down facilities and then restarting them in the future, and the loss of alumni support. In contrast, keeping the college open now at a reduced level, or “going dim,” offers the benefits or retaining alumni support, retaining human capital, keeping the facilities open, and taking advantage of the alumni fundraising, he said.

The alumni who studied Antioch College curriculum concluded that they need to build on the college’s traditional strengths, according to Jordan, and those traditional strengths are the college’s academic excellence, the co-op program and sense of community as expressed through shared governance.

“These three pillars of Antioch education are vital today,” she said.

The curriculum committee recommends that the college focus on current areas of strength, which include theater, filmmaking, and the performing and visual arts, along with a curriculum focused on sustainable energy practices.

The proposed curriculum “utilizes the strengths of the faculty and has the support of the faculty,” she said, adding that current recruiting materials could be used to reach out to prospective students.

“We have the financial support, we have a faculty eager and ready, we have a plan that stands up to reality, a plan that we have today,” she said to the trustees. “We think you have all you need.”

Following the alumni presentation, financial consultant Tracy Filosa presented a detailed analysis of the alumni proposed business plan, which showed a modest growth in enrollment while the college rebounds from the negative publicity associated with the announcement of its closing. During that time, robust fundraising would give college admissions officers time to do their job and attract the numbers they need for a slowly but steadily growing enrollment, according to Filosa.

Other parts of the business plan include the alumni group assuming all current college debts, including monies owed to other Antioch University campuses, Filosa said, as long as those correspond to “generally accepted accounting practices.”

For details on the business plan, go online to www.antiochians.org

Hope floats
On Thursday at 6 p.m., an overflow crowd of Antioch alumni, students, faculty and community members converged on the Antioch Cafeteria to show their support for the alumni board efforts.

On Friday, the alumni and trustees met in private negotiations all day, while alumni, students and faculty waited patiently, and sometimes not so patiently, for the long meetings that seemed to bode well for the alumni plan.

But no one wanted the potential heartbreak of putting their hopes too soon into a reconciliation between the alumni and the trustees.

“We are somewhat on tenderhooks here,” said alumni board member Christian Feuerstein. “We have put so much work and effort into this plan.”

For Antioch faculty member Hassan Rahmanian, the waiting was like “holding down a volcano,” he said while speaking with alumni on campus Friday. Until he found out the actual meeting results, he felt disoriented trying to read meaning into every facial expression or small event.

“Hour by hour it changes,” he said. “There are so many signals I can’t process them in a meaningful way.”

A decision seems near
On Saturday morning, trustees and alumni leaders again sequestered themselves in talks. College supporters’ hopes began growing, and around noon in the alumni gathering space on the second floor at Weston Hall, the mood was positively jubilant. Someone had just called to say that an agreement between the trustees and alumni board was imminent, with only details to be worked out. Looking a little dazed, the alums helped themselves to the turkey and cheese sandwiches and broccoli casserole, and started, gingerly, to feel like winners.

“This alumni board and its leadership is the most amazing collection of people,” said alum Allen Spalt of Carrboro, N.C., who said he always believed that the alumni plan would prevail. Spalt was one of about 75 alumni who came for the weekend to support the alumni board.

For alumni board member John Dawson of New Hampshire, the son of former Antioch College leader J.D. Dawson, the road to this day began, in June, in despair and gradually became more hopeful as the alumni pursued their plan.

“I’m still amazed,” he said, shaking his head. “I find it exciting to take part in what seems to be a radical change in how this college operates.”

Among those waiting was a man who had traveled halfway around the world to be there. Mitja Mersol, a journalist from Slovenia, had attended Antioch for a year when he was a young man, he said in an interview. Coming from a Communist country, he was bowled over by the caring, freedom of expression and close relationships between students and faculty that he found at Antioch, and the experience transformed his life.

“I retained these values as the real American values,” he said.

But the jubilation on Saturday was shortlived. At about 2 p.m. several alumni board negotiators, looking tense, arrived at the second floor meeting room, saying they needed to meet in private. According to several sources later, the negotiations reached a standstill in early afternoon when university administrators and trustees felt that Daily had revealed confidential negotiating information that soon appeared on an alumni Web site. Daily chose to remove himself from the negotiations at that point.

An hour later Antioch Associate Director of Alumni Relations Amy Maruyama announced that the trustees’ meeting had ended without an agreement and that an announcement would be made soon back at Bryan Center.

Keep on keeping on
Even though the Bryan Center meeting was called at the last moment, within a short time a crowd of villagers, students, faculty and alumni had assembled outside, waiting to be let in by the Yellow Springs police. Inside, five local police officers stood inside the gym as people filed in.

Zucker and Antioch Alumni Board President Nancy Crow stood on the stage as Zucker announced that no decision had been made.

Crow, in a prepared statement, called the deliberations “incredibly positive, which portends a good future. We have worked together in an unprecedented manner, and I am hopeful we can continue on this very positive path. I am optimistic, as is our board.”

In response to a question from Antioch Community Manager Rory Adams-Cheatham about how Zucker, personally, would support those who have given so much in the fight for the college and who now had to help students deal with their disappointment, Zucker said, “This is not a fight. We are all dedicated to saving Antioch College.”

Though many others raised their hands to speak, Zucker stated after three questions that the meeting was over.

After the announcement, students, faculty, villagers, staff, alumni and two trustees — Treichler and Janet Morgan — converged on McGregor 113 to process their hopes and disappointments on the negotiations.

Some spoke of their frustration at the Bryan Center meeting.

“I’m offended that we had to be in a room with armed security,” said Antioch College faculty member Beverly Rodgers. “I resent it greatly. We have not done anything as a community to deserve that kind of -treatment.”

In an interview Monday, Antioch University spokesperson Mary Lou LaPierre said the university had requested the police presence and that doing so seemed a prudent measure.

“You put any 300 people in a room and announce a decision, and you don’t know what they will do,” she said.

LaPierre also said that university officials have received “serious personal threats” from “people on the edge” and that those threats added to the concern.

On Saturday Antioch faculty member Jim Keen spoke to the assembled group in McGregor 113 about “how proud I have been of how our community has held itself during this time. It’s the proudest I’ve been in my 13 years with the college.”

The trustees were being asked to do something very difficult, Keen said, by changing a decision they had already made.

“I’m asking that we hold on a little bit longer,” he said. “We need to hold on and let this process conclude.”

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com