Antioch College Open

ACCC independence effortgives new hope to college

By Diane Chiddister

On Monday, the executive committee of the recently formed Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC) came to Yellow Springs in order to listen, to build confidence in their efforts to save the college, and also to ask for patience for the hard tasks ahead. The group, composed of major donors, former trustees and alumni, presented their case to a packed room on campus of Antioch College faculty, staff, students and villagers.

“We’re very committed to making the best effort we can to ensure that the college will not only continue but will thrive,” said co-chair Frances Degen Horowitz, Antioch alumna and president emerita of the City College of New York Graduate Center.

Others present were co-chair Eric Bates, former university trustee and deputy managing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, secretary Laura Markham, former trustee and a psychologist from New York City and David Goodman, treasurer, a New Jersey entrepreneur and president of North Arrow LLC. Other ACCC members present were Steve Schwerner, retired Antioch College dean of students and Lee Morgan, CEO of The Antioch Company.

Last Tuesday, the Antioch University Board of Trustees announced that it was taking the first steps toward allowing total independence for Antioch College by charging Antioch University Chancellor Toni Murdock with investigating the feasibility of making such a move. The trustees’ statement said that the feasibility study must be completed by the trustees’ meeting Feb. 21; if the move is deemed doable, ownership of the college will be transferred to the recently-formed ACCC. The group has pledged $7 million to the college if independence is granted.

The ACCC has three other directors, who are Barbara Winslow, associate professor at Brooklyn College and former university trustee, Catherine Jordan, CEO of Achieve Minneapolis and member of the Antioch College Alumni Board of Directors and Terry Herndon, entrepreneur and businessman from Massachusetts.

On Monday the ACCC executive committee members emphasized that they traveled to Yellow Springs that day to show their commitment to being accessible and to transparency.

“We want to be open, transparent, here and inclusive,” Bates said. “And we want to raise buckets of money.”

The group emphasized that at this point they could not give specific answers to questions regarding new student recruitment or retention of faculty at Antioch if the college gains independence. Although the trustees and alumni board reached an agreement to keep the college open Nov. 2, university administrators soon stated they would not recruit new students and that faculty jobs were still on the line, steps that many felt undermined the college’s ability to survive.

The ACCC cannot now give specifics on these issues because at this point the group is focused on helping the college achieve independence, and because until independence is achieved, the university administrators and trustees are in charge. However, their hope is to maintain the college in its present state for the near term, and to simultaneously look at ways to renovate buildings and revitalize curriculum for the future, the board members said.

“We don’t envision major changes,” Frances Horowitz said. The ACCC is currently talking with accreditation agencies to determine when student recruitment can begin, according to Bates. Also, according to Horowitz, the group has spoken with consultants who work with turnaround efforts at faltering colleges, and those consultants agreed that, to ultimately thrive, the college must remain open rather than suspend operations for a period of time.

The group also emphasized that it is also focused on fundraising, because without significantly more money, the ACCC effort will not succeed. They hope to raise $25 million as soon as possible, according to Bates, with an ultimate goal of $100 million.

Faculty members present thanked the ACCC representatives for their efforts, and expressed confidence that they could work together.

“After six months on a roller coaster, we finally have a group of people we can trust,” said faculty member Hassan Rahmanian. “You gained our trust in a short time because of the way you communicated with us.”

The ACCC need to recognize the strengths of the current college, according to faculty member Jim Keen, who described some of those strengths as the current students, especially the freshmen who came this year even after the college announced its suspension.

“That small group is a wonderful cornerstone to build on,” he said. “It is potentially priceless.”

The ACCC should also recognize the value of the college’s current faculty, Keen said. “We’re the faculty who are highly committed to Antioch,” he said. “That’s why we’re here.”

According to several board members, the ACCC formed two weeks ago as a way to break the impasse between the trustees and major donors, who had balked at what they perceived as a lack of college autonomy in the Nov. 2 agreement. That agreement stipulated that the alumni board would meet several financial “benchmarks” to keep the college open; while the the alumni board barely met the initial $2 million benchmark in November, it was clear that it would not make the December $4.6 million one, due to major donor resistance to the college’s lack of autonomy, which had been the condition for making the pledges.

“It became clear that the major donors were not interested in continuing a dysfunctional governance structure that has been proven not to work,” Markham said.

Aware of the impasse, several weeks ago a group of former university trustees, including Bates, Markham and others, suggested to the trustees and donors two possible ways to overcome the problem. The first way was a revision to the Nov. 2 agreement which more clearly stipulated an autonomous role for the college advisory board, and the other way focused on complete independence for the college from the university.

The major donors, most of whom are business people, believed that complete independence was the only answer, according to Goodman, since an entity which has a board of trustees, such as Antioch University, cannot legally transfer its power to another board.

“Anyone who has ever worked with a corporation knows that a board of directors is the entity that has responsibility, period.” he said. “It’s against the law for the board to give it to another board.”

At a conference call between donors and trustees in Dallas two weeks ago, it became clear that Antioch University Board Chair Art Zucker and Trustee Dan Fallon, who heads the board’s governance committee, were becoming open to the option of complete independence for the college, according to Bates. At that time, the ACCC group began efforts to incorporate into a nonprofit entity in Ohio.

The past several weeks have taken place in a collaborative spirit, according to Bates.

“Our experience so far is that the trustees lived up to everything they said. It’s been an open process, trying to find common ground,” he said.

All in all, the formation of the ACCC is a creative, “out of the box” solution to a very complex problem that shows the best of Antioch College, according to Keen.

“It’s what we try to teach people at Antioch,” he said.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com