April 3, 2008

Editorial

Trustees, only you can save Antioch

Now that negotiations between Antioch University and the Antioch College Continuation Corporation have come to a halt and the veil of confidentiality has lifted, it’s clear that the university negotiating team did its best to undermine the negotiating process.

Had the negotiating team, led by Chancellor Toni Murdock, wanted an agreement with the ACCC, it would not have started out asking the outrageous price of $54 million for the college, then stalling almost a month before lowering that price while every passing day was critical to the college’s ability to stay open. Had the university negotiators wanted the college to live, they would not have included the demand that the college pay the university $22 million for the college’s own $22 million endowment.

What’s clear is that the university negotiators showed no interest in reaching an agreement that would benefit both the college and the university. Bottom line, they wanted cash. And now it’s reasonable to assume that should the college close, the university leaders will sell off its assets to the highest bidder.

None of this had to happen. Ever since the June announcement that the college would close, alumni rallied to help, giving countless hours of volunteer time and raising more than $19 million to save a school that clearly inspires uncommon devotion. Its loss would be a tragedy for not only alumni, faculty and students, but for our town and for the country.

If there’s any hope left for a positive outcome for the college, it lies with a face-to-face meeting between the entire board of trustees and the ACCC, as recommended this week by the Antioch College alumni board. Astonishingly, this meeting has not yet happened. All ACCC communications to the board have been filtered through the negotiating team, and it’s clear the board received only limited and sometimes misleading information.

The Antioch University Board of Trustees must step up now to its responsibility to care not only for the university, but for the college as well. Its members must immediately take the fate of the college away from the negotiating team and place it into their own hands. Only then might Antioch College survive.

—Diane Chiddister