Antioch University plans to close Coretta Scott King
Center
By Lauren Heaton
Disappointment and hopefulness are the two conflicting
feelings Dana Patterson, director of Antioch College’s Coretta
Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom, has been carrying
with her this year. Antioch University informed her this month that
if the college closes this June, the center, which formally opened just
one year ago, would close too. But Patterson refuses to let the university
walk away without realizing the unique gift it has in the center, and
she holds fast to the hope that with or without her, the CSK Center
can continue its work toward increasing tolerance and diversity in the
community.
“Knowing that the center might not be open beyond June, I’m
feeling a personal disappointment because I made a commitment to this
legacy and work,” Patterson said last week. “And I want
the university to consider the value of what’s being lost.
Neither university Chancellor Toni Murdock nor university CFO Tom Faecke
returned calls early last week regarding the status of the CSK Center.
And on Friday, April 11, university leaders and the Antioch College
Continuation Corporation agreed not to speak to the press until they
had met directly regarding the transfer of ownership of the college.
But according to Patterson, she proposed to the university last month
a plan to continue operations at the CSK Center after June 2008 with
an annual budget of $350,000. The proposal included full-time positions
for a director and a fundraiser, as well as a part-time employee and
$20,000 for programming needs. And it could have allowed the center
to retain its $50,000 grant from Delta Airlines and two fully-funded
VISTA employees, if the programs could be applied to Antioch University
McGregor and the university’s other satellite campuses, Patterson
said. But the proposal was denied by the university this month, according
to Patterson.
So she plans to submit another proposal, one which Murdock has agreed
to consider, Patterson said.
This one includes a greatly reduced budget of $150,000 with just one
part-time director and a part-time finance director, as fundraising
will be key to maintaining the center’s programming, Patterson
said. And she also has initiated revenue-producing fundraisers related
to the arts that with approval from the university, could get started
immediately.
“While the college renovated, we would respond to the needs of
the other campuses and facilitate their finding a curriculum at the
intersection of those three goals, curriculum, classroom and community,”
she said. “If the center would remain, it has the resources it
needs to be one of the flagships of the Antioch system because of its
unique curriculum design.”
When college alumna Coretta Scott King gifted her name to the center
in 2005, the year before she died, it was with the understanding that
the center was to be used as an experiential teaching center for Antioch
students, faculty, staff and the surrounding community on issues of
race, class, gender, and social justice and diversity. According to
the agreement between then Interim College President Rick Jurasek and
the King Center’s agent Intellectual Properties Management, Inc.,
the center was also conceptualized as part of the Antioch College Renewal
Plan curriculum, which the faculty was mandated by the university board
of trustees in 2003 to implement to increase enrollment at the college.
The contract is specific about the use of the King name.
“The college will use the name for the life of the center as permitted
by Intellectual Properties Management, Inc. — no other use of
the name may occur without express permission of IPM,” the document
states.
The King Center’s intention gets more specific in 2006 when IPM’s
managing director, Eric Tidwell, denied the college’s request
to rename a new building after Coretta Scott King. “The agreement
only allows for the renaming of a curriculum after Coretta Scott King...,”
the letter states. It goes on to say that efforts to refurbish a building,
name it after Coretta Scott King and later replace it with a new structure
“are counter to the intent of the agreement.”
But Patterson, who has been in contact with Coretta Scott King’s
sister and daughter, said that the family is also disappointed in the
center’s potential closure. Patterson feels that the center could
continue as long as its leaders ensure that its mission aligns with
what the family would have wanted.
The CSK Center has a board of advisors made up of both college and village
community members, who were and are committed to garnering support for
the center. Through her connection with the center, advisory member
Joan Horn befriended Coretta’s sister, Edythe Bagley.
“Both of us simply can’t believe there isn’t going
to be some magic that will save it,” Horn said. “Dana has
worked her heart out, and it’s a crime and a shame and all of
that, that it should be thrown away.”
Dr. Leah Fitchue, president of Payne Theological Seminary, has partnered
with the center and lauded it as “a place where young people can
study current issues of race, liberation and peace while giving hope
to this nation that we have a responsibility to be better to each other.”
When Patterson agreed to direct the center, she left her husband and
four young children behind in Chicago and has been visiting them two
weekends a month for the past year to bring to life the vision that
was established by others before her for a social justice education
center that went beyond the classroom.
The CSK Center was conceptualized in 2005 with the help and leadership
of Antioch College faculty member Beverly Rodgers, staff member Ona
Harshaw, and later College President Steven Lawry. The Bonner Foundation
furnished scholarships for two Antioch College students each year, and
Delta Airlines committed to providing $10,000 a year in scholarships
over five years while providing travel expenses for visiting lecturers
and performers.
The CSK Center has had a dynamic presence since its grand opening ceremony
in March 2007, which featured a day-long program of speakers and workshops
on “strength in community,” poetry readings, musical performances
and art exhibits by college and Yellow Springs community members and
local youth. The center’s first program was a Native American
symposium focused on the issues and activism of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma,
which occurred prior to the grand opening.
Last spring the center hosted “Eyes Wide Open,” an art installation
of boots portraying the human cost of the Iraq war, followed by the
annual Midwest Hip-Hop Convergence, a symposium on the history and impact
of hip hop culture. In February the center partnered with local African
American churches and the Human Relations Commission to sponsor a Martin
Luther King Day celebration with the Watoto Children’s Choir of
Uganda.
Even in the midst of possible closure in June, the center had already
planned for this spring a two-day celebration of King’s birthday
in partnership with the Dayton Peace Museum, another Hip-Hop Convergence,
a non-violence workshop and one more look at “Eyes Wide Open”
to be displayed on Mills Lawn at the June Street Fair.
Patterson no longer believes she can sacrifice her family life for her
dream job, as she has for the past year. But she fervently hopes that
a discussion with University Chancellor Toni Murdock and a more modest
proposal for the immediate future of the center will yield a solution
that will allow the center to continue its mission.
“The center was a testimony that Coretta was here and that Antioch
was part of helping her grow and begin her life’s work,”
Patterson said. “The center was a gift she gave to the college,
and this legacy is too important to be forgotten.”
Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com
