The Antioch College Comeback
Call it a comeback. After having its operations suspended for the past two academic years, Antioch College will begin admitting new students as soon as 2011, Inside Higher Ed reports.
Leaders of the failed college's alumni association and the Antioch University Board of Trustees announced on Tuesday a plan to make the college independent of the university that closed it. The deal gives the college ownership of its campus, its $19 million endowment, its name, its literary journal, and, most important, total autonomy from the university. In return, the university will receive $6 million from the college's alumni and other donors.
Antioch's departure and return have been as controversial as its history. Founded in 1852 by Horace Mann, the college played a part in the abolitionist movement and was one of the first institutions to admit students regardless of gender or race. In the 1900s, Antioch was one of the first colleges to promote co-op education, a system in which students alternate between learning in the classroom and learning through on-the-job work experience. The college's famous alumni include Clifford Geertz, Stephen Jay Gould, and Coretta Scott King.
Though the college's campus is designed to accommodate 2,700 students, it saw fewer and fewer students enroll in the years preceding its temporary closure. Many members of the Antioch College community also resented the college's association with Antioch University, an entity created to run branch campuses across the country that offered mostly graduate-level courses. When the university decided to suspend operations of the college, many members of the Antioch College community argued that the university was sacrificing the very foundation of the institution.
Since the announcement, many alumni have pledged to increase the size and frequency of their donations to the college.
Tags: colleges | Antioch College
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Antioch College and its philosophy
I attended Antioch 1976-79. The school was so unstructured that the only real accomplishments were found through the co-ops, and 2 of my 3 co-ops were fantastic, enriching experiences. Unfortunately, the on-campus experience was exactly the opposite. There were few course offerings, virtually zero extra-curricular activities, rampant drug use, epidemic apathy, and viral man-hating feminists. So many students could not handle the lack of structure, the repeated back-and-forth movement to the co-op locations, the easily available drugs, the almost complete isolation from the real world, and the fact that you regularly lost contact with friends, that the turn-over rate was tremendous. And even if you could handle all of the above you probably found many of the people you befriended were forever lost. I suffer no tears over Antioch’s closure. The school took a tremendous amount of my money and gave me only two 3 month co-ops in return. I still have foul memories of the feminists and their malicious propaganda of lies spread through the school radio and newspaper. I was sickened that so many people, student and faculty, were unwilling to stand up to the spread of obvious falsehoods fomented by the feminist whose only apparent agenda was to demonized males. The lack of moral backbone Antioch displayed during my time is the primary reason I left Antioch and why I will not contribute one cent to the perpetuation of the philosophy for which it stands. I fully support the philosophy of open ideas and frank discussion, but not an environment of suppression so as to allow a minority a louder voice than the numbers of its members are entitled.
My memories of Antioch
My bittersweet (I'm being very kind here) memories of Antioch College are worth mentioning to anyone who will listen. The academic challenges of the college and the potential learning experience were in a sense, outweighed by a school and a student body that offered little direction and even less moral guidance. It is true that a person from a structured and advantaged background could do well here; but Antioch's penchant for unstructured, radical and leftist type belief systems attracted a strange group of people with little emotional or intellectual honesty in my opinion and even less honor. This lack of honor seemed to be upheld by the administrative forces as well.
The movement towards a radical minority-driven campus is, in my opinion, a disingenuous move towards appealing to a disenfranchised element and holds little promise for intellectual achievement. Rather it seems another swing at the activist past--a past that was summarily rejected by main stream America from the beginning and a past that the institution cannot seem to distance itself from. Rather than move towards a market driven institution the radical forces of confusion are moving in a predicatably rejectable fashion towards politically driven, rhetorical, socialistic crap which students with any connections in mainstream America quickly distance themselves from and if not, wind up in the trash heap of social experiences. Antioch College needs to turn its vision around but then again even Wharton is proud of its transexual, lesbian and whatever combination except hetero you can dream of--representation. So maybe when your daughter comes back looking like a truck driver and your son comes back in a dress you will crow that he/she/it is on the cutting edge of social experiences. I still think you're just weird--in general.
Antioch University
I am a student of Antioch University, not the college. I think a lot of alumni of the college give the Antioch University students a bad name because of the relationship between the two groups directors. It should be noted however, that the universities' students do try to uphold the values established by the central campus. I believe it is in the best interest of both the college and the University to remain tied together. The satellite campuses could provide a kind-of domestic travel abroad opportunity to the college students, while the University students could gain a center for pride/History/respect. In any event cutting programs apart from one another does not solve the problems, only hurts diversity and opportunity for broader education. I believe a majority of the Antioch University student body favors reestablishing the central college, but we are likened to supporters of corruption or evil for our affiliation. The differences does not lie between the students or the education, but rather the administrations. It is time the student organization came together and and stood up for another, but this approach was never utilized, instead we just get hate mail from the Antioch College Alumni. Lets just face the music and see that we need each others' support, no one wants to go to a school with no heritage and likewise no one can go to school with busted out water mains and run down buildings. It would have been easy enough for Antioch college students to continue their education through Antioch university campuses while the school is undergoing its overhaul - but no ... just hate hate hate ... A hypocritical reaction from Antioch college students. Time for peace and cooperation.
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