Sorry to hear about this closing. My uncle almost taught at Antioch and I applied to their Seattle division when I decided to go back to grad school. It was one of the more unique colleges in the country.
Night falls on Ohio's historic Antioch College
By P.J. Huffstutter
Los Angeles Times
YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio — It was perhaps the last great protest at Antioch College.
The call to arms came last week, when Antioch College's board of trustees said the school — representative of the '60s counterculture and the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements — had run out of money and would close in July 2008.
The news came as a shock to students, local residents and alumni, who descended upon the village Friday with one goal: to fight "them" and save their alma mater.
The shutting down of Antioch College is seen as more than the end of a university; it is another sign of the passing of an era when the search for knowledge brought greater rewards than a degree, a job and a comfortable place in suburban society.
So the Antioch faithful came by the hundreds, from across town and throughout the nation. Some wore anti-Vietnam War T-shirts, others crisp linen suits. But all shared a connection to the liberal-arts institution founded in the heat of the abolitionist era, in a place that was one of the final stops in the Underground Railroad.
"It breaks my heart," said Ralph Keyes, 62, who met his wife at Antioch on their first day of school in 1962. "It wasn't just a college. It was a cause."
Some prominent Antioch College alumni include:
Leland C. Clark Jr.: Chemist, built the first practical heart-lung machine.
John Flansburgh: Guitarist and songwriter for the musical group They Might Be Giants.
Stephen Jay Gould: Paleontologist and author.
John Hammond: Blues guitarist.
Coretta Scott King: Activist and wife of civil-rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Horace Mann: Abolitionist and the first president of Antioch.
Sylvia Nasar: Journalist, economist and author of "A Beautiful Mind."
Leonard Nimoy: Actor.
Eleanor Holmes Norton: Congresswoman.
Cliff Robertson: Actor.
Louis Sachar: Author of Newbery Medal-winning children's novel "Holes."
Mark Strand: Former U.S. poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry.
Rod Serling: "Twilight Zone" creator.
On Friday morning, trustees and college administrators tried to explain what went wrong to an auditorium packed with more than 600 people, many of whom hissed and jeered as college President Steven Lawry outlined the problems and how the school came to rely almost completely on student tuition to cover operating costs.
Ever since a student-driven strike divided the campus in the 1970s, at one point closing the school for six weeks, enrollment has steadily declined from its peak of more than 2,000.
Now, a few hundred undergraduates are willing to pay $35,400 a year for tuition, room and board to attend this laboratory for American liberal education, where verbal assessment — not grades — is a measure of academic performance.
The school's current endowment of $35 million is also lackluster. Denison University in Granville, Ohio, lists its endowment as $545 million; the endowment at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., is $279 million.
While there is a long list of famous alumni, the school became known for educating artists, activists and nonprofit organizers instead of wealthy business leaders.
It's not enough. The school will finish the 2007-08 academic year, officials said, and close.
Closing "was the only answer we could find," said Arthur Zucker, chairman of the Antioch University board of trustees.
Antioch University is the larger organization that, among other things, encompasses the undergraduate college and five satellite campuses, including one in Seattle. Only the college is closing; the satellite campuses are scheduled to remain open.
"Some trustees have taken out mortgages on their homes to keep the college going in the past," Zucker said. "This wasn't a matter of a couple million dollars. This was a matter of needing $30 million to $50 million to save the school."
Such explanations, however, were met with derision.
Time and again, the crowd members expressed how they were shocked that Antioch, whose mantra has long been to rally support for making the world a better place, did not rally to save itself.
Some spoke about their willingness to help close the financial gap and how their efforts to help had been fruitless.
"Why is it when you call the alumni office, no one answers the phone? The phones roll you to an answering system that's not configured correctly" to allow callers to leave a message, said Michael-David BenDor, 62, a 1967 graduate who lives in Ypsilanti, Mich. "How are we supposed to give money if the phones don't even work?"
Many firsts
The Antioch College of today is a shadow of the institution that took risks that many others did not dare.
Founded in 1852, it was one of the nation's first co-educational colleges. It was the first to name a woman as a full professor. And, while slavery was legal less than 100 miles south, it was one of the first to eliminate race as an admission requirement.
By the 1960s, the school and Yellow Springs had evolved into a haven for radical thinkers and social reformists, surrounded by the cornfields of conservative southwestern Ohio.
But today, the exteriors of many of the school's structures, including the main building that housed Friday's meeting, have chunks of brick missing. The bricks have crumbled after years of harsh weather and neglect.
Some sewage pipes need repair. Several buildings don't have running hot water. Lawns in front of the residence halls, once lushly green and neatly mown, have become fields of dirt and dead wildflowers.
Last academic year, nearly 400 undergraduate students were enrolled.
When students who were accepted for admission but chose to attend other schools were asked why, Lawry said, the top reason was the shabby condition of the school's facilities.
Having a tiny staff doesn't help. Finances have kept the school's classroom faculty to 40 and there is only one professor per subject matter; one person charged with teaching history, one for instructing literature, one for lecturing on psychology.
And Antioch faces fierce competition, administrators say, as other colleges have adopted the same educational approach — such as cooperative learning and pass-fail coursework — that once made Antioch unique.
Painful blow
Antioch's golden age endures in Yellow Springs, a village of 3,600 about 19 miles northeast of Dayton.
The closure will be a painful blow. Many residents attended the college, and the university is the town's largest employer. Its taxes make up 40 percent of Yellow Springs' general fund, said Village Manager Eric Swanson.
"Everyone knew that the school was in trouble, so this didn't come as a huge surprise. But when it closes, that's going to mean about 130 jobs lost here. And that's a lot for a village our size to lose."
School officials are hoping to retrench and raise enough money to reopen the campus in 2012. It's not an impossible dream: The board has closed and reopened the school three times in the past, mostly due to financial issues.
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