Save Antioch now on Youtube

Care about what happens to Antioch? Then make a video about it, upload it to Youtube, and label it "save antioch." Check out these videos Antiochians have already made. Share them, vote on them, save them, starting with these two:

Antiochians keep fighting back

The Washington Post published Megan Rosenfeld's ('69) reply to George Will's blistering attack on Antioch:

We need people who do not accept the status quo. "Antioch taught me to speak up for myself," one graduate said at a recent meeting of shocked alums in Washington. We need people who have learned -- in addition to history and science -- to question authority.

When my husband was at Yale, the unofficial motto was, "We go to school to learn to rule." Maybe that's one reason they have a $20 billion endowment. Our motto is, "Be ashamed to die before you have won some victory for humanity." Maybe that's why we don't.

(The motto of Trinity College, George Will's alma mater, is, "Pro Ecclesia et Patria" -- for church and country. Not quite as inclusive as "humanity," but I'm not criticizing.)

Our small campus in Ohio has always been a target for anyone with an anti-progressive bent. When I was there in the late '60s, the tiny Ohio chapter of the Ku Klux Klan regularly marched down the main street of campus, apparently under the assumption that if Antioch vanished, the Klan's racism could flourish. Some of us set up lemonade stands and watched the marchers from the sidelines.

The sexual-conduct pledge of the early '90s came in for a lot of derision -- but from what I've read and heard, date rape is not a problem at Antioch as it is on other campuses. All colleges today are petri dishes of social issues...

Antioch has produced a suitable number of MacArthur "genius" award winners, doctors and lawyers, if that's how you measure success. The proportion of Antiochians going on to get PhDs is one of the highest in the nation. We are proud to have never had a football team or a fraternity. To the best of my knowledge, "beer pong" was not invented on our campus...


If George Will hates us, we must be doing something right.

And Dan Gediman ('82), producer of NPR's popular "This I Believe,"  had this in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Speaking of those notorious moments from Antioch's past, I remain unembarrassed and unapologetic about the way the school and its students have addressed the key issues of the past two centuries. They may have sometimes expressed themselves in a messy fashion, but they have been on the right side of history in every major case that I am aware of.

From its very founding in 1852, Antioch admitted both women and people of color, something nearly unheard of in antebellum America. It was the first college in the country to hire a female professor. Antioch was an early and fervent advocate for abolitionism, women's suffrage and civil rights. It supported free-thinkers of every stripe, and when McCarthyism hit this country, Antioch was one of the few schools to support faculty who held politically progressive views.

Agreed, Antioch's students were sometimes overly strident -- even self-destructive -- in their politics, but at least they were deeply engaged in matters of substance, and I for one am glad to have come of age as a citizen surrounded by others who were not a bit cynical about America's ideals of fairness and freedom for all.

Ding dong, Antioch is not dead

News stories about Antioch's closure next year have already decided the college is dead. But not even the Antioch administration ever said they plannned to permanently close the school. Antioch has been to the brink of closure and beyond, then come back, more than once.

Antioch can make a comeback and turn this story around. To start, the Chicago Tribune posted this response by Antiochian Ed Koziarski to reporter Julia Keller's story, which was one of many prematurely ringing funeral bells for the school. As Ed writes:

The alumni reunion weekend was not a wake for a dying institution.Beyond the contentious Friday meeting that anchors the article, there was a much more inspiring story.

The alumni of Antioch College, along with faculty and community residents, are doing everything in our power to assure that the college remains open well beyond the 2008 "suspension" date announced earlier this month by the administration of Antioch University. We will not let Antioch die.

The college is small, and its financial crisis is real. But it holds a vital place in American higher education as a training ground for free thinkers and innovators in art, science, media, social service and other disciplines, as well as the activism for which it is widely known.

There are thousands of students who seek the kind of education that Antioch provides, rooted in independent thought, imagination, pragmatism, compassion and a willingness to challenge the status quo.

The problem is that the present university and college administration have lacked the confidence in these values that they need in order to successfully promote the college to prospective students, donors and the media. The announced closure is a wake-up call to revitalize Antioch and make it financially self-sustaining once again.

The Columbus Dispatch has this:

Perhaps that is why all of the fuss about plans to close the college is a puzzle for some.

Those who do not call themselves Antiochians may not realize the irony of the announcement. This private, liberal-arts college teaches that activism is more than a buzzword, that contributing to society is a mission, that participatory democracy is life's requirement.

And now, with word that the campus founded by the Christian Church in 1852 will close next year, the people who learned social justice at the hip of Antioch leaders find themselves pushing against the establishment that nurtured them.

The alumni are meeting in bars, libraries and living rooms across the country. They want to keep the college open, protect its assets and establish a local board of trustees to take control away from the larger system of Antioch University. They have raised a half-million dollars in three weeks. They promise to fight to save their school.