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EDITORIAL
Our view: Secrecy wasn't going to save Antioch College
Another view: Maybe time has come to give up on Antioch, a once worthy institution
Sunday, July 01, 2007
One of the more remarkable statements made in the wake of the announcement of Antioch College's closing was by President Steven Lawry.
He said the reason he didn't tell anybody on campus that the decision was coming was that he didn't know.
Extras
The fact that no public warning was given has added to the anger of students, faculty, alumni and the community. It is hard to understand.
Sure, everybody knew that things were going badly.
But interested people reasonably expect that explicit warnings will be issued, so that, for example, an emergency fund-raising campaign might be launched, or that other rescue plans can be entertained.
Try to imagine similar problems at a public university or college. So much more would have been known, as the result of public filings of financial information and public trustee meetings. There would have been much more communication and "process."
For Antioch — so associated with insistence on power for the people — to be accused of being closed off and secretive is an irony that has been much and appropriately noted.
In the wake of the news-making announcement, a lot of criticisms are being made about the way the university is structured and run. Some resonate.
The final authority is a board that runs a far-flung university system but meets only a few times a year for a few days. Antioch College itself has no board, and the college president doesn't report directly to the university board, but to a chancellor.
So there are lots of factors fostering separation between the board and the college.
On top of all that, and because things have been going poorly, there's been an awful lot of turnover. That, in turn, causes a lot of problems, sometimes leaving people feeling they can't even get a good explanation for why a policy exists.
And there is conflicting information. These days, for example, one gets different information about enrollment trends, depending upon whom one talks to.
A couple of years ago, the board instituted a change in the academic structure of the college that was designed to increase enrollment but was followed by a sudden enrollment drop.
(The change eliminated traditional academic departments in a fairly radical approach to interdisciplinary education.)
There's dispute about how much input the faculty had in this decision, and about whether the reform was simply enacted too fast.
What's clear is that the board has ultimate responsibility. One might — in other circumstances — have expected heads to roll.
They didn't, although some trustees have now offered to leave, in the wake of the latest news.
The anger of faculty members and alumni about the closing might be shrugged off as typical Antioch stuff, the acting out of self-styled rebels. In fact, though, people have questions and complaints that would arise even if the Antiochians were a bunch of Republicans.
The world beyond Antioch likes to talk about other factors that allegedly brought about its demise. Extreme politics; extreme political correctness. Fine.
That discussion needs to be had within the Antioch community. Did a determination to question authority devolve into a prohibition against questioning the dissidents? A lot of knowledgeable people think so, and think that the culture impacted the school's attractiveness to students and faculty.
Meanwhile, though, some nuts-and-bolts issues need to be confronted, too. There are good ways and bad ways to structure and administer colleges. Antioch University has not done well by Antioch College.
