Who will save Antioch University?

The college faculty, with their lawsuit, and the Alumni Board, with their proposal, have taken courageous steps to save Antioch College in Yellow Springs.

While the Board of Trustees has agreed to share some financial information, it may be limited and the BOT may insist that the Alumni Board keep this information confidential.

The Alumni Board should accept nothing less than full and public financial disclosure and an independent audit. Otherwise, they will be forced into accepting the Board of Trustees version of Antioch’s finances.

But neither the faculty lawsuit nor the Alumni Board proposal will have any effect on the branch campuses. After all, it is their business model that has forced the closing of the college.

If the branch campuses are allowed to remain without tenure and with large numbers of cheap, fearful, exploited adjuncts, they will continue to contradict the social justice values of the college, and thereby continue to undermine the existence of the college itself.

It’s heartening to see the valiant attempts to save the college.

But who will rescue Antioch University from its current Board of Trustees?

Richard, at 11:20 am EDT on September 4, 2007

wagging the dog

The Antioch University Board of Trustees provides a convenient target for critics of the disaster unfolding in Yellow Springs. So, how many members of the BOT actually live in the Yellow Springs area? The answer: zero. The BOT is getting their info from their “employees,” the Antioch University administration. Who allegedly changed the locks the other day at Antioch College? Surely, those were not Trustees who executed that order? Perhaps, they signed off on it? The BOT has been getting bad info from their employees, the administrators of Antioch University. Who are these people? Toni Murdock is the one who gets the press. Who is advising Murdock? That’s the question. Who has been in key positions at Antioch University over the past dozen years as the Antioch College “land grab” has been planned and executed? As journalists dig into this steaming pile of storyline they need to question everything they see and hear. The bottom line is money. Who handles the money? Accountants do. It’s time to start looking at the CFO’s who have been keeping the books over there. Is there a person who has consistently been involved over the past dozen years? Did this individual supposedly retire in December of 2004? Did this person actually vacate the premises? Is this person still there, with a different title now? Antioch University shrouds itself behind a curtain that obscures the truth. Pull back that curtain. Let’s see who is really standing there. It won’t be a member of the BOT.

Anthony Mordor, at 10:50 am EDT on September 5, 2007

Antioch College Hijacking

As the weeks have gone by, and certainly with the new lockout of the College President, Antiochians and others concerned have finally recognized the scope of the hijacking of that venerable institution. Chancellor Murdock has finally exposed herself as a dirty street fighter out of the school of Rove and Cheney. She may not as ignorant and delusional as Gonzales or George Bush, but her imperious character is certainly reminiscent of that man who is convinced he is king.

She is clearly a hard ball player and it is time for those concerned to play hard ball too. Those of us who fought the hijacking just a few years ago of the Pacifica Radio Foundation, the creator of listener sponsored radio fifty years ago, know how hard it is to fight an entrenched board. But we won that time. In that case it took court action.

For years we went about our own lives ignorant of the serious developments at the college. Lke the three monky trio, we heard no evil, we saw no evil, so we said nothing. But now all we need is a fourth sense, the sense of smell.

We need serious investigation of the Chancellor, her background and reputation in her former University activity, as also, perhaps, her non-Antiochian Board members who are reported to be out of the military-industrial-national security establishment. And is the sale of the College assets an objective, as many suggest? We then need evaluation of legal and other alternative actions.

As I have posted elsewhere, and as a matter of perspective on the crisis, money is major but not the ultimate issue. No plan for regeneration is sustainable unless enrollment can be multiplied to a viable level and campus culture, at least as described by Ralph Keyes, can be brought back to the civilized level many of us remember and that established Antioch as a premier insitution for both scholarship and social change.

BobBogen, at 5:45 am EDT on September 6, 2007

Where Does It End?

Every morning I wake up wondering what Chancellor Murdock will do next. Each morning I am awed anew at her ability to carry our the most draconian, ham-handed, un-deomcratic, anti-Antiochian actions with out shame, in full view of the academic world, while the Antioch University Board of Trustees stand and watch as the reputation and future of the College most of them attended is torn to the ground.

There was a time when firing the Chancellor would have been a problem for the college and the U. Too much transition at the top of both has caused fund-raising to lag, morale to decline and bitterness to become endemic. Stability was the most important thing for the Antioch brand of education. Now however, after nearly 3 months of actions that are completely contrary to the tradition and practice of Antiochians, firing Dr. Murdock is essential and would prove to be a victory for the University and the College.Leaders are defined by how they manage through crisis, in this crisis Dr. Murdock has shown nothing but the back of her hand to the college’s alumni, disrespect and indifference to the college faculty, and a shocking lack of understanding of why students attend both Antioch University and Antioch College. Ms LaPierre can spin as fast as she can and the audience does not lose focus of the big picture: a 152 year old institution always at the forefront of progress, freedom, equality, egalitarity, knowledge and community governance has been gutted of its reputation, its curriculum, its own President; reduced to an administrative shell on the outskirts of the University it gave birth to in order to support the core mission of the college.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

Travis Sanford ‘94, at 2:30 pm EDT on September 6, 2007

Predicted a decade earlier.

When a fellow Antioch University Seattle alumnus informed me a couple of years ago that Toni Murdock had been elevated from her disastrous, alienating run as president of the Seattle campus to her current position as chancellor of the entire system, I filed that piece of information under “I can’t watch anymore.”

People, this individual has done all of this before. Evidently, though many of us tried to wake the BOT up to the destructive consequences of her management style, the BOT instead drank some particularly intoxicating form of Kool-Aid and promoted her. Why, I will never be able to fathom. She nearly single-handedly gutted my master’s program while I was still in it. Unfortunately, nobody is going to pay me or my fellow former students back for that fiasco. This woman should not be running any part of Antioch University. And since the BOT still can’t figure that out, they shouldn’t be running it, either.

Sigh. This is such old, old news. I’m sorry Antioch College had to be her next victim. She has alienated and mistreated so many faculty, staff and students — it’s the one thing she seems to do well. If anyone is trying to whitewash her performance record, don’t believe it. Those of us who were subjected to her ham-fisted decisions in Seattle know all too well the truth.

Not Surprised, at 5:10 am EDT on April 30, 2008