When Hope Anne Nathan, class of ’92, heard the word “Chicago,” her eyes widened.
“If you run into Oprah, tell her that $41 million saves us,” said Nathan, with an eager, earnest, maybe-I’m-not-really-kidding sort of smile.
The scenario whereby a talk-show tycoon swoops in to save a doomed college might sound like the plot of a feel-good movie, but stranger miracles have occurred. And Antioch College, a tangerine dream of a place that sticks out in the featureless farmland of west-central Ohio like an odd treasure found in the attic, is a bit of a strange miracle itself.
The college, founded in 1852 with Horace Mann serving as its first president, was among the first schools to indulge the outlandish notion that female faculty should be treated equally with male, that black and white students ought to learn together, that grades may not be the best measure of progress, that education is not just a matter of abstract theories but also hands-on experience.
Antioch, that is, has always been a place that revels in being different — which perhaps is how it stoked the dreams and fed the creative fires of graduates such as Coretta Scott King and “The Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling.
That iconoclastic spirit is echoed in nearby Yellow Springs, a breezy, laid-back village of 3,500 that seems small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. It is a place in which cafes and bookstores alternate with shops selling stained glass and wind chimes, where imperturbable cats sun themselves on stoops and the mood is 1960s cool.
But things suddenly heated up on June 13, when Antioch’s Board of Trustees announced that the college would close next year. The news came just days before Nathan and hundreds of other alumni were to arrive here for their annual reunion weekend, which was to conclude Saturday.
“We knew there were problems,” said Nathan, manager of a food co-op in Pittsburgh, “but it was still a shock.”
What was supposed to be a funky, freewheeling few days of hugs and swapped stories ended up being, as more than one alum termed it, “a wake.”
The reasons for the closing are not mysterious: A deficit of $40 million to $50 million, a skimpy endowment, declining enrollment, and facilities that, because of historic money woes, have become fraying, neglected eyesores. Trustees said they hope to reopen the school in three to four years, but that was met by many with a skeptical, “Yeah, right.”
On Friday, Antioch College President Steven Lawry and trustees faced angry alumni and faculty at a public meeting. What makes the issue especially complex is the fact that the Yellow Springs campus is part of the Antioch University system, which maintains five other locations in places such as Seattle and Los Angles. These are non-residential institutions that do well financially; they have, in fact, been supporting the Yellow Springs campus for some time, said Toni Murdock, chancellor of the Antioch system, who spoke at Friday’s meeting.
Also on hand was Arthur Zucker, class of ’55 and chairman of the board of trustees. Looking wary and defensive but speaking with a sadness that roughed up his voice, he said the board’s decision to close Antioch was agonizing: “We are sorry. We are grieving, and it hurts. It hurts.”
Short of money — or idealism?
That wasn’t good enough for Antioch’s faculty members, who read a statement announcing they would explore legal action to halt the closing. Among their suspicions is that the Antioch system wants to eliminate the residential campus at Yellow Springs because its faculty is tenured; faculty at the other locations is not.
Yet some believe the fate of Antioch reveals more than just funding issues in higher education. Some see the school’s low enrollment as a sign that a certain idealism is absent from today’s students, that high-paying jobs on Wall Street have aced out public service work in Third World countries. Antioch’s destiny can thus be viewed as a watershed, as the culture realizes that the ’60s are finally over.
Lawry disagrees. Sitting in his office late last week in Antioch Hall, a stately brick edifice that dates to the college’s pre-Civil War roots, he looked a bit rumpled and bemused at the turn of events that had left his own job up in the air after July 2008. But he was firm about the priorities of today’s youth.
“There are hundreds of thousands of those [idealistic] students out there — they’re just going other places,” declared Lawry, who took the president’s job a year and a half ago, after working more than a dozen years with the Ford Foundation on land development projects in Africa.
The problem at Antioch, Lawry said, is straightforward: “Financial vulnerability.” Remedies, he said, could include increasing the endowment.
And what of Yellow Springs, which many residents say is tied to Antioch not just geographically and financially, but spiritually?
‘Ringing the death knell’
“We’re devastated,” said Kurt Miyazaki, owner of Underdog Cafe. Sitting at one of the mismatched tables that give the place its scruffy, bohemian feel, surrounded by bright yellow walls and overstuffed bookcases, he said, “I’ve been here 11 years, and from what I can see, the town and the college are intertwined in so many ways.”
The campus employs about 150 people, some of whom will keep their jobs — the college library will stay open, because it serves the entire Antioch system — but most won’t.
Not everyone is upset. Henry Wickham, an attorney in Columbus, Ohio, who grew up near Yellow Springs, used to spend his spare time as a teenager there in the late ’60s, ogling what he derisively calls “the hippies, the folkies, the dopers.”
Others, though, mourn what they consider a unique institution, a place that celebrates diversity and critical thinking. Amanda Banaszak, a massage therapist who has lived in Yellow Springs with her husband and two children for a very happy decade, said, “A lot of people are playing taps and ringing the death knell.” Yet she’s wistfully optimistic: “Perhaps the college can be restructured to make it more vital.”
That resiliency seems to be in the water, which gives the town its name. Deep in the wooded ravine that cushions the outskirts of campus, in a nature reserve maintained by Antioch, mineral deposits imbue the water with a yellow-orange hue, said Banaszak, adding in a serene voice, “There’s a legend that, once you drink it, you will always return to Yellow Springs.”
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Famous Antioch students
Olympia Brown (Class of 1860): First ordained female minister in the United States
Marion Ross: Enlisted in Civil War and was among first group of soldiers to win Congressional Medal of Honor
George Shull (Class of 1901): Developed hybrid corn with his work in botany and genetics
Leland Clark (Class of 1941): Invented the first heart-lung machine and other artificial organs
Rod Serling (Class of 1950): Created “The Twilight Zone”
Coretta Scott King (Class of 1951): Spoke and wrote on behalf of civil rights
Eleanor Holmes Norton (Class of 1960): Congressional representative from District of Columbia
Stephen Jay Gould (Class of 1963): Invigorated paleontology with his books and Harvard lectures
Sylvia Nasar (Class of 1970): Wrote the biography “A Beautiful Mind”
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jikeller@tribune.com
