Despite the efforts of its alumni, and the indignation of its
students, Antioch College is closing its doors next summer. The
college’s board of trustees voted to “suspend operations” next July
in hopes of reopening the school in four years. Remaining students
will be allowed to finish their degrees at an adult-education
facility in Yellow Springs.
Antioch has had a reputation for being progressive since its
founding. Its first president was Horace Mann, who provided the
school with its motto (“Be ashamed to die until you have won some
victory for humanity”) and directed that the school admit women
and, roughly one hundred years before the civil rights movement,
blacks. In recent years, it has been known for less noble
manifestations of liberalism.
In the 1990s, the school made headlines with its oft-mocked
“Sexual Offense Prevention Policy,” which mandates that consent be
given at every stage of sexual activity and includes helpful
guidelines such as “silence is not consent” and “a person can not
give consent while sleeping.” According to the Antioch Survival
Guide, a college manual distributed to incoming students, “the
spirit of the [sexual offense] policy is YES… This spirit is
about a fully affirmative YES. Not an ambiguous yes, or a
‘well-not-really- but-ok-I-guess yes,’ certainly not a ‘silent-no
‘yes,” or an ‘ouch’ or ‘yuck-but-I’m-afraid-to-hurt-your-feelings
yes.’ This is about YES, UM HUM, ABSOLUTELY, YIPPEE YAHOO YES!” The
Survival Guide also provides step-by-step, heavily illustrated
instructions for what the writers refer to as “safer sex,” topics
ranging from condom use to dental dams.
Antioch more recently gained infamy for choosing death-row
inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as its 2000 commencement speaker. Jamal, who
was sentenced to death for killing Philadelphia policeman Daniel
Faulkner, delivered his address via video recording. On campus,
identity politics thrives: the Queer Center, “open to self- defined
lesbians, gay men, bisexual, transgendered, and queer people”; the
Jew Crew (“to provide a safe space for self-identifying Jewish
students”); the Third World alliance (dedicated to the “organized
and committed struggle” against “colonialism, neocolonialism, and
imperialism”; and the Women’s Center whose office, Womenspace, is
closed to men unless “open hours for the larger community are
established.”
The burning question is, of course, why is Antioch closing?
There’s been a fair amount of finger pointing, notably on the
college’s message boards, where posters are murmuring darkly about
poor leadership and “crass money-grasping and corporate marketing.”
In a question and answer session posted on the college’s website,
the expected enrollment for the 2007-2008 school year was 302
students, in contrast to the 577 enrolled in the fall of 2002. In
response to questions about the cause of falling enrollment, the
document stated, “Some people would point to the condition of the
College’s facilities, some would point to the poor results of
fund-raising, some would point to the difficulties imposed by the
Renewal Plan, and some would point to the campus culture.”
Antioch suffers more than a dearth of students. Despite the
alumni’s last-ditch efforts to raise money in recent weeks, the
school has stated that alumni giving has not increased in several
years. Antioch’s endowment is around $32 million, compared to
almost as liberal Oberlin’s $700 million. If Antioch is so
relevant, so permissive, so downright hip, why aren’t students and
dollars flocking to the campus? Isn’t the Antioch experience what
young America wants?
This is the problem that no one at Antioch wants to admit: What
the college offers is not, in fact, what most of young America
wants. Antioch provides an infinitely customizable education with
low standards. Students create their own majors, spawning such
degrees as Community, Self, and Body, Harmony and Peace through
Music, and Gestural Arts. These individualized majors include at
least a year’s worth of work experience instead of more traditional
schooling.. There are no grades, only narrative evaluations where
professors are responsible for “considering their students’ work
and responding to it” and “students are responsible for setting
their priorities.” Activism in the form of protests is openly
encouraged. The Survival Guide devotes an entire section to advice
on conducting a successful protest, ranging from writing important
phone numbers in permanent ink on your body in case of arrest to
submitting a list of the names and numbers of all protesters to the
Antioch College Community Government office. Antioch provides a
world of boundless choices and little or no consequences, and
students are voting with their feet.
In its quest to be inclusive and relevant, Antioch has made
itself irrelevant. Students looking to acquire marketable skills go
elsewhere. Those interested in a chance to rigorously explore
classical thought can seek out the growing Great Books programs at
other campuses. But these programs are academically serious, while
in Antioch’s permissive environment, there are no right or wrong
answers, only interesting ones.
Perhaps the students and friends of Antioch should bear in mind
the words of William Wordsworth, whose poem “Nuns fret not at their
convent’s narrow room” explores the seeming paradox of freedom
within confinement. The poet muses that nuns, hermits, weavers,
and, yes, even students “with their pensive citadels” find freedom
and joy within the strict limits of their craft. Wordsworth himself
finds this contentment within the strict confines of the sonnet and
remarks that he will be pleased “if some Souls (for such there
needs must be)/ who have felt the weight of too much liberty,/
should find brief solace there, as I have found.”
We work the hardest for those that ask the most of us, and, to
those who ask for little, we respond with less. In the end, it
seems that Antioch tried so hard to maintain political correctness
and eschew academic standards that it became uninteresting to
thrill seekers, who can easily find a wilder experience elsewhere,
and irrelevant to earnest students, who are looking for something a
little more substantial. Perhaps students oppressed by the weight
of too much liberty are shunning the hallowed halls of Antioch’s
Yellow Springs, Ohio, campus and seeking more disciplined
shores.
