Antioch College

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Antioch College
Motto Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
Established 1853
Type Private undergraduate
President Steve Lawry
Location Yellow Springs, Ohio, United States
Website http://www.antioch-college.edu

Antioch College is a private, independent liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Founded in 1852 by the Christian Connexion, it began operating a year later with Horace Mann as its first president.

The official motto of Antioch College is, "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." — Horace Mann.

Antioch was later reorganized with Unitarian support as an independent nonsectarian college. In 1920, College President Arthur E. Morgan, a noted engineer concerned with community values, restructured the College to introduce for students the co-operative education or work-study plan.

Antioch College blends practical work experience with classroom learning and participatory community governance.

A separate campus of Antioch University, also located in Yellow Springs and established in 1988, offers academic programs for adults responsive to emerging societal needs.

The college had fewer then 500 students in 2006 and is one campus of the Antioch University System.

Antioch College is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association, the Eco League, and the North American Alliance for Green Education.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Founding & Early Years

On October 5th, 1850, the General Convention of the Christian Church passed a resolution stating "that our responsibility to the community, and the advancement of our interests as a denomination, demand of us the establishing of a College." This resolution was passed unanimously by the 82 delegates, who represented 521 ordained ministers. The delegates further pledged "the sum of one hundred thousand dollars as the standard by which to measure our zeal and our effort in raising the means for establishing the contemplated College." The Committee on the Plan for a College was formed to undertake the founding of a college, and make decisions regarding the name of the school, the endowment, fundraising, faculty, and administration. Most notably, the committee decided that the college "shall afford equal privileges to students of both sexes." The committee made no comment and passed no resolution regarding the admission of black students; they apparently did not consider this as a possibility. The Christian Connexion sect wanted the new college to be sectarian, but the planning committee decided otherwise.

Horace Mann, Antioch's first president, ran the college from its founding in 1853 until his death in 1859. The young college had relatively high academic standards, and also emphasized good health, co-operation, and sound ethical and moral principles. The first curriculum focused on Latin, Greek, mathematics, history, philosophy and science, and offered electives in art, botany, pedagogy, and modern languages. Tuition was $24 a year, and the first graduating class consisted of 28 students. Although the founders planned for approximately 1,000 students, enrollment only exceeded 500 once in the 19th century, in 1857.

One notable character in Antioch's history is Rebecca Pennell, who was one of the colleges ten original faculty members. She was the first female college professor in the United States to have the same rank and pay as her male colleagues. Her home, now part of the Antioch campus and called Pennell House, currently serves as community space.

In 1859, Mann gave his final commencement speech, which contained the sentence that has become the college's motto: "Be ashamed to die until you win some victory for humanity." Mann died in August and was initially interred on the Antioch College grounds. The next year, he was reinterred in Providence, Rhode Island, next to his first wife.

In the 1850s, two African American girls, residents of Yellow Springs, enrolled at Antioch Preparatory School, which was then an official part of the College. A member of the board of trustees quit in protest and removed his own children from the school, but the Hunster sisters stayed at Antioch. In 1863, Antioch trustee John Phillips proposed a resolution stating "the Trustees of Antioch College cannot, according to the Charter, reject persons on account of color." The resolution passed with nine trustees in favor and four opposed.

The college faced financial difficulties early on. From 1857 to 1859, Antioch ran an annual deficit of $5,000, out of a total budget of $13,000. In 1858, Antioch was bankrupt. Mann died in 1859 and the college was reorganized, but deficits continued. Mann's successor, Thomas Hill, took Antioch's presidency on the condition that faculty salaries be paid despite deficits. Despite this, his salary was often not paid and he supported his family with loans. Hill resigned in 1862 due to increasing financial troubles, sectarian conflict between Christian Connexion and Unitarian trustees, and his having been elected president of Harvard. In 1862, the college was closed until finances improved, and remained closed until after the end of the Civil War.

In 1865, the college reopened, now administered by the Unitarian church. Financial troubles continued, and the college closed again from 1881-1882. In 1899, finances were so restricted that faculty made between $500-700 a year, very low for the time, and the president was paid $1,500 a year. In contrast, Horace Mann had made $3,000 a year more than forty years earlier.

[edit] The early 20th century

In 1919, Arthur Morgan was elected to Antioch's board of trustees. An engineer, he had been involved in planning a college in upstate New York that would have included work-study along with a more traditional curriculum. Instead, Morgan presented his plan for "practical industrial education" to the board and was authorized to begin developing it. He was elected president by a unanimous board the next year, and in 1921, the cooperative education, or co-op, program began.

Students initially studied for eight week long terms alternating with eight week long work experiences. Male students generally took apprenticeships with craftsmen or jobs in factories, while female students often served as nursing or teaching assistants. The college had no black students from 1899-1929 and only two from 1929-1936 (neither graduated), so it is unknown how racial discrimination among employers affected the co-op program. While Antioch had no religious quotas (which were common until the 1940s), many employers discriminated against Jews, which limited the amount of Jewish students at Antioch.

In 1926, the college's Administrative Council was formed as an advisory body to the president. It was chartered in 1930. The Administrative Council was originally a faculty-only body (a student seat was added in 1941). In time, the Administrative Council has come to be the primary policy-making body of the College. This has been brought into question under the Lawry Presidency. The Community Council was established a short time later, to advise on and manage what at other college campuses would be considered "student concerns." At Antioch, these matters, such as campus artistic and cultural life, are approached as community-wide concerns and thereby affecting students, staff, faculty members and administrators equally.

[edit] The late 20th Century

Since the 1950s, Antioch has been considered an early bastion of student activism and liberal thought. Antioch faced pressure from the powerful House Unamerican Activities Committee, and became the mockery of many area newspapers, because it would not kick out its students and faculty accused of having Communist leanings. But college officials stood firm, insisting that freedom begins not in suppressing unpopular ideas but in holding all ideas up to the light. The school, including professors and administration, was involved in the early stages of the American Civil Rights Movement and remains a supporter of free speech.

The 1960s were considered by many to be Antioch's 20th century heyday; the school was healthy and vibrant. The student body topped out around 2,000 students, the college owned property all over Yellow Springs and beyond and the college grew throughout the decade to became one of the most respected liberal arts institutions in the country.

Following on the heels of the past decade the college also became one of the primary sources of student radicalism, the New Left, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and to a lesser extent the Black Power movement. The town of Yellow Springs also became an island of liberal and Left activism in southern Ohio as well.

In many instances, the environment of the school itself spurred action among its students. Eleanor Holmes Norton, future congressional delegate for Washington, DC cited her time at Antioch "when the first real action that could be called movement action was ignited," according to an interview now available in the National Security Archives.

The 1970s saw the college continue to be known as a source of activism and often controversial political thought. Several graduate satellite schools around the country, under the Antioch University name (with the college as its base), were growing as well, including the McGregor School (now known as Antioch University McGregor), located adjacent to the original Yellow Springs campus. Antioch University New England was the first graduate school offshoot in 1964. The university campuses are located in Keene, New Hampshire; Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California; and Santa Barbara, California.

During the late 1970s, the University system partially collapsed, leaving Antioch College and Antioch University in financial dire straits by the beginning of the 1980s. During the 1980s, Antioch went through persistent financial troubles, with the student body shrinking to several hundred students. Several buildings on campus were either condemned or boarded up, and the rest of the campus and grounds fell into disrepair. The faculty roster also suffered under financial constraints.

In 1993 Antioch became the focus of national attention with its "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy." This student-created educational process, got more publicity for the college than anything since the student strike of 1973. [citation needed]

Beginning in the 1990s, the college began the first of several revival pushes by the student body, alumni, faculty and third-party donors. Though financial problems remain with the college, in the early 2000s, Antioch trustees, administration and donors took up the "Plan for Antioch College," a multi-million dollar renewal commission which has altered the investment and marketing strategy for the college, as well as the basic structure of the curriculum. This "Plan for Antioch College" was met by much resistance on the part of the student body as well as vast swaths of the faculty.

Continued lack of confronting structural inequities towards people of color and low-income students, lead to a student-initiated protest entitled "People of Color Takeover." This highly controversial event triggered the creation of the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom, the campus entity responsible for pushing the College towards just practices and structures.

One popular ranking, US News, classifies Antioch College as a third-tier Liberal Arts College.[1] The best-selling guidebook "Colleges That Change Lives" says of Antioch, "There is no college or university in the country that makes a more profound difference in a young person's life or that creates more effective adults." [2]

[edit] The Official Antioch College Mission Statement

Antioch College is a distinctive national liberal arts college which has recruited students from throughout the country since the 1920s and has played a major role in the development of cooperative education, community governance, and international education. The primary mission of Antioch College is to empower students: the academic curriculum provides students with a broad liberal education that challenges their values and perspectives as well as increases their knowledge, ability to question, and general intellectual consciousness about themselves and the society in which they live; the cooperative education program provides life and work experiences which develop independence, confidence, and self-motivation; and community structure offers significant responsibility for the social, cultural, financial, and policy issues that govern college life.

Students are expected to reach beyond conventional learning. With classroom and co-op faculty, and within the context of the curriculum, they plan their own education, reflect upon their experiences, and as a result, change their perspectives. The goal is for Antioch students to become intelligent experimenters, informed risk-takers, creative thinkers, and courageous practitioners.

Antioch College encourages its students to have a balanced respect for all of life—self, others, society, and the earth. Empowered by their education, students are encouraged to empower others.

[edit] The Official Antioch College Honor Code

Antioch College

Antioch College is a community dedicated to the search for truth, the development of individual potential, and the pursuit of social justice. In order to fulfill our objectives, freedom must be matched by responsibility. As a member of the Antioch Community, I affirm that I will be honest and respectful in all my relationships, and I will advance these standards of behavior in others..


[edit] Noteworthy alumni

[edit] See Also

[edit] External links


Great Lakes Colleges Association
Albion • Antioch • Denison • DePauw • Earlham • Hope • Kalamazoo • Kenyon • Oberlin • Ohio Wesleyan • Wooster
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