The Antiochian Fall 2019/Winter 2020

Antiochian THE

SPRING, 2018

The Sustainability Challenge + Antiochians winning victories for the planet How green is our campus?

R. Buckminster Fuller at Antioch Can’t stop Nonstop: 10 years later

FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

Antioch College Works Antioch in extremis Antiochian Women Act for Justice

Own Your Educatıon

New curriculum, new power The Antioch Nine return Before #MeToo: the SOPP Antiochians on the march

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 53

Donors Make an Education that Works Possible “I’ve always valued and been grateful for the education I’ve been able to get.

About four years ago, I started talking with [Principal Gifts Officer] Wendy Ernst, and [Vice President for Advancement] Susanne Hashim, about increasing my financial support. It seemed to me that Antioch was getting a good re-start,” Dr. Irwin Pomerantz ’57 (known as “Pomey” in his Antioch connections) explains.

After the College received accreditation, Pomey decided to make a multi-year commitment to support the College’s programs in the sciences in honor of his parents, generously creating The Abe and Sonia Pomerantz Memorial Fund in Support of The Sciences Division in 2018.

Pomey’s parents immigrated to the United States (his father from Poland and his mother from Russia) with very little education. But, they “instilled in the four of us children a strong belief in the value of an education. My three siblings and I were able to attend college and several of us have advanced degrees.”

Co-op was the deciding factor in his choice of Antioch College, and those experiences allowed him to explore the different worlds of chemistry. “I was able to get Co-op jobs in academic and industrial chemistry labs, in a basic biochemistry research lab, and finally, as a teaching assistant in chemistry at Antioch. I had a strong belief that I wanted a career in teaching chemistry at a liberal arts college.”

He went on to earn his PhD in Organic

Pomey working in Antiochiana during Volunteer Work Project Chemistry and spent some time teaching, even back at Antioch College, before moving to work in research for the US Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

“I feel very strongly about Antioch, so it’s important to me to get not only the public relations viewpoint of Antioch College—not only to know what the President is saying— but to meet the students and get their point of view on what the College is offering and what their academic and Co-op experience has been,” he states. Regularly attending

Reunion and Volunteer Work Project gives him the chance to meet with Antioch faculty and staff and, with strong support from Steven Duffy ’77 at “the Olive,” to talk with many students in the chemical, biological, and environmental sciences. He is most grateful for those opportunities.

“If alumni see the ‘spark’ of something vital being incubated or actually being implemented at Antioch,” he concludes, “then they should find some way to contribute to the College in its rebirth and development.”

Every gift helps students to afford an education that works Make a gift today: antiochcollege.edu/support

To create your own named scholarship, or to support other existing scholarships, please contact Vice President for Advancement Susanne Hashim at 937-319-0163 or via email shashim@ antiochcollege.edu

Antiochian 24 8

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Antioch College Works Providing Access to a Transformative Applied Education

2 From the College President 4 From the Alumni Board 5 From the Alumni Director 7 The Stoop`Musings from campus and beyond 14 Postcards From Co-op 18 The Mound Recent Grads 44 In Memoriam 54 Class Notes & AlumNews 54 Social Justice Honor 55 Kentucky State Appointment 56 Best Horror Fiction 58 2019 Alumni Awards 61 Mentoring Award 62 Antiochiana: “Adventuring at Antioch”

19 Seed Diversity, Food Justice 24 Antioch In Extremis 32 In Their Voices: Antiochian Women 38 Alumni Spotlight

Prexy Nesbitt ’67, Allison Maria Rodriguez ’03, John Sims ’90

On the Cover: Dillon Powell ’22 on Co-op working on the process of drying coffee beans at Mount Totumas Cloud Forest Reserve in Panama which was founded by Jeffery Dietrich ’79.

Dillon’s Co-op entails learning about sustainable practices in ecology—from coffee harvest to their food production greenhouses—as well as identification of native flora during trail maintenance in the reserve, and food preparation for the eco-tourism business.

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From the President Work. This is what defines Antioch College—in so many ways—perhaps more than any single word.

It has been 10 years since the arduous, but also liberating work of securing the College’s independence from the University was realized.

We celebrated this milestone—and the remarkable determination and effort it entailed—in late October. I will always remember the moment as magical: Trustees were wrapping up the first afternoon of meetings and we were in the Kettering Building, when someone called everyone’s attention. 'What bell is that ringing? Is it from Main Building?' Everyone listened. 'Yes, of course, it is,' someone else answered. 'We’re being called to celebrate Independence Day, Antioch-style.'

At which point, on to Main Building we went.

The work of building a new kind of College began with Horace Mann, and the work continues. Arthur Morgan emphasised work at the heart of a new kind of educational model nearly 100 years ago, and since that time students have found themselves engaged in an experiential, applied education like no other offered by a liberal arts college. The work of providing a rigorous educational model that relentlessly focuses on classroom, Co-op, and community continues.

Our outstanding faculty forward an innovative and challenging curriculum. They involve students directly and meaningfully in the development of courses, as well as in the work of academic and field research.

We work in and on our community, continuously and diligently, engaging in the messy work of democracy, pushing and struggling for greater agency, equity,

2 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

and justice both on campus and beyond.

We relentlessly persist in the work of ensuring the future of this action-oriented college—where education meets the real world—perhaps with even greater urgency than ever.

Alumni, faculty, staff, and students are building a new kind of college—working hard to restart a college even as others have closed. We do this in an environment where many parents, students, and employers are highly skeptical about the practical value of an undergraduate degree. They question the relevance of a liberal arts education, and the “nonproductive” tradeoff time it will take to acquire it, and many are disinclined or unable to incur loan debt to finance it.

There is a growing disconnect between the public perception and the academy's view on the value of a degree. According to a Lumina Foundation study, while 96% of chief academic officers believed their institutions to be effective in preparing students for the world of work, less than 15% of Americans agreed, and only 11% of business leaders strongly agreed that college graduates have the competencies and skills necessary to be ready for work.

A liberal arts degree is all the more suspect because it is seen to be even less relevant to the real world, in spite of numerous studies that point to its economic value. Colleges and universities have generally been less than effective in demonstrating their value, and the cost for a great majority of families has become prohibitive.

But this is why Antioch College is different. This is why so many of us have fought so hard to ensure its survival. Because an Antioch College education works for students like no other; examples of which you can find within these pages. Though Co-op and the wealth of experiential learning and work opportunities which permeate the fabric of academic and community life, an Antioch College education defines and develops

a relationship to the world of work that creates purpose, and the foundation for a life of impact and personal fulfilment.

In December, we announced the new Antioch College Works initiative which is, in many ways, a heightened commitment to our signature educational premise. Antioch College Works is built on the Antiochian tradition of integrated, applied learning, but it goes further than the existing Co-op program to guarantee rich work experience throughout a student’s Antioch adventure. And, Antioch College Works doubles down on our commitment to justice and equity by addressing issues of affordability and access through generous scholarships, including full-tuition scholarships for qualifying students.

Antioch College Works turns the conventional approach to a four-year degree on its head.

As I’ve traveled and met with alumni and friends to talk about this program, there is much excitement for the vision we are advancing. Please read more about Antioch College Works on page 20 to learn about why we are so very excited for what the future holds, and why we must continue the hard but exhilarating work of bringing an Antioch College education to a world that needs it.

In closing, join me in reflecting for a moment more on Antioch College’s journey of the last decade. Recall those personal experiences and stories which are proof that Antioch is a college that works. I ask you to listen for the Main Building bell, and to continue on with us as we bring Antioch College forth as a beacon of, among many other things, democracy, diversity, and justice.

John Lithgow met with Susanne Hashim, vice president for Advancement, and President Tom Manley in New York last spring following a performance of his Broadway play, Hillary and Clinton. John spent part of his childhood in Yellow Springs when his father, Arthur Lithgow ’38, was directing theater at Antioch, including co-founding the acclaimed Shakespeare Under the Stars festival.

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From the Alumni Board Dear Antiochians: When Antioch University closed Antioch College in 2008, none of us knew if we would ever graduate another class. The University was surprised to observe the energy, tenacity, and tireless commitment of Antioch alums to restore the College.

Prior to the closure, there were three or four Antioch alumni chapters, and over the summer of 2008, that number grew to more than 30 as alums everywhere were shocked that the University would close the College, often referred to as the heart of the University.

The Alumni Board continued to meet and Antioch College Continuation Corporation was formed and raised resources to reopen the College. I was proud to

be an active ACCC member and help support the emerging chapters and am now proud to be on the Alumni Board to continue to support Antioch College in any way I can. This past October, we celebrated ten years since receiving the keys to reopen when the University realized it could never reopen the College without the support of its alums.

Since then, we have graduated five classes and one of the highlights of being President of the Alumni Association is to welcome the new alums!

The Alumni Board is actively engaged in supporting Antioch College and identifying myriad ways to give back in addition 4 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

to financial support. Watch this space in the Antiochian for a message from a member of the Alumni Board and learn of ways we can: • Find our classmates in the Alumni Directory (http://alumni.antiochcollege.edu); • Engage in alumni chapters; • Learn about Reunion and how to actively participate; • Support the efforts of faculty; and one of my favorites, • Host a Co-op student.

You will also learn how you can be considered to join the Alumni Board. Nominations close March 28 for terms starting during Reunion next October.

The Alumni Board is thrilled to welcome April Wolford ’92 as Director of Alumni Relations. We regret that this means she had to step down from the Alumni Board but are thrilled that we continue to work with her in this new capacity. Let April [AWolford@AntiochCollege.edu] and me [Kmulhauser@consultingwomen.com] know how you want to support our beloved Antioch College I hope you will mark your calendar now for October 15–18, 2020 and join us at Reunion.

Karen Mulhauser ’65 President, Alumni Association

Antiochian THE

A MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE President Tom Manley

Editorial Collective James L. Lippincott and Christine Reedy Design & Production Jandos Rothstein ’86 Editorial Contributors Beth Bridgeman Karen Foreit ’67 Fred Kraus Sophie Malon Karen Mulhauser ’65 Scott Sanders Dean Snyder Jennifer Wenker April Wolford ’92 Ben Zitsman ’20

Photography Beth Bridgeman Chris Chavers ’22 Mila Cooper Jeffery Dietrich ’79 Dennie Eagleson ’71 Kim Landsbergen James Lippincott Sophie Malon Christine Reedy J.P. Robinson

The Antiochian is published by the Office of Advancement at Antioch College. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Distributed free of charge to alumni and friends of Antioch College. Postmaster and others, send change of address notification to Antioch College, Office of Advancement, One Morgan Place, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387.

Write to communications@antiochcollege.edu.

Contributions of articles, photographs, and artwork are welcome. All submissions will be edited for length, spelling, grammar, and editorial style. The Office of Communications will notify you if your submission is accepted for publication.

Letters should be no longer than 150 words, must refer to an article that has appeared in The Antiochian, and must include the writer’s full name, class year (if applicable), as well as city and state of residence. No attachments, please. We do not publish anonymous letters.

The comments and opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of Antioch College or the staff of The Antiochian.

Submit Content Or Send Letters to communications@antiochcollege.edu. Standard post to The Antiochian, Antioch College, One Morgan Place, Yellow Springs, OH 45387.

Printed on recycled paper Copyright © 2020 Antioch College

From the Director of Alumni Relations Dear Antiochians and Friends: It is with great excitement that I write this first letter to you as the Director of Alumni Relations for our beloved Antioch College. I am truly delighted to be rejoining the College at this time when our country desperately needs progressive educational institutions like Antioch. In fact, a strong desire to see the College succeed in light of the current political climate is a main reason I am returning to the Antioch College Community after 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. Because we do a disproportionate amount of “good” in the world, there must be future generations of Antiochians.

Immediate priorities for Alumni Relations include growing alumni engagement by building and supporting alumni chapters, increasing participation in the annual Reunion set for October 2020 and expanding opportunities to contribute to the College’s financial health.

Expanding the number, and strength, of alumni chapters is critical for connecting alumni with the College and each other.

Already I am supporting efforts by the Alumni Board to start chapters in Seattle and Chicago and have made contact with prospective leaders in other cities! We are also exploring “virtual”—or online—chapters that can support alumni interests by affinity. The Science Affinity group for example is an early leader in this area with a very active online community. An affinity group for Community Managers was created recently with the initial goal to provide feedback and historical perspectives on the newly created Community Manager position. I look forward to seeing the conversations that emerge going forward.

Increasing participation in Reunion is another top priority. Generally about 350 alumni and friends attend Reunion and we want that number to grow. Reunion is moving to the Fall, October 15– 18, 2020, to provide more opportuni-

ties for alumni to interact with, and get to know students, faculty, and staff. Fall is also a beautiful time of year to be on campus in Yellow Springs.

Philanthropy is critical to Antioch College’s success so that is a third priority for Alumni Relations. Roughly 85% of the College’s revenue comes from philanthropy, primarily alumni donations. The College’s alumni and friends accomplished an historic and extraordinary achievement by reopening the College 10 years ago. Our ongoing financial support is critical for long term success so please plan to make contributions annually!!

Board Of Trustees Maureen A. Lynch–Chair Robert M. Hollister ’66–Vice Chair Sharen Swartz Neuhardt–Secretary John K. Jacobs Jr. ’76–Treasurer Shadia Alvarez ’96 Michael Casselli ’87–Faculty Representative Chris Chavers ’21–Student Representative Shane Creepingbear ’08–Staff Representative Shelby Chestnut ’05 Shalini Deo ’02 Tom Manley–President Susan Jean Mayer ’79 Sharon Merriman ’55 Matthew Morgan ’99 Karen Mulhauser ’65 Mohammad Saeed Rahman Malte von Matthiessen ’66 Honorary & Emeritus Trustees Kay Drey Atis Folkmanis ’62 David Goodman ’69 Terry O. Herndon ’57 Frances Degen Horowitz ’54 Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton ’60 Joyce Idema ’57 Jay W. Lorsch ’55 Lee Morgan ’66 Barbara Slaner Winslow ’68

I look forward to working with you all to help build a strong Antioch College for current and future generations of Antiochians! My hope is to create a groundswell of support across our base of exceptional alumni and supporters that will provide the resources needed to sustain this vibrant, creative, and challenging academic community that trained us all to win victories for humanity.

Stay tuned!

April Wolford ’92

Alumni Association Board Of Directors Karen Mulhauser ’65–President Jack Mathews ’15–Vice President Nate Bowles ’76–Secretary Phillip Brigham ’97–Parliamentarian Jim Hobart ’58–Immediate Past President Nicola C. Baltimore ’92 Nivia Butler ’88 Michael Casselli ’87 Robin E. Daniel ’87 Karen Foreit ’67 Rivka (Rachel) E. Gewirtz-Little ’91 Jessie Joanne Herr ’63 Kristine R. Hofstra ’91 Catherine V. Jordan ’72 Stephen H. Lipmann ’67 Marc Jean Masurovsky ’77 Steven Thurston Oliver ’90 Jill Ordman ’98 David Scott ’72 Alan D. Siege ’78 Joan Straumanis ’57 David F. Vincent ’65 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 5

Antiochians gathered in October with Julia Reichert ’70 to celebrate the opening of the retrospective Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH.

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TheStoop STATS

From the Class of 2019 Senior Survey

92% STRONGLY AGREED OR AGREED THAT THEIR ANTIOCH EDUCATION IMPROVED THEIR CRITICALTHINKING SKILLS

92%

100%

demonstrated for a cause (frequently or occasionally) during their time at Antioch

strongly agreed or agreed that their Antioch education improved their ability to express themselves creatively.

92%

strongly agreed or agreed that their Antioch education improved their ability to have balanced conversations about difficult or contentious issues

“ Antioch College provided me the intellectual and experimental space to develop a creative activism that intersects the language and essentials of the heart, mind and hand for a better understanding of, and humble contribution to the complex world that shape the future of our humanity. “ Antioch is Da Vinci + Harriet Tubman + John Cage + Duffy divided by two.

“Awesome anyway you cut it.”

92%

strongly agreed or agreed that their Antioch education improved their workplace skills

83% strongly agreed or agreed that their Antioch education improved their ability to navigate cultures that were not their own

Soils Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Science Kim Landsbergen is participating in a collaboration with seven area schools to study environmental justice trends in urban lead pollution and historical redlining. The project is coordinated

by Wittenberg University Professor of Geology Sarah Fortner.

—John Sims ’90

See the profile of John Sims on page 42 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 7

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Ten Years of Independence

On Thursday, October 24, Trustees, alumni, students and faculty, and friends of the College gathered on campus to celebrate a pivotal moment in the newly independent College’s story: the day the keys for Antioch College were acquired from the University. Several people integral to independence spoke during a commemorative luncheon including Lee Morgan ’66, Matthew Derr ’89, and Rick Detweiler (former president of GLCA), and Shadia Alvarez ’96, while Susanne Hashim read a letter sent from David Goodman ’69. Guests also have the opportunity to learn more about the College’s curriculum from Vice President for Academic Affairs Kevin McGruder and a few of our faculty members, and attended a demonstration around sustainability practices and tour of the Antioch Farm led by Professor Beth Bridgeman and students. The celebrations culminated at a reception in Antioch Hall, where a generous grant from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation has resulted in mechanical system upgrades and building stabilization efforts that will eventually lead to year-round use of the iconic building as a hub for College and community.

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“Honestly, I will always remember this moment as magical: The Trustees were finishing the first afternoon of meetings,” reflects President Tom Manley. “We were in the Kettering Building when someone called everyone’s attention. ‘What bell is that ringing? Is it from Main Building?’ Everyone listened. ‘Yes, of course, it is,’ someone else answered. ‘We’re being called to celebrate Independence Day, Antioch-style.’ At which point onward to Main Building we went.”

The following are a selection of Antioch’s Indices of Success—just a few examples of how much has been accomplished over the past ten years to create A College of Action.

Milestones & Achievements • Accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission in 2016, achieved two years ahead of schedule • Approved for Title IV financial aid—first awards Fall 2015—and Federal Work Study and Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant—first awards Fall 2019 • Launched participatory design-build

process known as FACT—Framework for Antioch College’s Transition-—in August 2016 which affirms values, and led to updated curriculum and educational landmarks—Own Your Education, Learn Experientially, and Act for Justice—and other initiatives • Invested more than $40 million in our historic campus, reversing decades of deferred maintenance and neglect • Campus renovation and improvements to buildings include Wellness Center (Curl Gymnasium), Arts & Science Building, and alternative energy (solar and geothermal) facilities • Received LEED certification for all major renovation projects on campus • Historic North Hall awarded Gold LEED, second-oldest building in the US with such designation • Silver ranking from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) program in our first year of participation

• Antioch Kitchens 2nd in the nation for “Real Food Challenge” • Demonstrated strong and prudent fiscal planning by restructuring the operating budget over three years from $22 million in FY 2016 to $13 million in FY 2019 to align expenses with revenue • Conservation easements secured to provide enduring legal protection for Glen Helen as a publicly accessible resource for environmental learning and recreation, and establishment of endowment to support operations Students + Academic Program • Successfully placed students in over a thousand Co-ops • Approximately 15% of Co-ops conducted abroad in 36 countries • Students land prestigious, competitive Co-ops, including positions at the White House and the U.S. Department of State • Students are excelling in proficiency-based language program • 82% of graduates from the Class of 2018 employed or in graduate school within six months • Students are competitive applicants

Rick Detweiler, Matthew Derr '89, Richard Lapedes

for prestigious scholarships such as the Marshall Scholarship, Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Program, and Gates Cambridge Scholarship • College’s curriculum revised to self-designed majors gives students greater agency and responsibility to own their education • Developed five Areas of Practice which cultivate the habits of learning, doing, living, and being in the world in experientially rich ways; students extend beyond simply knowing to knowing how Fundraising + Alumni/Friends • Raised over $132 million in gifts and commitments since reopening • Raised over $23 million from foundations since reopening • Established 26 New Generations Scholarships worth more than $1.3 Million • Three consecutive sold-out Coretta Scott King Center Legacy Luncheons • Alumni giving participation has grown from 3% before closure to around 25% These—and many other accomplishments—are a foundation upon which we will continue to build in the next decade as we take hold of the extraordinary opportunity before us.

Propel Ohio Last March Antioch College hosted a regional Propel Ohio Gathering, a leadership program promoting civic engagement sponsored by Senator Sherrod Brown.

Undergraduate students from across southwestern Ohio and community leaders attended to discuss issues of child poverty. As a college that practices deliberative democracy and social justice—and whose educational landmarks include learning experientially, and acting for justice—Antioch College is a hub for dialogue and action in our region and beyond.

Indigenous People’s Day

On October 14, Antioch College recognized Indigenous People’s Day by encouraging our community to consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement on this land we occupy and beyond.

The Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and the Indigenous People and Native American Heritage Month Planning Committee, organized a series of events in honor of Indigenous People‘s Day including Identity Talks with Jennifer Knickerbocker (Anishinaabe from White Earth Nation), Each One Teach One volunteering at Mills Lawn Elementary School, A Safe Space for Dialogue with Shane Creepingbear ’08 (Kiowa), and Cinema & Conversation: Smoke Signals.

We acknowledge that we could not exist as a college unless the Indigenous people were removed from this land. We pay respects to the Shawnee, Miami, and Ottawa Nations’ elders past and present.

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Celebrating Coretta’s Legacy The Coretta Scott King Center will host its Fourth Annual Legacy Luncheon on Thursday, April 30 with Dave and Elaine Chappelle returning as presenting sponsors. The luncheon sold out in each of its first three outings, so this year the event will be held in a larger venue, the Stem Plant in downtown Dayton.

The Legacy Luncheon has successfully raised awareness of the Coretta Scott King Center and Antioch College within the greater Miami Valley and beyond.

Each year, awards are presented as part of the program to honor national and local activists.

Antioch College Supports Global Climate Strike Three days before the UN Climate Summit in NYC in September, people around the world participated in the Global Climate Strike to demand transformative action be taken to address the climate crisis.

As a College of Action built upon these landmarks: Own Your Education, Learn Experientially, and Act for Justice; as a laboratory college that practices environmental sustainability; and as a signatory of the We Are Still In Declaration, Antioch College stands in solidarity with the call to world leaders to take immediate action to address climate change.

The community participated in the strike in a number of ways, including a panel discussion on campus, “Refusing Fatalism: Realistic Approaches to Achiev10 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

Storyteller

ing Climate Justice,” with Dr. Chris Cuomo, professor of Philosophy at the University of Georgia, Professor Kelli Zaytoun and Dr. Sharon Lynette Jones of Wright State University, and Jennifer Knickerbocker of Antioch College.

Associate Professor of Performance Louise Smith ’77 kept busy during her recent sabbatical.

In September, she presented a collaboration with Selena Loomis-Amrhein ’17 called The Sympathy Of All Things at Agraria in Yellow Springs. Smith continued her sabbatical activities in October as a writer in residence at Yaddo—a retreat for artists in Saratoga Springs, NY—for nearly three weeks to work on a new play with multiple women characters, tentatively titled Sovereignty.

Smith also participated in a reading of a new work by Antioch College alumna Ellen Maddow ’71, The Lemon Sisters or Art For The Artless, with the Talking Band in New York City in October.

A laboratory for democracy Community Governance has continued to evolve over the last year, seeking ways to best serve the campus community and provide representation at all levels of College governance resulting in significant recent developments.

In addition to the faculty representative to the Board of Trustees, a student representative position was added in the last year, and most recently the addition of an elected staff representative.

During the Fall term, Community Council focused on a standing proposal to reinstate the Community Manager position, a role which has not existed since reopening. A job description was created and a search is currently underway. As a bridge, Noah Greer ’22 (who served as ComCil co-president with Chris Chavers ’22 in the Fall) is serving as the Community Facilitator, an interim position created as a Co-op job during the winter quarter.

And, the Senior Leadership Team, a policymaking body and presidential advisory group created following reopening, has seen its bylaws updated to clarify its function and interaction with ComCil. Further, the membership has been restructured with elected faculty, student, and staff representatives in addition to administration seats. With these changes, the group has been renamed College Council.

Alumni have been integral in the continuing evolution of Community Governance since reopening including discussion panels during Reunion, presentations to the community, and discus-

sions with ComCil leaders. Avery Martens ’08 (who served as Community Manager at Nonstop) attended a Community Meeting in September to share perspectives and experiences.

Students of Color Leadership Conference

Nineteen Antioch students attended the annual Great Lakes Colleges Association Students of Color Leadership Conference in early November. Kensy Zelaya Sabillon ’21 presented a workshop titled, “The Role of International Financial Institutions and Transnational Corporations in the Immigration Crisis of Central America.”

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Producing Music and Masculinities

As a collaborative effort, Dr. Jennifer Grubbs (visiting assistant professor of Anthropology) and Dr. Téofilo Espada-Brignoni (visiting assistant professor of Psychology) organized a panel with Asher Ruck ’22 and Ka’Dae Brockington ’22 at the 42nd Annual conference at the Organization for the Study of Language, Communication, and Gender.

Their panel, “Producing Music and Masculinities: A Transdisciplinary Dismantling,” interrogated the ways in which masculinities are constructed and reified in popular culture. Specifically, this engaging discussion examined multiple genres of music through the lens of both anthropology and social psychology. The conversation was predicated on the intersectional construction of masculinities, with particular attention to race and ethnicity, class, and sexuality.

Working for Diversity in STEM Fields

Last October, Dr. Kim Landsbergen (assistant professor of Biology and Environmental Science) attended a National Science Foundation-funded workshop “Transdisciplinary Research on Incivility in STEM Contexts” at the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana.

The workshop brought together researchers to address various issues that collectively create challenging work environments for diverse populations in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields including disrespect, microaggression, ostracization, intimidation, rudeness, abuse, victimization, gaslighting, exclusion from social networks, etc.

“Directly acknowledging these patterns also addresses the fact that the ‘STEM pipeline for increasing diversity’ is a pipe where women, POC, LGBTQIA, and other diverse people exit that pipeline all the time as a result of these incivilities and implicit biases tolerated in STEM departments and Higher Ed in general,” Landsbergen says.

Landsbergen has been a member of the Association for Women in Science since 1994, and works to mentor and advocate for equity, inclusion, and diversity in environmental sciences and natural resource management.

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A panel of faculty, students, and staff presented the Women’s History Month Townhall, “Women Speak,” hosted by the Coretta Scott King Center.

Left to right: Cynthia Dunlevy, Kim Landsbergen, Mary Ann Davis, Jennifer Knickerbocker, Mila Cooper, Ashanti Walker ’22, Feroz Sayre ’22, Susanne Hashim, and Ashley Matias-Matos ’22.

Panelist from the Coretta Scott King Center Town Hall, “The HispanicLatinx Experiences at Antioch College,” organized as part of Hispanic-Latinx Heritage Month. Left to right: Téofilo Espada-Brignoni, Dieder Franco, Kensy Zelaya Sabillon ’21, Ashley Matias-Matos ’22, Maria Ramirez ’22, and Catalina Jordan Alvarez.

The Struggle for a Better World In August 2019, the American Political Science Association (APSA), the world’s leading political science professional organization, held its Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Dr. Dean Snyder, assistant Professor of Political Economy, played a key role in organizing the meeting as program chair of the New Political Science Division—one of 49 specialized divisions that make up the APSA. The New Political Science Division’s mission is to make the study of politics relevant to “the struggle for a better world” by supporting scholarship that reflects a commitment to progressive social change. In August 2018, the New Political Science Division elected Dean Snyder as its 2019 program chair.

“Being selected as a program chair was a real honor,” Snyder told The Antiochian. “It put me in position to create platforms for academic debate on some of the core political, social, and ecological challenges facing us today.”

The theme of the 2019 meeting of the APSA was “Populism and Privilege,” which covered issues like the rise of rightwing populism and the politics of identity. Snyder was well-suited for the task, having published a co-authored article in the journal New Political Science on corporate media coverage of the rise of the Tea Party in 2012.

“Since the initial burst of right-wing populism in the late-2000s, one of the most important developments has been the global far-right’s push to roll back environmental regulations and transform government institutions to accelerate the exploitation of the natural world,” Snyder said. “Trump’s efforts to weaken the EPA and Bolsonaro’s opening of the Amazon to transnational agribusiness are two stark examples.”

Snyder reviewed over 100 academic paper and panel proposals to construct the New Political Science Division’s conference program, which ultimately included 18 panel presentations and roundtable discussions on themes like “Race, Class,

and Identity in the Age of Trump,” “Social Justice and Community Empowerment in Divided Times, “Political Socialization in the Age of Digital Media,” and “Populist Politics in the Anthropocene.”

Dean Snyder joined the Antioch College faculty in 2015 and teaches courses on the politics of global capitalism, international relations, and political ecology. His dissertation, Commercial Capital and the Political Economy of Agricultural Overproduction, which examines the political-economic development of industrial agriculture, was honored with the New Political Science Dissertation Award in 2016.

Members of the Black Student Union (BSU) cooked a potluck dinner and shared a meal with members of the Yellow Springs Senior Citizens Center. This event was organized by Chris Chavers ’22.

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PostcardsFromCo-op Co-op is a critical part of an Antioch Education: Antiochians remember their Co-ops as formativelearning experiences, where learning happens on the job, and, most importantly, gaining life-skills and resiliency in confronting the real world.

Art, Interview, Translations

By Sarah Tibble ’22 When I first thought of working for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the idea seemed daunting. I could only really imagine what would come forward for my very first Co-op.

My employers proceeded to tell me that I would be splitting my time 50/50 between the two of them. One is an Antioch alum, Marc Mazurovsky ’77, who focuses on Art Restitution and making a database in order to consolidate all the information out there and make it as accessible to the public as possible, in order to educate and help those Jewish families who have yet to see their losses accounted for.

My other was with the Oral History Collections Manager, Noemi Szekely-Popescu, who works with a plethora of people internationally in order to collect and record people’s stories from World War II, specifically those that involve the Holocaust.

“Never Again.” That is the mission statement encompassing the purpose of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. When you walk through each instalment in the museum, “Never Again” is plastered all over the building; it is wired into the very foundations of the beams that hold it up. Most of the work that I did was to work towards making information known to my superiors, which in turn would make it the information available to the general public. This access to knowledge embodies the entire mission statement, because knowledge is power. If one learns from their mistakes, as well as other incredibly unfortunate events—such as the Holocaust—one would hope that it would never happen again. However, despite the hopeful undertones of “Never Again,” the museum has made an effort to consider the repetitions of genocide that have happened across the world. Currently, there is an exhibit on the genocide in Syria.

14 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

I did many things at USHMM, but most notably, I performed clean-up work for the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) project, which is the previously mentioned database that Marc Mazurovsky helped formulate (www.errproject.org/jeudepaume). I also worked on a project consisting of translating Italian Government documents pertaining to a group of Jewish refugees during World War II. I was also in contact with—what we like to call witnesses—those who saw the atrocities committed by the Nazis but were not all the way involved.

While in DC, I had the pleasure of meeting Sarah Weddington, the woman

Sarah Tibble ’22 with Sarah Weddington

who fought Roe v. Wade, the landmark SCOTUS case.

I also walked through the National Gallery of Art and looked for all the art that the Nazis stole during World War II. This excursion was particularly eventful, as I was going through the museum, looking for the titles that were on the list of names I got from previous research. I was proud! I wanted to share what I was doing, thinking that the employees of the NGA would know the provenance of the paintings housed between those walls. I approached one of the monitors/guards in the room I was in and I told him I was looking for the looted art. The man sud-

denly got a very offended look on his face, as if I just accused him of looting the art.

Learning to Organize at the Transgender Law Center

By Chris Chavers ’22 On my Co-op with the Transgender Law Center in Oakland, CA, I’ve come to learn that all skill sets are needed to become an effective organizer. I’ve learned that you don’t call the trains here “the bart” but “BART.” I’ve learned that a street without hills doesn’t exist in San Francisco. Let me tell you about a typical day….

I wake up around 7:30 AM every morning because my body is still on Eastern Time. I take the muni up to 24th street and walk down to Mission Station. I’ve learned that buses are my friends and so are Uber Eats apps. From there, I get to Oakland and walk about three minutes to my job. Every Monday, I have a conference meeting. Normally I get my assignments through emails and get to choose what time I get my lunch.

The field of communications and development at the Transgender Law Center was fast-paced. Every day we worked on a strategy plan for social media, content to push out regarding new information, and ways we could create materials to inspire others to keep pushing in their lives, as well as for others to want to help marginalized groups. Most of my days for TLC were filled with those projects—finding the inspiring people, events, content, and writing about it.

I worked with TLC’s social media platforms to communicate various messages that incorporate our efforts for the survival of trans lives and magnifying the voices of trans people of color. Our mission statement reads: “TLC does what it takes to keep transgender and gender noncon-

Chris Chavers ’22 (center) with April Wolford ’92 and Colette Jackson at the UC Berkeley One IT Summit 2019 focused on diversity and inclusion. forming people alive, thriving, and fighting for liberation.”

During my time there, I worked on legal cases, developed language for a number of TLC press releases, and facilitated meetings. I’ve also written action plans for my role here and invitational forms for a congressional hearing. Learning the foundational tools of nonprofits and how they function has helped me develop new skills and understanding.

The highlight of my job was been the blog post/article I wrote for TLC for “Arianna Lint,” a trans woman of color from south Florida. The blog post is being posted at the end of June and I’m very proud of my work on it. I read a report that contained information for our division of the Protect Trans Health campaign that Arianna had worked on. This report dived into the numbers behind discrimination in the healthcare field that trans people, trans people of color and non-binary people face. From this report, I crafted an article on its content and highlighting Arianna’s work in this area. She’s one of the leaders in the department Positively Trans and has her own center in south Florida helping trans folks of color living with HIV. Be-

ing able to read her compelling and inspiring story and then write a piece about her was amazing. From learning WordPress and how to publish on the web, now I am inspired to start my own website to share information to folks back home!

This work intertwines with my goals of becoming an activist and organizer. This Co-op gave me the toolkit I need to continue my dreams and goals for my life.

Empowering the Immigrant Community

By Kensy Zelaya Sabillon ’21 As a second-year student with an interest in immigration law, I decided to do my Co-op at RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services), located in Houston, TX. RAICES is a nonprofit organization that provides free and low-cost legal services to immigrants and refugees in Texas.

RAICES’ holistic objective is to make the THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 15

Postcards(cont.) immigrant community stronger by providing them with legal aid, education, advocacy, and social services. RAICES is divided into three major departments: legal services, social services, and outreach.

My official title at RAICES was Multidisciplinary Intern, which gives me the enormous advantage of working in various departments. I had the chance to work directly with the attorneys or legal assistants. I also got to engage in outreach to the Houston community because the office is relatively new to this city. I think that having the flexibility of rotating throughout the different departments gave me an advantage of learning how each area works and the effectiveness of collaborative efforts, as well as how a nonprofit runs.

My role as an intern at RAICES was to assist the attorneys with their cases or help the outreach program. In outreach, we gave presentations to immigrants about their rights or we tailored a presentation depending on their needs. I helped the legal program by writing Country Conditions of the Northern Triangle countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras).

These are research documents specifying conditions in each country that may help to build the legal case for asylum.

One of the attorneys in charge of the affirmative cases (asylum seekers) assigned me the project of working on the asylum-seeking applicant’s personal statement. I was to explore how could he make his claim for persecution stronger.

A personal statement is a document that is written by a person that gives a detailed description of how specific situations in their country of origin makes them fear for their life.

I looked in his personal statement and saw keywords that represented current issues back in his country of origin. I did research to understand his claim. As part of this project, I read articles that talk about asylum and how attorneys can help their clients in making a stronger claim. I also learned how cognitive psychology connects with the personal statement when presented to the judge. When I had a good amount of knowledge about this, I started highlighting and annotating the most important part of his claim. Addi16 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

Kensy Zelaya Sabillon ’21 tionally, I translated (Spanish to English) all of the legal documents of this individual because every document presented in court as evidence need to be in English.

As part of the outreach program, I sent many emails to different institutions offering the services that RAICES provide. Another role was to call clients and ask questions regarding their cases or to schedule appointments. These are just some of the various tasks that I did during the day within different departments.

My day-to-day in the office was always different. Some days were slower than others, but I always got to work on my projects. My day started at 7:30 AM usu-

ally by doing translations or research on current conditions in different countries. Afterwards, clients started to arrive, which is usually one of the best parts of the day. Lunchtime at RAICES is a very harmonious experience because we usually all have lunch together at the same time around a table. Sometimes, we have “the question of the day,” which was usually a question about our favorite thing to do or childhood. In this way, we got to know each other better and build a stronger team. Occasionally, we have presentations like “How to do Strategic Planning,” which for me was very enriching to learn this in-depth from a nonprofit organiza-

tion. My afternoons were not long and I usually return to my project work.

A big reason of why I worked in RAICES is because I believe that immigrants are a major part of the United States. Over the years, the environment has become even more hostile for immigrants, and I wanted to do something to help. As a professional career, I specifically want to pursue immigration law. What RAICES stands for motivated me to feel that I am in the right place. It fit my educational interests perfectly. I got to see people from Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East together in the same place, and I’ve never been exposed to such a diversified environment before. I found it fascinating. Helping with the legal department gave me first-hand experience on the procedures to follow and how to treat the clients. I also read articles that are recommended by attorneys or go to presentations that are extremely educational regarding law procedures and how a successful nonprofit works.

Learning the Law

By Elinore Hendrickson ’22 I’m a first year student working on myself and my self-designed major. I’m studying Economics, Law, and History because I feel compelled to help people in whichever way I can, most successfully.

My major will also include a range of artistic studies, because I’m interested in all forms of art. I haven’t decided yet on my ideal career path—I think I want to be either a lawyer or a professor.

Admittedly, I was afraid of going to Chicago for my first Co-op. My hometown, Fort Morgan, CO, has a population of 12,000 people and it’s the biggest city you’ll find in an 80-mile radius. We had about two dozen restaurants, a dozen small schools, and a Walmart. I knew my entire high school graduating class by name. In comparison, Chicago was more than a little daunting. But I had nothing to worry about.

My Co-op at the Law Office of Phillip Brigham, LLC, gave me an incomparably

insightful look into the work and life I’d be signing up for as a lawyer. Phillip has been so patient in answering every question I could come up with. With him, I’ve seen six different courthouses in Chicagoland.

I’ve met more than a dozen clients with a range of legal problems.

I’m now able to easily research past cases and ascertain their relevancy and use to the cases we’re working on. Running over to the Richard J. Daley Center to check if anything new has been filed without our knowledge or to print out a client’s previous court order comes as easily as ordering the coffee I get everyday from the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street.

Meeting other attorneys or judges doesn’t even faze me anymore. After some severe phone-call anxiety, I don’t bat an eye at answering the phone when Phil’s out or in a meeting. I take great pride, actually, in sounding like the world’s most competent secretary.

My employer, Phillip Brigham, is a graduate of Antioch College himself, Class of ’97. The Co-op at his office has been available for a few years, and he’s had a student in the position nearly every quarter. Phil is a family law and criminal defense attorney. He helps people with divorce, prenuptial agreements, and to get more parental responsibilities or time with their kids. Some of our clients were trying to change their child support or maintenance orders. We even worked on a case of international kidnapping! As well as all the family law cases, Phil has been helping clients—alleged criminals— with cases of drug possessions, aggravated discharge or possession of a firearm, and domestic battery to name a few. He’s really good at making sure clients understand what they’re charged with and what he’s doing to help them. He ensures that no one ever signs anything they haven’t read or don’t understand. He explains to clients—and to me—what any new terms mean whenever they come up (because lawyers speak a different form of English than the rest of us). I’ve also seen him give people much kinder deals than what his average hourly rate is, because as he says, “people usually only get the justice they can afford.” He knows people deserve better than just what they can afford.

After a couple weeks during which I was adjusting and learning the ropes, I began each morning writing a to-do list for the day. It always started with whatever, if anything, I hadn’t finished from the day before. Then I’d go into Phil’s office and he would tell me all he needs me to do. Some days, it was one or two projects that would take me all day—researching a very specific case or tracking payments throughout 10 years of bank statements. The days I liked more started with a to-do list of half a dozen or more tasks, which I’d finish by lunch.

After lunch, I’d ask for another to-do list, please. Some days I would run errands, like delivering a courtesy copy to a judge’s clerk on one of the top floors of the Daley Center or bringing documents to another lawyer in the Loop. Anytime I had questions, or whenever I wanted to not work, I could go into Phil’s office and sit and ask questions.

As time went on, more and more of my questions focused on the ethical loopholes that became apparent to me. “What stops attorneys from stealing money from their clients, since they have all their information?” “Who pays for judges’ election campaigns?” “Are police officers required to turn on their body-worn cameras?” (Respectively: nothing; they can steal from their clients easily; lawyers’ offices hoping for an edge in court; nope, they can turn them off whenever they want.) These questions and more have all the same answers: corruption, corruption, and money. This is particularly alarming because, while these facts are unsurprising, they aren’t hidden or covered up at all. If that level of gross corruption is so out in the open, what do they bother to hide?

I’ve learned so much about the U.S. justice system while in Chicago, and it’s been a grim lesson. Phil does his best to remedy the situation but the trouble is, being a lawyer is likely to make one pretty jaded and pessimistic. He did a banger job sharing that attitude with me; I’m in agreement with him on most things these days.

Phil seems to accept that he can only help individuals, so he focuses on that. I think we do a pretty good job in that respect.

Alone, we can only change so much.

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 17

Mound

The

Catching up with Recent Grads

Alana Guth ’18 works for Mills College in the Office of Institutional Advancement where she is also pursuing her Master’s of Business Administration and Management. Alana has also been awarded a Net Impact Plant-Based Food Fellowship to work on building community through cultivating food.

Rose Hardesty ’18 is teaching at a Sudbury Model School in Austin, TX. Mitch Goth ’17 recently completed his 25th full-length novel, and his first traditionally published work and first international publication. Released October 12, 2019 by Castrum Press, Tether is partially inspired by Mitch’s time at Antioch and experiences post-graduation.

Malka Berro ’18 is a Policy Associate working on federal legislation and grassroots advocacy at the National Council for Behavioral Health in Washington, DC. Her work includes supporting efforts to increase access to mental health and addiction care nationwide, strengthening the workforce, improving behavioral health parity, and expanding access to life-saving Mental Health First Aid. Malka will be speaking at the National Council's annual conference in June, and her team is and is working to bring hundreds of mental health and addictions advocates for “Hill Day,” (thenationalcouncil.org/hillday) the largest behavioral health advocacy event of the year.

Michelle Fuji ’17 is a Litigation Paralegal at Outten Golden, a New York law firm that advocates for workplace fairness.

She’s also become involved with the Sunrise Movement.

Lauren Gjessing ’17 is working on land preservation and educational efforts at the Tecumseh Land Trust in Yellow Springs. Lauren had previously been with the Land Trust as student as part of the Miller Fellow program.

Timothy Grant ’18 is working as a technician for the Miami Valley Educational Computer Association (MVECA).

18 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

government and civic organizations, and public and private educational institutions with the common goal of protecting, restoring, preserving, and promoting the environmental and agricultural resources of an 18 county region in southwest Ohio.

Keegan Smith-Nichols ’17 is pursuing a Master’s in Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is also involved in a small cooperative food-producing garden using skills learned on the Antioch Farm.

Angel Nalubega ’18 is teaching at the St. James School, a middle school in Philadelphia, leading and supporting subjects such as Religion, Art, and Social Studies.

She also leads students in the “Activism Lab,” where students examine issues and learn how to respond.

Eric Rhodes ’16 completed a Masters degree in History at Miami University and is now teaching history at the University of Angers in France. He plans to pursue a PhD in History.

Maya Canaztuj ’17 works for the Miami Conservancy District as a Hydro Tech to protect flood plains and water quality in the Dayton area. She also continues to serve as the Membership Coordinator for Gem City Market in her free time.

Maya was also selected along with Gabby Loomis-Amrhein ’16 for The Partners for the Environment 2019 Environmental Leaders Program. The Partners for the Environment is an alliance of environmental organizations,

Taylor Spratt ’17 is working for Teach for America as Development Manager cultivating and stewarding donors, as well as strategic planning, and designing engagement opportunities and events in support of educational equity. She is also a Graduate Research Assistant for “Innovating Gender Monitoring in the Comparative and International Education Society” at Florida International University.

Soleil Sykes ’18 is a Staff Assistant for the United States Senate Armed Services Committee.

Greta Treistman ’17 is enrolled in the Master of Library and Information Science program at the University of Washington and working as a reference assistant at the Seattle Central College library.

Seed Diversity, Food Justice The professional practice areas of Beth Bridgeman, assistant professor of Cooperative Education, are informed by community engagement and student-centered experiential learning pedagogy. She teaches courses in co-constructed learning, agrarian systems, reskilling and resilience, plant medicine, seed-saving, and harvest preservation, utilizing the Antioch Farm and campus as a learning laboratory.

Beth’s courses and work often engage in the growing movement to reclaim and renew food systems—challenging the industrial paradigm of how we grow our food, and addressing key issues of human health, resilience, ecological justice, and social justice.

memories associated with the saving of this seed?

Students identified, interviewed and archived the stories of seed-savers and those who are working to re-establish a new seed

Interviewees were identified through partnerships with the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, and Seed Savers Exchange. “[But] someone needs to keep up an old method if it’s not to be lost; some young person needs to get interested and begin the life’s work of mastering the craft; be it botanical art or baking salt-raising bread or making saddles. Like life forms themselves, human crafts must be continually renewed, regrown inside

By Beth Bridgeman “Re-establishing a Seed Commons through Oral History Methodology: Capturing the Story of Seed ” is a research project that provides a venue for preserving knowledge of the nearly lost art of saving seed while grounding students in an epistemology of hope as they document change-makers who are charting a course forward into the great uncertainty of the Anthropocene. It highlights storytelling and mindful listening as a means of transferring knowledge from one generation to the next, and engages students in a high-impact pedagogy within a community of practice.

In fall of 2019, an advanced level eleven-week course, “Seed Sovereignty and Citizen Action,” was incorporated into the project.

When we save seed, we are saving the important germplasm, or genetic material, within that seed. But it is critical also, to save the story of that seed. Who are those working at the forefront of seed sovereignty today? How are they saving seed, and why? What are their stories? Why do they save this particular seed? Where did it come from? Was it passed down through their family? Which ancestor passed it down? What mattered to those ancestors?

What did they hope for? For how many generations has it been saved? How far back can the seed be traced? What are the

commons, thereby utilizing oral history and experiential methodology in their own learning, and making available to the public these impactful strategies of seed mentors and seed elders who are “fighting the good fight.”

a living person, or they become obsolete, extinct, within a generation.”* * Howsare, Erika. “The Magnificence of Seeing.” Taproot, 14 Nov. 2017.

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 19

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program strengthens the College’s commitment to providing an affordable liberal arts education to all its students, while also creating more opportunities for them to learn through work at the College, in the community, and in the world.

Work Readiness According to a recent study by the Lumina Foundation, fewer than 15% of Americans believe a college education will provide students the skills they need in their careers. The study further found that just 11% of business leaders strongly agreed that students graduate from colleges with the necessary skills and competencies for professional success. Even so, executives and hiring managers believe that there is value to the accumulation of knowledge and development of critical thinking skills gained by obtaining a liberal arts degree.

There’s a clear disconnect between the inherent value of a liberal arts education and the ability to apply that education outside the classroom. As a liberal arts college that has, for 170 years, encouraged its students to use their education to win some victory for humanity—to use what they have learned—Antioch is uniquely suited to bridge this gap.

The disconnect is between the knowledge, and the knowhow.

22 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

“Colleges and universities used to be solely centers of knowledge,” says President Tom Manley. “But that model has changed. What’s critically important now is not what you know, but what you do with what you know.”

A survey by Hart Research Associates shows how much employers value college experience combined with applied learning experiences: 93 percent of executives and 94 percent of hiring managers say that they would be more likely to hire a recent graduate who has held an internship or apprenticeship with a company or organization. They also value the completion of other types of applied and project-based learning experiences.

But, at Antioch, we don’t see a liberal arts education as a mere means to a remunerative end for our students. Work experience is a vital part of our conception of a liberal arts education, one that is inextricable from the whole. As Associate Director of Admission Shane Creepingbear ’08 sees it, “This isn't just about building students' résumés: It's about giving the confidence to navigate unfamiliar places, the knowledge to adapt themselves to any situation, and the self-assurance to throw themselves completely into whatever they do.”

This is what sets an Antioch College education apart. Our trailblazing Co-op pro-

gram is at the heart of Antioch College Works, building even more transformational educational opportunities into the student experience.

“We see work as a form of education,” President Manley explains. It's one of Antioch’s foundational principles. “So this isn’t a renunciation of a liberal arts education—it’s exactly the opposite. At Antioch, we understand the power of applying the liberal arts outside the classroom, to help students answer the most important questions that human beings have.”

The faculty has continued to construct courses around experiential learning and engaging students in research projects.

And beyond the classroom, Antioch College Works guarantees work placement on campus or in the Yellow Springs community. What’s more, the program offers all students the possibility of post-baccalaureate Co-op placement (or “Launch Co-op”) to help bridge students’ higher education career with their post-graduate life. In the third or fourth year, students can also receive fellowships to support an international Co-op.

“Antioch College has been developing and refining its Co-op approach for 100 years,” explains Manley. “We know it works because we have the testimonials from thousands of alumni and their employers to prove it. That’s why we believe

no school is better equipped to anchor transformational learning through the experience of work than is ours.”

“Co-op was a big draw, and has been fundamental to my experience,” says Samuel Edwards ’18, echoing the sentiment of generations of Antiochians. “Every Co-op changed and challenged me in ways I didn't expect. They made me the person I am today.”

International Engagement A 2018 report by the Institute of International Education notes that the number of students studying abroad continues to grow, and that 16% of those seeking bachelor’s degrees study abroad at some point in their academic careers. While the College does not currently have a typical “study abroad” program, Co-op provides students with meaningful opportunities for immersive experience abroad. And, Antioch College Works guarantees that students will have the ability to put their skills—gained through the College’s proficiency-based Language and Culture program—into practice through an internationally engaged Co-op placement. Fellowships will be provided to qualifying students to offset travel and living costs.

Cost and Access Affordability is widely understood to be the greatest barrier to higher education.

Student loan debt reached an all-time high in 2019 at $1.41 trillion, according to the credit reporting agency Experian. That's a 33% increase since 2014.

Antioch College Works represents a bold, action-oriented approach to addressing this issue immediately. We seek to offer true affordability and access to education, and the program will enable students to engage in the unique, life-changing experience that is an Antioch education.

“This is really geared to economic equity,” says Vice President for Enrollment and Student Success Gariot Louima. “We spent a considerable amount of time looking at not only the populations of students who have been drawn to Antioch since reopening, but also examining regional and national demographic trends. Students who come from families with little to no income enter four-year, liberal arts colleges at rates much lower than those who come from families with greater economic privilege. We wanted to serve our current students better—and we wanted to signal to families up front that

we are committed, in a very real way, to improving and ensuring access.”

To enable access to higher education, all students eligible for the Pell Grant will receive full-tuition Antioch College Works Scholarships thanks to generous donor support. Further, the College is commitmented to provide every student with the maximum need- and merit-based aid possible, regardless of Pell Grant eligibility.

According to Dr. Mickey McDonald, president of the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA), Antioch College is the first institution in the GLCA to offer free tuition for students eligible for Pell Grants.

Among private liberal arts schools in Ohio, Antioch College is also the first to make this commitment to Pell-eligible students.

Accessibility to all students, regardless of economic circumstance, is of utmost importance to the College. A recent report from Education Reform Now has highlighted that many schools in Ohio have lower-than-average enrollment of students eligible for the Pell Grant. Not Antioch:

About Pell

The Pell Grant program, funded by the federal government, is the largest source of need-based grants for postsecondary education. Financial need is determined by the US Department of Education. According to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Pell students are an expanding demographic who are “more likely to be older, a member of a racial or ethnic minority group, financially independent (seeking work), and a first-generation college student, and more likely to attend school full time and throughout the academic year.”

According to an Education Reform Now report about Pell Grant-eligible students in Ohio, “Some 31 percent of college students in America received a Pell Grant in 2018. The vast majority come from households with less than $60,000 per year in income. In Ohio, almost 30 percent of first-time, full-time students attending four-year colleges between 2015 and 2017 were Pell Grant recipients. Among Ohio colleges, the median Pell student enrollment rate was 36 percent.”

65% of students currently enrolled at Antioch College are Pell eligible.

Around 73% of our students are eligible for the Pell Grant, and our commitment to ensuring their access to quality higher education is reflected in the new Antioch College Works scholarships.

Beyond tuition, access to the international engagement opportunities is also considered. “Even with financial aid, many students from low-income families are unable to cover the additional costs associated with international experiences,” says Vice President for Academic Affairs Kevin McGruder. “The Antioch College Works initiative will address this financial barrier, providing all students with the opportunity to participate in international experiences.”

It Works We understand that higher education still provides transformational socioeconomic mobility for low-income and under-resourced students. That’s why Antioch College Works as a program—not only with full-tuition scholarships, but also with work experience and learning in and out of the classroom—to provide the type of education students and their families are looking for. And what kind of education is that?

One that is flexible, applicable to the challenges we face now, and able to prepare students for whatever work in the world will look like in the future.

“The current struggle for viability in higher education is in no small part a crisis of public confidence in the value of a college degree, particularly one in the liberal arts,” says President Manley. “At Antioch, we are determined to demonstrate the value on both counts. The Antioch College Works program catalytically combines inspiring academic study with job experiences both on-and-off campus, both before graduation and after. Students graduate not just with a degree, but with a résumé.”

Asher Ruck ’22, currently on Co-op in the College’s Office of Admission, sums up the appeal of Antioch College Works, adding, “When I think about Antioch College Works, I’m excited. It doesn't just make it financially easier and less stressful for me to get a great liberal arts education, but it enriches that education, too. It gives me work experience, and it also makes sure Antioch is accessible to people who might not have been able to afford a college education otherwise.”

Read more about Antioch College Works at antiochcollege.edu/works THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 23

It’s

a 20 mile drive from Antioch College’s campus to the Dayton Correctional Institute (DCI), a state women’s prison just west of the city for which it’s named. If you know your way, and if there’s no traffic on US-35 going into Dayton, you can make it in just under half an hour. Even if there is traffic— and even if you somehow miss that last right onto Germantown Road, too—the trip won’t take you more than 40 minutes. It’s not far away.

Driving there, you pass through a drably uniform landscape—the sub-suburban desolation typical of this corner of the Midwest: Taco Bell, strip mall, stucco church, strip mall, billboard advertis-

ANTIOCH INEXTREM 24 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

MIS

By Ben Zitsman ’20 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 25

KaDae Brockington ’21, Dr. Jennifer Grubbs, Mary Evans ’20, and Adam Green ’20

ing the services of a personal injury attorney, his grin as rapacious and mirthless as an anglerfish’s. Then the buildings of downtown Dayton, abrupt and unnaturally stout. Then you’re there.

You don’t feel you’re far from home.

Yet, unless you’ve had the misfortune of intimate acquaintance with our nation’s penal system, that’s exactly where you are: You’re about as far from home as a person can get. And you’ve arrived before you could even finish your podcast.

There are many profoundly strange things about prisons, and about the system they’re built to serve. This is just the first.

DCI is surrounded by two fences approximately ten feet apart. Each fence is topped with a spool of concertina wire which, when viewed at close range, looks jagged and dentate, almost medical. In the interval between the two fences, the ground is covered with a snarl of the same, so to walk across this interval is to, effectively, forfeit any skin beneath one’s knees. The fences’ sole aperture is covered by a gatehouse.

It’s through this gatehouse that anyone who wishes to enter or exit the prison under protection of the law must pass, and it’s through this gatehouse that, in the fall of 2015, Emily Steinmetz led a group of eight students.

26 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

Inside-Out courses bring traditional college students and incarcerated students together in jails and prisons for semester-long learning.

This was class. Steinmetz was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Antioch College; the students were her students.

They had enrolled in a course called Inside-Out: Race, Gender, and Citizenship.

This was its first meeting. Class was to be held in a visiting room inside the prison.

Inside. In the sense that I’m using it, there are as many definitions of this word as there are prisons, which means at least 6,125 definitions of “inside” in the United States. At DCI, though, “inside” means this: behind the fences, through the gatehouse, behind the twin glass doors of the main entrance—a glass both pitch black and perfectly reflective: just as suited to obscuring what’s behind it as to revealing what’s before it—through a metal detector, and then behind several sets of steel security doors, the purpose of which would

be perfectly clear even if they didn’t open with a reluctant pneumatic sigh and shut with a malicious clanking finality.

In other words, no class offered in Antioch’s 160-plus-year history had ever been quite so inconveniently located as Inside-Out. But in addition to the eight Antioch students enrolled in the class, there were eight incarcerated women enrolled; and the inconvenience of having to go somewhere pales in comparison to the inconvenience of having to stay somewhere; and this is especially true when one is compelled to stay there by heavily armed guards. And modes of inconvenience aside: Where else were they going to have it? Of course it was in prison. That was the point.

Inside-Out wasn’t just a single class, after all. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange

Program, operated out of Philadelphia’s Temple University, is an entire initiative to offer classes like the one Antioch did in the fall of 2015. According to the program’s website, “Inside-Out courses bring traditional college students and incarcerated students together in jails and prisons for semester-long learning.” To achieve this, Inside-Out trains college professors—over 900 at their last count—to organize and facilitate classes in prisons. Steinmetz was one such professor.

So, Inside-Out was far from unprecedented, then. But that didn’t guarantee the success of this particular iteration of the program. After all, Antioch is unlike most schools that participate in Inside-Out, and DCI—well, all prisons essentially operate as fiefdoms: If a prison’s administrators don’t feel like offering a particular program to prisoners, then (with the exception of certain programs it would be unconstitutional to withhold) they don’t have to, and they certainly don’t have to explain why. Innumerable things could have prevented Inside-Out from taking root at Antioch and at DCI. None did, though.

can get there. Listen to ice hitting a glass: You can hear the bright, unsentimental music of precious objects—bone china, good silver, blown glass, and rare coins.

Ice is delicate, ethereal. Improperly cared for, it simply disappears. It seems like it could be rare.

At DCI, it is. Containers lined with trash bags and scrounged bits of foam are jury-rigged to keep stores of it from melting. People trade their phone cards for ice, trade the odd illicit cigarette, trade food from the commissary—vast amounts of food; the exchange rate is abysmal.

Getting ice, keeping ice, rationing ice: At DCI, people spend entire still, summer days thinking about nothing else.

This all sounds a little like a rejected Twilight Zone episode: “Imagine, if you will, a world where ice is worth its weight in gold…” But no. It can just get really, really hot in prison. That’s all there is to it.

It can get really hot, and the incarcerated cannot control the temperature of their surroundings: They have no thermostats to adjust, no windows to open, no fans to plug in. Instead, sometimes, they have ice. And when they do, they hold on to it.

Like ice, for example. Whatever ice may mean to you, it means more to someone incarcerated at DCI. Distributed twice daily, and only on days when the heat is truly intolerable, ice is coveted, hoarded, traded, and fretted-over as much as any valuable commodity on the outside. More, even.

This may be hard to imagine, but you

Mary Evans ’20 took Steinmetz’s inaugural Inside-Out class. When I talked to her this week, during a break from her job as a producer at WYSO, she was excited: On the basis of her work for the radio station, she’d just been offered a job working with Jonathan Platt, a Yellow Springs resident whose storytelling project, Story Chain,

helps incarcerated people in southwest Ohio share their stories with their children. For Evans, what started as a workstudy position had turned into the promise of post-graduation employment doing something she loves. It’s a quintessentially Antioch success story.

“And, you know, I owe it all to Inside-Out,” she told me. “That’s where it started.”

For any other Antioch student, “it” would clearly refer to her keen interest in prison justice. For Evans, it means something a little different: It means her being an Antioch student in the first place. When she took Inside-Out in the fall of 2015, she was an inside student, incarcerated at DCI. At the time, Evans was serving an eightyear sentence for a drug-related offense.

She already had an interest in prison justice, then—imprisonment will do that to a person—albeit in a somewhat unfocused, oblique way.

“When I got eight years for a drug offense, it really threw me for a loop,” she explained. “I understood I’d committed a crime, and understood it was a crime that deserved punishment. But it seemed so arbitrary.” According to Evans, Professor Steinmetz gave these notions focus, context, and direction.

“The very first book she assigned us was Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis, and it blew my mind. I was raised in a rural community—in Gallipolis, Ohio.

They didn’t teach me about Angela Davis in school.”

The readings Evans encountered in Inside-Out were immediately relevant to her.

In reading The Communist Manifesto, she saw how the concept of alienation applied to incarceration—how her punishment was imposed by the state and rendered to the state, rather than to the people affected by her actions. In Wendell Berry’s The Pleasure of Eating, she found an explanation of just why the poured concrete-andbrushed-steel environment of prison felt so unnatural. “Everything we read was like that,” Evans said. “It was like it was written about us, except it was written in the past, by people who never even knew us.”

It didn’t take long for Evans to apply what she was learning in class to her life as an incarcerated woman. “Even as the class was still being taught, I started taking on radical approaches to my work in the prison—like a true Antiochian,” she told me.

“And, because of that, I actually got a lot THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 27

of things done inside that they said would never happen.”

As a result of her work in Inside-Out, and with the help of Steinmetz and several of the course’s outside students, Evans founded The Symbolic Interruption, a newspaper written and published by women incarcerated at DCI. The idea of a prison newspaper had been proposed before, but never to much effect. Apparently, DCI admin all but told the interested parties they’d have better luck proposing a Free Guns for Prisoners program. But, Evans said, “[Inside-Out] taught us how to be activists—how to protest, how to advocate for ourselves. Without it, The Symbolic Interruption never would have existed.”

Most of all, Evans told me, Inside-Out retaught her something incarceration made her forget: She had agency. “It made me realize not only can I learn the things I’m taught, but I can be them. I can embody them. I can enact these changes.” When the class ended, Evans, with the help of Steinmetz, applied to Antioch. She was accepted. Within a week of her release from prison, she was on Antioch’s campus, enrolled in classes as a full-time student.

“Without Inside-Out, I’d be back in prison, or I’d be dead,” Evans said. Sitting across from her, at a picnic table behind WYSO, it was hard to picture this.

She’d just been talking about her plans for the future, gesturing enthusiastically all the while. She seemed, more than anything else, to be relentlessly alive. Maybe it was hyperbole. Maybe she knew just what I wanted to hear. For a little while, I allowed myself to entertain this cynical line of thought. But when, at the interview’s end, she said “This program saves lives.

It saved mine,” it was with enough conviction to render all follow-up questions moot. I turned off my tape recorder, and thanked her for her time.

The mirrors in cells are not mirrors at all, but highly polished stainless steel, usually just a flat surface of the combined sink-toilet fixture, in which you can’t see any of your face’s features, but only the dim, fuzzy shape of a face. This is strange, too, and I could write about it, possibly dragooning it into metonymic service, if I wanted to explore what incarceration does to a person’s identity. Or the baffling ubiquity of a prepackaged pastry called the Sweet Texas Honey Bun in prison commissaries. Or how prison is never truly dark, and nev28 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

er truly light either. And these are just the first examples that came to mind. The modes of strangeness are, in prisons, basically innumerable. But to focus on these discrete instantiations is to ignore a bigger fact—ultimately, I’d argue, the fact of incarceration—which is: the US penal system is incredibly weird. Not the prisons, not the features of the prisons, but the system itself. When someone has committed a crime in the United States, we respond by putting them in a building with other people who’ve committed crimes, and not letting them leave. This has been shown, in numerous academic studies, to have essentially no therapeutic or rehabilitative value.

Consequently, many people have sought, and seek now, to reform the system, or at least ameliorate its malign effects. Inside-Out tries to do this, and does so by making uneasy peace with the system. It doesn’t actively seek to dismantle the system, anyway. It exists within it.

Some people do actively seek to dismantle the system. They call themselves, aptly enough, prison abolitionists. Angela Davis is one such person: Her book, Are Prisons Obsolete? is a foundational text in the prison abolition movement.

It’s largely responsible for introducing the idea that it is possible, and desirable, to abolish prisons entirely. With what prison abolitionists hope to replace them varies. Many aren’t even sure. They simply believe there must be a better way.

This is from Critical Resistance, a grassroots organization founded by Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore dedicated to the advancement of prison abolition: rom where we are now, sometimes F we can’t really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn’t just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It’s also about undoing the society we live in because the prison-industrial complex both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy.

Jennifer Grubbs, Antioch’s current Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology, has spent a lot of her time in academia working to imagine what a better way might look like. She’s also the Antioch’s current Inside-Out facilitator. This quarter, she’s teaching a class at DCI, just as Steinmetz

This program saves lives. It saved mine. did before her, and she describes herself as a prison abolitionist.

I interviewed Professor Grubbs in her office in McGregor Hall. We spoke for the better part of an hour, the first several minutes of which I spent warily eying a wall-mounted bookshelf that, it seemed to me, was precariously full. Many of the books were about the anthropology of space and place. In fact, that’s the name of the Inside-Out course she’s facilitating this quarter: “The Anthropology of Space and Place.” Though I confess I know nothing about anthropology, much less the anthropology of space and place, I found myself making inferences about Grubbs based on her office, and doing so in a way I thought seemed abstractly anthropological. There were the (very full) bookshelves.

At the wall opposite them, there was a desk, covered in papers and various open books, post-it notes jutting semaphorically from their pages. Against the far wall of the office, the windows of which looked down on the quad, there was a foldable crib. This, I knew, was sometimes inhabited by her son, Durruti, who’s named for Buenaventura Durruti, the famed Spanish anarcho-syndicalist. All in all, I thought, it seemed like the office of someone who cared deeply about her work, and had a strong ideological framework she could apply to it. In the interview that followed, this suspicion was confirmed.

“I became interested in [Inside-Out] my first quarter here,” Grubbs told me, “and, in a sense, I inherited the class from Emily Steinmetz.” When Steinmetz relocated to the DC metroplex to be closer to family, Grubbs was hired to fill the position she left vacant.

Her office, too, once belonged to Steinmetz.

But Grubbs’ interest in Inside-Out was more than just a matter of continuity.

“I came to Antioch with a deep connection to doing prison justice work, restorative justice being my own guiding politic, and prison abolition being something I felt strongly about,” she explained. “So, I kind of fused together what I felt I wanted to be doing with the way it was done at Antioch,

and then I went through the training to do that myself.”

Grubbs’ Inside-Out training took place at a men’s prison in Michigan. Despite having done fieldwork interviewing previously incarcerated people—her research centers on environmental and animal rights activists who engage in direct action, many manifestations of which are criminalized— before the training, Grubbs had never spent time in a prison before. It was a sobering experience for her.

“It’s a different reality, in prisons,” she told me. “I saw just how precariously the people there live: in these tiny, tiny cells they try to make feel like a place of home.

But they’re so clearly not a place of home, and they feel no sense of connection to their metal dresser, or their one shelf, or their bunk bed.”

The chief cause of that sense of precarity is a simple one: Incarcerated people are subjects of the state, and subject to the state—to its rules, and to the sometimes arbitrary enforcement thereof.

“I’ve actually had formerly incarcerated people come to my classes to talk about this,” Grubbs told me. “About having deep issues with their personal space now, because they were so used to the possibili-

ty of being shaken down by a CO [correctional officer].”

It’s a form of powerlessness Grubbs has, to a certain, attenuated extent, shared in feeling. “You’re brought in as a subject of the state,” she said, “because it’s the state that gave you permission to be there in the first place. So you have to not comment, and you have to be apolitical in some sense to continue to get access—even when what you’re seeing is so obviously deprivation.”

It’s a peculiar balancing act, having to shelve one’s political convictions in order to act on them. Grubbs described it to me as “decentering yourself.” To illustrate this, she described a preliminary interview with a founding member of Inside-Out. She began the interview by asking Grubbs why she was interested in facilitating Inside-Out classes.

“So, I said, ‘I am a prison abolitionist.

I’ve advocated to get people out of prison. I’ve done activism to raise awareness about conditions in prison, and I want to do this as a form of social justice.’ And when she heard that, she pretty firmly corrected me.”

It seemed this was exactly what Inside-Out wasn’t about. “She said, ‘This is not activism. Inside-Out is going inside a

prison to provide a class. If you want to be an activist, then it’s separate from this.’”

There was something a little counterintuitive about this distinction and, initially, Grubbs struggled with it. “At first, I had trouble with that. But I think the nuance Lori’s striking—and I’m learning this—is if you want them to let you in, you can’t go in there as a prison abolitionist. Very quickly, you’ll be met with bureaucratic red tape.”

Here, Grubbs paused. I looked up at her from the notebook in which I’d been scribbling interview notes. There was, it seemed, shared acknowledgment that we’d hit on something vital.

“It’s a challenge,” she said.

Antioch is a school intoxicated by theory. It always has been. Maybe it has something to do with our roots in the Christian Connection: with those stern-mouthed, wild-eyed men whose photos hang in Antiochiana—with their belief salvation was so near-at-hand one could happen upon it behind a hedge, like a stray cat. Maybe it’s something in the water. Maybe it’s both.

Whatever the reason, even among liberal arts colleges, Antioch’s proved an unusually nurturing environment for big ideas about better worlds.

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 29

Yet Antioch is also bolstered by practice. For all we talk of changing the world, we’ve always been relentlessly engaged with this world, as it is now. Community governance forces us to reckon with Antioch as it is in order to realize our ambitions for what it could be. Co-op challenges us to take what we’ve learned in the classroom, and put it to work off-campus. Our Farm allows us to indulge high-flown rhetoric about sustainability and environmental stewardship, but only if we’re willing to dig around in the dirt for it—if we’re willing, quite literally, to ground ourselves.

This is our position: somewhere in the liminal space between theory and practice. It’s often uncomfortable, but it isn’t untenable. And it’s defined us.

This in mind, Inside-Out begins to look a lot like Antioch in extremis. The tension between theory and practice is there, and the space between the two is where the action takes place, but everything about this conflict is exaggerated and distilled— reduced to its very essence.

Prison abolition—a cause to which both Grubbs and Steinmetz are dedicated, and to which a majority of the students to whom I spoke either obliquely or explicitly subscribe—demands, as Grubbs put it in my interview with her, “a far larger po30 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

litical imaginary than I, or any one person, could possibly propose.” It is, in other words, as structurally ambitious a theory as any you care to name, and one that seeks to upend an institution as entrenched as any in American society.

Similarly, the “real world” of prison presents all the complexities and impediments of the real world, only amplified.

Oftentimes, the advancement of theory is hindered by public indifference. Prison abolition doesn’t tend to face this problem in prison because COs and prison administrators, provided they’re aware of prison abolition, are rarely indifferent to it.

They are overtly hostile. What’s more, the logistical difficulties posed by the “real world” attain hellish dimensions in prison. Of the five Inside-Out students and facilitators I interviewed for this piece, each told me—wholly unprompted—how very difficult the arbitrary nature of prison bureaucracy made things. As Grubbs put it: “I go to the prison, and some days I take my shoes off. I go to the prison, and some days I don’t. I go to the prison and I bring my clear bag full of notebooks. Some days, they ask me what the notebooks are for. Some days, they don’t.

Some days, they don’t let me bring them in at all. Whatever it is, it’s all arbitrary.”

While she can choose how much, if at

all, to push back against these strictures, Grubbs explained, at a certain point, she finds herself forced to accept a difficult truth: “Ultimately, they have the authority. That’s prison. It’s a cage, and they have the keys.”

In this way, Antioch faculty and students who participate in Inside-Out find themselves wedged between theory and practice. They find themselves right where they’ve always been—only more so. What are they doing now that they’re there? If Inside-Out’s classes here are Antioch in extremis, then what does that singularly Antiochian synthesis of theory and practice look like under these especially trying circumstances? I talked to Adam Green ’20, one of two students participating in Inside/Out this quarter, to find out.

Adam and I spoke in a bustling Cedarville coffee shop. At every table but ours, students from the nearby Baptist university sat, talking of Baptist university things.

Many were dressed in athletic warmups designating them members of Cedarville U’s various sports teams. The students who weren’t excitedly discussing the Cedarville Lady Yellow Jackets’ volleyball prospects were engaged in the particular brand of highlighter-intensive close reading—lots of colors going at once: neon blues

We don’t forget who they are, or pretend their lived experiences aren’t different than ours.

It just stops mattering. and pinks and greens—that’s the hallmark of serious Bible study. The place felt about as removed from Antioch as DCI. So, when Adam said, “I’m very against the US prison system, and prisons in general,” it sounded like he was responding to the question, ‘What’s something you’re pretty sure no one has ever said in this coffeeshop before?’ But that’s not what he was doing. He was formulating a thought about the power dynamics at play when he goes to DCI for this quarter’s Inside-Out class, The Anthropology of Space and Place.

“I’m against these systems,” he continued, “but I have to play nice. I have to laugh along with the COs when they joke about incarcerated people—which they do.

A lot. But even though I really want to not be complicit in that, I have to laugh along, because they can just kick you out. They have that power.”

It was the very same thing I’d heard from everyone who’d been inside DCI, and I told him as much. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d imagine. But it’s worth it, I think. Because— well, wait: You know the name of the class isn’t actually Inside-Out, right?”

I told him I did.

“Well, that’s part of what makes it so powerful,” he said. “Because it doesn’t emphasize how it’s different than any other college class. It doesn’t make its subject this inescapable fact of incarceration. It puts inside and outside students on equal footing, because it’s a class like any other.

The room just happens to be different.”

Adam explained that the structure of the class, despite its venue, is the same as that of any other Antioch anthropology class. “Most of our homework assignments are written responses to the readings, but then in class, it’s just discussion and activity-based. We break off into small groups and discuss how we relate to what we read.

It’s just… a class.”

I tried to ask a few more questions about the strangeness of prison, of incarceration, of the whole setup, but to my surprise, Adam didn’t seem interested. In fact, he seemed interested in the opposite. “So, unlike what I gather about previous Inside-Out classes,” he said, “this is strictly an Anthropology course. It doesn’t make prison its subject; it doesn’t engage with prison abolition. It’s identical to a course that’s been offered on Antioch’s campus for many years now. Same structure, same material—just being taught inside DCI.” I nodded. This was not the direction I expected the interview would go. I realized my questions would have to be extemporaneous from here on out.

“So, uh, what’s that like?” I asked, awkwardly.

To my surprise, Adam’s face broke into the most genuine smile I’ve ever seen on an interview subject—a wonderful, fullfaced thing: It looked like his features had yielded to the weight of sheer delight. “It’s really, really great,” he said. “There’s this moment that happens a few minutes into class, pretty much as soon as we get started discussing the texts. The inside students stop being inside students. We don’t forget who they are, or pretend their lived experiences aren’t different than ours. It just stops mattering. I don’t even think about it. They’re just students. Exactly like us.”

I realized, a few days earlier, Mary Evans had told me about the very same moment, seen from the other side: “Of course I was wary at first,” she told me. “It was like, ‘What, are they just here to look at me? Or like see me as some kind of charity case?’

But then we started talking and we were just all there for the exact same thing: Just to work through these ideas and to learn.”

For Mary, this realization led her to Antioch—to keep working through ideas, to keep learning. For Adam, it led him to a newfound appreciation of what happens on the outside—of what happens at Antioch.

“One difference between the inside students and outside students is that the inside students are just better. They’re better pre-

pared; they engage more deeply with the readings; they don’t bullshit half as much.”

I asked him why he thought that was. For a minute, he was silent. Then, he spoke: “I think it’s a question of privilege,” he said. “The opportunity to take a class for college credit is, to an incarcerated person, a big deal. For us, we have the choice of 50 different classes a quarter. But its sort of made me realize how lucky I am. Like, I get to take all these classes for credit. I get to be involved with Inside-Out.” Yes, prison is strange. It’s overwhelmingly strange. It’s so strange, that within the context it imposes, it makes incarcerated people seem—seem fundamentally different, somehow—by default. This isn’t so.

And I believe this is why Inside-Out matters. Because it transcends the strangeness of its surroundings, and of its circumstances: It is a class. Its students are students. They are there to learn. That’s all.

When I talked to Mary, she told me something that seems important now: “There are a lot more people just like me still on the inside,” she said. “People as smart as I am, and as passionate, but with different passions than mine: political economy majors inside, environmentalists inside—and this program gives them the same chance I had. It lets them be those things, rather than just incarcerated people. It sees them.” This was in answer to one of the first questions I asked her: Why is Inside-Out such an important program for Antioch?

Well, here’s your answer.

Here’s a victory for humanity. Here’s a feel-good story. Here’s the Antioch College you know and love—the one you feared ceased to exist the moment you walked over the mound: It’s all here. Except it isn’t. Should Grubbs leave, there’s nothing to guarantee this program will stick around, and rebuilding it is a time-intensive process—and not a cheap one.

For each professor who undergoes it, Inside-Out training costs $3,000, not including travel expenses. For now, Antioch is working to make Inside-Out classes a permanent part of the curriculum. Grubbs is working to help inside students gain Antioch credit for taking them. There’s still work to be done. But we’re making progress, and one day—maybe soon—practice might catch up with theory.

If it’s going to happen anywhere, it’s going to happen here.

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Penny (Millicent) Ball ’61

V 32 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

Voices IN THEIR

ANTIOCHIAN WOMEN

While we were preparing to start this issue, we sent out a call to Antiochian women to reflect on a series of questions related to their own personal experiences at Antioch College and in the world.

We received an overwhelming number of thoughtful and insightful submissions spanning generations of Antiochians. From reflections about mentors and lessons learned on Co-op to the challenges new generations of women will face, here is a selection of their answers in their own voices.

What did you learn at Antioch College that you find important in your everyday life now?

“We must re-evaluate our basic assumptions” was a meme and applied to all aspects of living and learning. It still holds true for me.

—Niela Miller ’57 I didn’t take any high school science classes beyond biology. Antioch science courses awoke in me an interest in physics. I started as a math major in 1957 because math had been my favorite subject in high school. After Antioch, I went to graduate school (University of Maryland) and earned a PhD in high energy physics. That led me to work at Heidelberg University (Germany), Imperial College (London), Purdue University, Brookhaven National Lab (Long Island), and finally the Superconducting Super Collider (Texas).

—Penny (Millicent) Ball ’61 That work, school, and life were intertwined. That ideals were important. That making the world a better place was im-

portant. That growing, maturing, becoming more fully oneself, was a life-long journey, not a five-year experiment.

—Katya (Nina Sabaroff) Taylor ’66 On reflection, I now believe that the most important thing I learned at Antioch College was not the science I learned in classrooms and Co-ops, but the incredible value of community. Community governance taught us about leadership. My entire life since Antioch has been defined by community and horizontal decision-making, whether in the organizations where I was the Executive Director—like NARAL and the Center for Education on Nuclear War and Citizens Against Nuclear War—or in the organizations that started around my dining room table like Women’s Information Network to support and mentor young, prochoice, Democratic women.

Similarly, I started Consulting Women, a network of over 1,030 DC-area self-employed women consultants. I coordinate it, but activities are mobilized by others.

Or how I coordinated Women for Obama in the 2008 election, or how I formed and led coalitions, or how I managed my consulting business since 1988. None of it was

about me, but instead about how we can work in community to make a difference.

That was the impact of Antioch’s Community Governance model. As I learned how to get over being shy, I also learned a leadership model that is inclusive. I am forever grateful for that.

—Karen Mulhauser ’65 The power of independent thought, the need to defend social justice, the value of celebrating diversity.

—Holly T. Dublin ’76 I learned how to live anywhere in the world on a budget, how to navigate hard conversations and be a good listener. Coops, community meetings, intimate class sizes, and self reviews kept me accountable to myself and to others.

—Melanee Meegan ’01

What truth did you recognize and/or confront while at Antioch?

I learned the truth about our natures, i.e.

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 33

aspiring to high ideals while struggling with our shadow sides. Heartbreak and ethical challenges occurred on a fairly regular basis! These were all opportunities to learn about myself, the complexity of relationship, community, and society and that I was responsible for the choices I made. I learned that resilience and flexibility were important skills. I learned to view every experience as a learning opportunity.

—Niela Miller ’57 I could figure things out, including new experiences. Not to be afraid of change or the unknown.

—Barbara Robertson ’63

That more than one idea can be in operation at the same time. Human society is multifaceted, so it’s important to reflect, ask questions, listen, and observe before taking action. Contrary to the popular image of Antioch as a bastion of political correctness, I found it to be a place where, above all, students were expected to think critically about our studies, our role in the campus community and the world beyond.

[A] valuable Co-op experience took place my senior year on campus, when I joined a feminist editorial collective that produced the The Antioch Record for a semester. Our plans to report the news from a feminist perspective were controversial.

What assumptions about women would you like to change?

We had to struggle to define what feminism meant in the context of the campus.

At one point, we found ourselves battling a student group that felt our editorial stance was discriminatory. In protest, its members dumped much of one week’s print edition in a trash bin. Despite the controversy, by the end of the semester many students had come to accept our experiment, and the idea that a feminist Record could cover campus news.

—Barbara Solow ’80

women are called aggressive. Women who speak up are called shrews. Women are breadwinners for their families, just as men are, and yet, Walmart managers are still telling their women employees that the less experienced, less skilled man needs the promotion because he’s a breadwinner. Really???

—Susan Firestone ’70

Quite a few! Not all of us want to have children; I was an only child, and I knew when I was 13 that I did not have the temperament to have children.

—Linda Jay ’63 I never felt that I had to hide my intelligence while at Antioch. I wish I could say that the greater world was also more accepting of smart women, and it is better than 50 years ago, but smart women are still struggling to be heard. Assertive

The Co-op program really gave me my life. And the truth for me was that I must do my best to thrive in a variety of circumstances, not complain, create my own opportunities, then work like a demon to make sure I survive and succeed. The truth of “stay flexible,” and “be open to all things were central to me in the constant and abrupt Co-op transitions between school and the real world, finding jobs, housing, transportation, new co-workers, new friends, then back to studying and spending hours in the library. We are never strangers to change. And that’s a good truth to know and practice.

—Victoria Hochberg ’64 I learned from my Co-op jobs in social work that, while I loved the clients, the other social workers did not love me. I just didn't fit in. And then, when I finally had a job in theater as assistant assistant stage manager at the Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo, I felt a sense of belonging. The other theater people enjoyed what I had to offer. That cinched it for me.

—Terry Baum ’69 The necessity of being true to yourself. Antioch held up different mirrors than those in my life back in Los Angeles and expanded my horizons. It was richly experimental soil! I learned to act on my instinct and creative urges. To take leaps of faith, even if you might fall and hurt yourself.

—Abbe Kanter Jaye ’73 Antioch helped me to more deeply understand the dangers of inequality, the privileges of being white, and the vast differences between the world’s rich and its poor.

—Holly T. Dublin ’76 34 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

I believe Antioch helped me understand that I wanted to do something with my life that benefited others. Like most Antiochians, I took to heart our motto, which has rallied me time and time again throughout my career.

—Jordan Tamagni ’84

Women leaders are always under scrutiny and judged more harshly, in my view, than male leaders. There’s a sense of women being more difficult to work with and when women lead, like Hillary Clinton experienced, a reluctance to trust or “like” them even when they are highly qualified.

—Sally Greenberg ’75 That women need to act like men to have

success in male-dominated fields. This must be changed because it is the very fact that women and men are different that leads to the best outcomes. Women who begin to act like men lose support from other women and will never be accepted by men–so it leaves them in a lonely, unsupported place.

Women can still be women and achieve success. And women working together as women can be a formidable force for good.

—Holly T. Dublin ’76 I am saddened and infuriated that women are still seen as lesser in employment opportunities and leadership positions. I cannot believe we have not had a female

president. I am also horrified about the current wave of anti-abortion legislation.

As the mother of three daughters, I honor the role motherhood has played in my life. However, I also understand how essential my career was to my overall wellbeing. I am saddened to see that women are still seen as primarily a receptacle for conception by some. The notion that women are not in charge of their own bodies is not even logical. It is an abomination to our humanity.

—Ellen Stone ’81 Well, I guess I’d like to challenge the assumption that one can make assumptions about women at all. But there is no question that Antioch taught me to seek out and confront my own assumptions and biases.

—Jordan Tamagni ’84

Who or what has influenced your career or life choices?

I first think of Irwin Abrams, who taught the courses in History of Western Civilization and Modern and Contemporary Europe. His focus was on historical interpretation, which opened my mind well beyond the history classes themselves. In Modern and Contemporary Europe he set up a steering committee, in which about five of us students met with him once a week to set the agendas for the discussion groups. It was a real privilege to be part of that group and to be taken seriously and

to feel that I was making a significant contribution. Dr. Abram’s approach has generalized to other aspects of my life, particularly keeping an open mind and seeking evidence. Although I chose to major in psychology and became a school psychologist, my love of history was kindled by these experiences and has increased as I’ve grown older.

—Ruth Kamrass Steegmann ’54 My Co-op jobs at Antioch had been in fields related to computing, starting with an actuarial firm in NYC, then the College computer center, and finally the large computer center at Convair Astronautics in San Diego.

Thus, I learned FORTRAN and some assembly language programming before computer science was a college course. This gave me a practical background in program-

ming that was useful throughout my graduate school (thesis experiment analysis of bubble chamber data) and professional life.

—Penny (Millicent) Ball ’61 I had a strong/competent woman role model in the faculty, Pat Linn, whom I try and emulate to this day. She was confident, knowledgeable, reliable, and no nonsense.

She was able to stand out amongst the overwhelming number of male faculty at Antioch and be heard and respected. I have come full circle to the strong Antiochian role model of Pat Linn as I am now an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Wilmington College. I have been able to help out with many

community efforts and get my students involved in these causes/needs. We have traveled to Columbus, OH, and Washington, DC, to lobby for issues at the border with families and detainment, as well as Ohio’s need for increased funding for Human Services and Support Services in Schools. I get to write letters of recommendation and help students apply for graduate school and Social Work jobs. Now I get to pay it forward to future generations and guide women and men into their future careers in Social Work, Psychology, and Criminal Justice. I aspire to be a strong role model showing my students how to be their authentic self, care for others, be responsible, reliable, strong, flexible, kind, and even a little adventurous.

—Wendy Grab ’89 Early in my Antioch career I was chalTHE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 35

lenged—in a writing through philosophy course by Al Denman—to consider using gender neutral pronouns and to experiment with the “female generic.” It astounds me today that this was something I had not before considered. In Marianne Whelchel’s literature courses, I learned to honor the long devalued and dismissed experiences and contributions of women.

And in James Daraja’s upper-level course on time and change, I discovered the power and possibility of the social construction

of reality. All of these experiences shaped me and the way I saw the world.

—C. Lynn Carr ’89

What makes you hopeful for future generations of women?

I’m hopeful for future generations of women because of the encouragement they’re getting to enter into STEM programs of study. I’m also pleased that women have entered the campaign for President of the United States. At this point, I have confidence that any of them would be a good President. Their biggest challenge is to persist, even in the face of resistance or disapproval by men or by society.

—Ruth Kamrass Steegmann ’54 The inspiring Women’s March in January 2017 confirmed that women will not stop struggling for full equality and parity in all aspects of life. The midterm elections of 36 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

2018 has proven this again. And the number of women running for President is inspiring.

Young women have picked up the mantle of this ongoing fight. This gives me great hope.

—Victoria Hochberg ’64 Of course I am hopeful for future generations of women, including my daughter, who, loving art and math, became an architect. I have no doubt the US will eventually elect a woman president. But I also believe women are freer now to choose

how they want to live in the world, following their “true north” as to their purpose, and how to fulfill it. I am proud (and humbled by) the strides women have made in my lifetime (when I went to high school, we weren’t allowed to wear pants, imagine that!), although of course we have a long way to go. That is why, truly, it is “from one generation to the next,” that we dedicate ourselves to liberation.

—Katya (Nina Sabaroff) Taylor ’66

What do you believe will be the biggest challenge for the generation of women behind you?

The biggest danger for women in the future is to assume that all problems facing women are solved. So much of life is based on unexamined assumptions about gender that it is important to bring those assumptions into consciousness—and to fight

for women when those assumptions lead to their mistreatment. I am especially concerned about working class girls and women in the US and other countries whose lives have been heart-breakingly limited by poor education, poor health care, and lack of opportunity. If I could believe that activists will fight for these girls and women, I would be optimistic about the future. I will not allow myself to be optimistic, though, until I see serious improvements in their lives and that of other oppressed people.

Now that would be a victory for humanity!

—Zelda Gamson ’59 Trying to do it all. There is still the conflict between career and family and many women are penalized for wanting both.

—Barbara Robertson ’63 It will be an uphill battle to destroy the manifestations of sexism. But I am also concerned about factionalism between different groups of women. This is a false schism and is often used by the dominant culture to keep women apart. I also believe that the abortion issue, though divisive as well, will galvanize younger women to step up and fight for the right to own their own bodies. The rescinding of this right will be a wake-up call. Economic inequality, the high cost of a college education will prevent many women from receiving a higher education and will affect their incomes throughout their lives. The cost of child care in America is out of step with other developed countries and is another way

that women are penalized. These, and more are problems that need to be faced and overcome.

—Victoria Hochberg ’64 While women in the United States and some Scandanavian and European countries have achieved many freedoms, there is still much discrimination against women that the #metoo movement has exposed. Then there is the condition of women around the world. I just visited mostly Muslim countries and in many places we visited, women are invisible, not in the workplace and not out and about. Boys are playing on the streets and are part of daily life but girls are again, invisible. I worry about those girls and women and whether they have any real opportunities, especially those in lower income levels.

—Sally Greenberg ’75 To finally change the entrenched, sexist beliefs that continue to persist – that women’s bodies are not their own, that women are not taken seriously, that women are not inherent leaders and innovators, that women cannot be safe in this world without men to protect them.

—Ellen Stone ’81 The death struggles of the dying patriarchy worry me! The current Presidential administration’s stealthy stacking of the federal and state judiciary with social and political conservatives scares me to death—we are already seeing the impact. And never forget that 51% of white women voted for Trump. We should all be scared about what that tells us.

—Jordan Tamagni ’84 In some ways the status of women in the US has improved since my youth; in other ways it seems we haven’t moved at all. And recent events threaten to raze the gains made in my lifetime. We continue to debase and undervalue women and the feminine. We continue to rank men against other men and women on the basis of race, class, immigration status, sexuality, and religion. We continue to diss the natural environment and allow moneyed interests to prevail.

—C. Lynn Carr ’89

Do you identify as a feminist?

I have always identified as a feminist. I read The Feminine Mystique (by Betty Frie-

dan) when it was first published, and, unfortunately, couldn’t find any other woman at that time who was willing to talk with me about it. I am militantly pro-choice and don’t believe that anyone can know what position she or he would take until confronted by this issue either directly or with a family member.

—Ruth Kamrass Steegmann ’54 Definitely not. I can’t really say why not.

I have never affiliated with the feminist movement. Probably because I grew up and have lived in a society where that has been very late in coming and also grew up in a family with three loving and supportive brothers who always believed in me. I guess I always felt that attaining my goals depended on my own skills and hard work—even when I knew there was a strong male dominance in the field. I seem to have unusual hardwiring relative to many women I know.

—Holly T. Dublin ’76 I support women as co-equals to all humans on earth, regardless of gender. But, I don’t call myself a feminist. It’s kind of a narrowing of a person to say they are any kind of an ‘ist,’ don’t you think? And yet, we live in a world of identity politics.

—Abbe Kanter Jaye ’73 Absolutely. I do not see the world as treating women equally – by a long stretch. Systemic change needs to occur world-wide to keep women safe and to allow us to thrive.

—Ellen Stone ’81 I identify as a feminist because the alternative is to passively accept the status quo that continues to disadvantage women, especially women of color and those from underserved communities. More egalitarian societies are more healthy societies.

Here in this obscenely unequal country, women still face tremendous challenges to obtain equal pay, maternity leave, decent child care, and so many other obstacles to their health and wellbeing. I identify as a feminist because I love women!

—Jordan Tamagni ’84

What issues are you involved with?

I see myself as a proud feminist still working on equity issues. When I led NARAL in the ’70s, we thought for sure that by the turn of the century abortion rights would be pro-

tected and the ’70s would seem like the dark ages. It is so very hard to understand how those who oppose women’s rights to self-determination have been so successful.

Gerrymandering, I suspect since a majority of the country support a woman’s right a have an abortion. I have recently gone through files to find my Congressional testimony about abortion, and about my personal experience with rape. I thought I would never need to dust those off. But the need is unambiguous. A very strong thread in the fabric of my life is realizing that unless women can decide when or if they want children, they cannot avail themselves of the opportunities available to people who don’t get pregnant. It’s that simple.

—Karen Mulhauser ’65 Gun violence prevention is my number one, but also I’ve taken classes on teaching English as a second language to new immigrants and representing the legal interests of low income consumers who are facing debt collectors. Once I’m not working anymore, I’ll throw myself into those volunteer opportunities with more gusto.

—Sally Greenberg ’75 I am active in immigrant support work in my community through an organization called the Pioneer Valley Workers Center. The center advocates around issues of importance to low-wage and immigrant workers in our region. Through the center, I have raised funds, attended protest marches, lobbied legislators, brought food to immigrants who have sought sanctuary in two local churches, written press releases, conducted research, and helped strategize about ways to fight the anti-immigrant and anti-worker policies of the current administration.

—Barbara Solow ’80 I am extremely concerned about women’s health issues, including access to contraception and abortion rights. I am equally concerned about our environment and the increased likelihood of mass extinctions of animal species due to global warming.

I believe until we address the race issues in our country, including how current anti-immigration sentiment and mass incarceration statistics are impacted by racism, we won’t be able to move forward. Finally, I am deeply concerned about the huge political division in our country and the shift toward trust in totalitarian leadership.

—Ellen Stone ’81 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 37

AlumniSpotlight Always in Movement Rozell “Prexy” Nesbitt spoke recently with student Truth Garrett ’20 about attending Antioch College, his work in Africa and liberation movement struggles, being Martin Luther King Jr.’s bodyguard, and how the College has shaped his career. This piece is based on their conversation.

By Christine Reedy Prexy Nesbitt ’67 first heard of Antioch College on suggestion from his father, who, during World War II was working as a civilian instructor at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, OH, teaching pilots how to use their radios. At that time, Nesbitt explains, “He used to come over to Yellow Springs all the time because that was called the ‘oasis in the desert’ by Black folk who were around Wright Patt.” His father took him to see Antioch while they were out on a college tour trip.

“Well I got down there and went by the folk dancing that was on the Friday night and got so excited by all that folk dancing, I said, ‘Shoot, I’m going to apply to this place.’”

Beyond folk dancing, Antioch College introduced Nesbitt to the Antioch Education Abroad experience. “That was one of the real pivotal points in my development and in my exposure. Though I had traveled overseas just before I came to Antioch (I had lived in Sweden through a program called Experiment in International Living), I’d never been to Africa.”

While he had planned to go to Rhodesia, due to a last minute visa denial, Nesbitt ended up in Tanzania at the University College of Dar es Salaam.

“I ended up going to spend a year at the University College of Dar es Salaam, which would be then the first trip of what would become about 25 trips over the next 10 or 15 years to just Tanzania, which was the center of the liberation movement struggles in southern Africa,” Nesbitt states.

Work Against Apartheid After graduating from Antioch College, 38 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

Nesbitt was instrumental in a project dealing with banking and financing in Africa.

In 1970, he began work as a field organizer for the American Committee on Africa. “I started working, organizing professionally around trying to get people mobilized to fight the apartheid government of South Africa and see the connection of that to the racisim in the United States.”

Nesbitt left the position after three or four years because it wasn’t a career job, but in 1977, he was asked to come back to run a bank loan campaign. “That was a campaign to get people to withdraw

government do any business with banks making loans. “It led to the banks withdrawing their money from supporting Apartheid, literally,” Nesbitt adds.

Activism at Antioch At the time Nesbitt attended the College, Antioch sent more people to the South to take on Civil Rights work than any other college its size. His parents, particularly his mother, wouldn’t let him go. Instead, Nesbitt got very involved in the fight to integrate Gegner’s Barbershop right in Yellow Springs. “The guy never did cut Black

Nesbitt at Gegner’s Barbershop in 1964 their monies and cease banking with any banks that were involved in making loans to South Africa,” he explains. “We started a movement called the Committee to Oppose Bank Loans to South Africa. It had branches across the country, and we easily mobilized because we had great support from the unions, churches. Some cities withdrew their money from banks like Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, and a number of other smaller banks that were involved in sending thses loans that helped the Apartheid government run the militiary and run the oppressive machinery of the Apartheid regime.”

This important work preceded the passage of U.S. sanctions against South Africa, which included not having the U.S.

hair,” Nesbitt says. “I was the first Black person to sit in his barber’s chair and he responded to that by throwing his barber’s apron all over my head. Now, it was a nonviolent demonstration, so I couldn’t respond as I would have liked to have.

I was marched out by Chief McGee and James Lawsom, who were both African Americans and the chief of police and town manager respectively, and it was a big event because there was a huge mobilization.” At the time, there were only nine or 10 Black students on Antioch’s campus, Nesbitt recalls, and Central State and Wilberforce students would join in to mobilize around issues.

As a student, Nesbitt was also involved in a variety of issues. “I started Antio-

chians Concerned with Southern Africa, and we were protesting Antioch’s money involved with Chemical Bank.” At one point, the group took over a Board of Trustees meeting, following the Trustees all over campus each time the group tried to assemble away from them. “They couldn’t figure out how we were able to follow them all over campus,” he adds. “It was because all of the workers—they were our buddies—so they told us every move they were going to make.” J.D. Dawson, dean of students, arranged an off-campus meeting, which eventually led to Antioch divesting from its portfolio any companies involved in South Africa.

Nesbitt was also involved in integrating Yellow Springs schools. “I ran a little club for white families to have their children play baseball and sports with Black families. It was a children’s club; it was an initiative of children. It was beautiful.” A shocking incident happened, though. At one point Nesbitt and one of the children in the group were shot at. “I was giving her a ride on my bicycle in the basket—she was a six- or seven-year-old—and they almost killed her.”

People from surrounding towns, places like Xenia, would come through Yellow Springs and to Antioch’s campus regularly, “and hoot and call us names and throw stuff at us, especially those of us who were Black or mixed couples.” Also enrolled at the College were a group of former military officers. “They came to me one night and said, ‘Look Nesbitt, we see what’s happening here, and some of us have been talking, and we want to be available to you. So that you know that you can always turn to a group of us to respond and give you some back up.’”

Those students became a defense group for the Black students. “It was deep,” Nesbitt says. “It was deep. They were all white because there were very few Black people in Antioch. These were ex-military guys who had come to New Wave Thinking. These were wonderful guys. I’ll never forget the solidarity they showed us.”

Dr. King’s Bodyguard Nesbitt came home from Tanzania in the summer of ’66. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was also in Chicago at the time leading the Chicago Freedom Movement. According

to Nesbitt, churches in Chicago—especially Black churches—were afraid of repercussions from Mayor Richard Daly and wouldn’t host Dr. King. “But the little old tiny church that my family belonged to— that was an integrated church—we opened up our doors to him and he worked out of that church,” Nesbitt explains.

“I came back from doing all of this freedom work in Africa, and my mother said, ‘Go up there to the church.’ And sure enough, I got very involved in something that was called the Union to End Slums and had the great pleasure to work with some of the wonderful people that were around, that were staff.”

So how did Nesbitt become a bodyguard? For one, he was athletic and had been a football player. Also, he knew the neighborhood. One march in particular, captured on film by Skip Yates, includes Nesbitt as one of Dr. King’s bodyguards. “I was supposed to catch anything thrown, and above all, keep anything from hitting King,” he explains. “Well, I missed something, and it hit him and cut his head open. He looked up and said, ‘Nesby, I thought you were this great football player!’ It was serious. It was a horrible day. He called that the worst violence he’d ever seen. More violent than in the South.”

Foundations of His Ethic There are two fundamental experiences that have helped Nesbitt keep working and moving forward, as well as kept him from becoming vindictive or revengeful.

First, his father’s family. “My father and his four other brothers all lived together and there was, to this day, a kind of code of looking out for each other. Particularly for my father, who was an enforcer for the group. Nobody messed with them.

They’re very seriously engaged people, although they are teachers. They were also moving into neighborhoods where there were a lot of hostilities from whites.

They defended themselves.” His family background and history is the source of his attitude “that people didn’t get away with messing with us.”

The second is discipline. It came from his family, but also the liberation movements he was exposed to in southern and

eastern Africa, particularly the Mozambique Liberation Front. The Front’s founder married a white American woman in Nesbitt’s family church and then worked out of Tanzania running an armed struggle against the Portuguese government.

“He and I knew each other very well,” Nesbitt relays. “In fact, I went to him with the intention of fighting against Portuguese colonialists.” Unfortunately, Nesbitt could not speak Mozambican languages.

Nesbitt instead helped with propaganda.

“I worked with a wonderful man doing the Mozambique Revolution Magazine. I worked on helping set up school curriculum materials for the schools they had in the liberated areas.”

His involvement exposed him to ideas and clarity about struggle. “For example, the Mozambicans fought Portuguese colonialists, and they never saw the individual Portuguese as their enemy. They were fighting Portuguese colonialism and U.S. support for that colonialism.

They were fighting a system that put land mines in their fields and around schools and hospitals they put up. It was a very great education for me. I’m very indebted to what I learned over there from our brothers and sisters in Africa.”

A Movement in Orange County When asked what’s next, Nesbitt suggests Antiochians and those in the Yellow Springs area consider coming out for a visit. “Come out here to Orange County where I’m currently living and help me create a more progressive base out here.

It is flipped from being red to blue, but now we got to really solidify that and help develop more of a base for people of color, help move along the unity between Blacks and Latinos.”

African Americans and Latinx people are the majority in Orange County, but Nesbitt has seen that some residents want to cling to the past. “The old white folks, including some of them at the campus where I am at—Chapman University—are running on a program of ‘bring back the old Orange County of the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society.’ Any folks from there in Yellow Springs or Antioch people or alums, if any of you are in the area, come on by and visit. Come on by, as I say!”

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 39

AlumniSpotlight Fantastical Transcendence

Still from in the Presence of Absence— José Maria and Ike

By Jennifer Wenker “Growing up Latinx in rural West Virginia definitely shaped me. There was a lot of racism and homophobia where I spent most of my childhood.” Allison Maria Rodriguez ’03, a first-generation Cuban-American whose large family had just relocated from southern Florida shares.

“I always felt like an outsider and I experienced a lot of trauma there. It put me inside my head a lot. Daydreaming and fantasy saved me. But existing in that space—it forced me to think ‘outside the box’, because, to be honest, I wasn’t allowed ‘inside the box.’”

“I chose Antioch because I imagined it to be the exact opposite of what I was experiencing.”

40 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

Allison’s sister Amanda Rodriguez ’04 is also an Antiochian, and years later her youngest sister, Angelina Rodriguez ’18, would graduate from the newly independent Antioch College.

After graduating with a BA in Language, Literature, and Culture at Antioch College—where she also studied at Oxford University in England and Kyoto Seika University in Japan—Allison Rodriguez earned her MFA from Tufts University and made her home in Boston.

There, her Antiochian interdisciplinarity and passion for social justice would become evident.

Rodriguez identifies primarily as an artist, but she is also an educator, an organizer, and a curator. “Part of my practice is providing opportunities for other

artists whenever I can, as we are all stronger together.” Her interdisciplinary art— predominantly in new media, film/video, and installation—addresses themes ranging from human migration to environmental loss and species extinction. Her work converges on a desire to understand the space within which language fails and lived experience remains unarticulated.

Throughout her time in Boston, Rodriguez has been passionate about the need to lift others up as she herself finds her platform. She is deeply involved with different arts activist organizations, one focused on queer artists (Boston LGBTQIA Artists Alliance) and another on artists of color (CreateWell), both of which work to support and provide resources to marginalized artists. She has also curated numerous exhibi-

tions focused on marginalized artists, such as “one highlighting queer artists with disabilities and another with LGBTQIA Latinx artists. All of my advocacy work focuses around the art community; I truly believe in the power of art to change lives.”

“My newest body of work, Legends Breathe”—which she will be installing in her upcoming solo exhibition at the Herndon Gallery this summer through fall—“is about the power of the imagination in transcending trauma. I interviewed non-binary and female-identified artists about childhood fantasies that helped them survive traumas.” Together with those artists, Rodriguez is exploring and constructing their inner fantasy worlds through video collages. All of these collages become part of an immersive, but intimate, installation for other bodies to engage with. She explains, “Trauma is isolating, but art is about communication, and I felt there was an unseen power there.”

Rodriguez approaches darkly difficult subject matter unflinchingly, and yet while her work explores loss and grief, it rarely ever feels hopeless, and is sometimes quietly liberatory. She possesses a real empathy with her subjects and subject matter and that is communicated through her work.

“I see my work as fundamentally about interconnectivity, between all existence.

It’s a bit spiritual in that regard. I look to

Portrait of the artist, inside her installation at the Boston Center for the Arts (2019).

Wish You Were Here: Greetings from the Galapagos (2018) at the Boston Children's Museum.

find ways of exploring these themes (trauma, climate change, extinction, etc.) that are more intimate, personal, than usually presented in scientific data.”

And, running deeply through her work, there is evidence of a strong storytelling influence—one aspect of her rich Cuban heritage—a kind of visual, metaphorical Magical realism telling a deep-

er and “truer” truth and a rewriting of the narrative in fantastical ways—making possible transcendence.

“I understand what it is like to be the outsider and to exist in-between cultures, and of course there is trauma—I think this forced me to think differently, to see things differently, because ‘the (dominant) narrative’ didn’t work for me.” allisonmariarodriguez.com

Artist in Residence and Herndon Gallery Exhibition

PORTRAIT BY MELISSA BLACKALL, INSTALLATION PHOTO BY STEWART CLEMENTS.

Through a successful FotoFocus Biennial 2020 grant proposal written by Creative Director of the Herndon Gallery Jennifer Wenker, together with the artist, Rodriguez will be artist-in-residence at Antioch College during the summer block, where she will mount her solo exhibition, as well as teach a 4-week intensive, The Artist as Cultural Worker. The survey exhibition will run through Reunion 2020, and receive attention through participation in the national FotoFocus Biennial 2020.

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 41

AlumniSpotlight Mathematical Structures, Politics of Symbols, and Poetic Reflections A prolific conceptual artist, writer, and activist, John Sims ’90 has been working at the center of an art, activism, and global social justice practice. His work is shaped by mathematics, design, performance, film, music, the politics and symbols of white supremacy, and poetic/political text.

Over the years, Sims has been featured by The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Root, Al Jazeera, Guernica, Art in America, FiberArts, Science News, NBC News, The Huffington Post, The Rumpus, and Nature to name just a few.

During high school in Detroit, Sims “ran with the local socialists” and co-founded the student group SAW (Students Against War). Antioch College was a perfect fit for someone who wanted to study mathematics and who refused to play sports for socio-political reasons.

Reflecting on his time at Antioch, Sims explains, “The student radicalization and community governance on campus taught the power of communication and expression.” He learned “half the battle is to have a clear and dimensional expression of the issues and not to be afraid to challenge the institutions that breed contempt for change.”

He became very politically active while he was an exchange student at the University of Tübingen, Germany. “I helped start the first Afro-Student Union in Tübingen and was there in Berlin when the wall came down in 1989.”

Many Antiochians were influential in shaping Sims’ work. Dr. William “Bill” Houston, Antioch Professor Emeritus Of Mathematics was one. “Bill Houston was my main role model. His mathematics, his activism, his love of nature, his minimalism, his clarity of mind, and just was oth42 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

erworldly.” Another mentor was music professor William David “Bill” Chappelle ’80. “His incredible emotional intelligence, the gift of language—both oral and written—were so inspirational.” Sims feels they “embodied the brilliance of the best of an Antioch experience.”

A year after graduating, Sims returned to work at the College as Special Assistant to the Dean of Faculty. During this time, he created and organized the Cross-Cultural Field Program (CCFP) that took a diverse group of students to the South to learn about African American culture. The program received strong support from both Coretta Scott King ’51 and Congressman John Lewis. He also founded African American Culture Week (AACW)—program events celebrating the African American experience which became the 25-year-running AACW Blues and Gospel Fest.

Sims has been on the forefront of contemporary mathematical art and leading the national pushback on Confederate

iconography for 20 years. By combining his mathematics training with art, Sims seeks to confront symbols that represent white supremacy and to promote cross-cultural community.

His multimedia project Recoloration Proclamation (launched in 2000 and concluding with a series of shows starting at the Buffalo Arts Studios in March), is just one example of how Sims’ work has confronted racism in a very public way.

The project began in 2002 with a show in Harlem which featured various re-colored Iraqi, Chinese, Israeli, Palestinian and Confederate flags. But Sims found the reaction among attendees at the show’s opening to be typical—it didn’t provoke.

Outside, however, a man had become outraged by the display of the Confederate flags. Intrigued by his response, Sims decided to dig deeper.

The next iteration he conceived was an installation piece—a “hanging” of the Confederate flag—at Gettysburg College

in 2004. In the face of hate mail and death threats, he fought for the project to continue. But the organizers succumbed to the pressure resulting in a diminished, shortlived gallery installation. Sims boycotted his own show. “This experience was so disappointing and revealed the complicated dynamics of liberal institutions that teach one thing and do another,” Sims reflects.

But the project landed squarely in the middle of a national political conversation about freedom of speech. He has continued with various iterations of his Recoloration Proclamation and, in 2015, held the now annual Burn and Bury Confederate Flag Memorial Day event—a long overdue funeral. In 2017, Sims successfully executed his performance and exhibition of The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag at Ohio University’s Kennedy Museum. In an interview with the Sarasota Herald Tribune Sims said, “It’s not just a conversation, but a forceful call to action leading to a movement to take down Confederate monuments across the South, and change school and street names honoring the Confederacy.” Sims says the Confederate flag represents fear, and this work is meant as a “confrontation of the fear through creative resistance.”

Sims’ work is featured as the subject of the first chapter of Stephen Ornes’ 2019 book, Math Art: Beauty, Truth, and Equations. And his project, The SquareRoot of Love—which Sims says “is about building community which I learned how to do at Antioch”—has been traveling to cities around the globe since 2010, “engaging the ideas of love through art, poetry, performance, food, and drink.”

Reflecting on the current climate, Sims says,“Race is hard to talk about because it is rooted in white supremacy, privilege, and power. Real power wants to be invisible and to make it visible is hard and uncomfortable. Real powerlessness wants to hide, but things are changing and things will continue to change. As long as the youth and students with an Antioch-like mindset push the conversation—the language, the expression, and actions for change—we might have a chance to push things forward.” johnsimsprojects.com THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 43

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Al Denman, professor emeritus

Al Denman

[January 16, 2019]

Al Denman, professor emeritus, was College Pastor, and Professor of Philosophy of Law and Religion at Antioch College from 1965 to 1993.

Al attended the University of Idaho where he received a BS in Psychology and LLB from the law school. In 1952 he married Donna Denman. They moved to Boston where he was a student at Boston University School of Theology and she at BU College of Liberal Arts.

After graduating from BU, Al served as Chaplain and professor of religion at the College of Idaho from 1956 to 1960.

He was chair of the Migrant Ministry program serving migrant workers in the area.

He was the recipient of several scholarships enabling him to focus on Social Ethics with classes at Boston University, at Harvard Divinity School, and Harvard Law School. He spent time in Germany attending lectures in Jurisprudence at Frankfurt and Freiburg.

Returning to the U.S., he was a fellow at Boston University's Human Relations Center. He received his PhD in Social Ethics and Sociology of Religions.

He was the last person to hold the title of College Pastor at Antioch. Over the next 28 years, he left the College Pastor position and expanded his teaching to include a variety of classes, including American Legal Systems. His classes were not the traditional lecture style but involved students as co-teachers in the learning process by presenting papers and participating in class discussion.

A long-distance runner, he taught a class on Meditation and the art of Glen Running. Students were introduced to the history of the Glen Helen Nature Preserve, both the human and geologic history. They were free to choose whatever distance they ran but to increase the distance over the six week period of the class.

He established the Friday Forums on Public Issues which he began in 1983. He insisted on a format that would include a panel of people who were informed 44 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

and articulate about all sides of an issue.

These people were to present their ideas in the first hour. In the second hour he wanted the audience to join in the dialogue. He would say he hoped people had

been open to other ideas and would find they had changed as a result.

He retired in 1993 and became active in the Tecumseh Land Trust and served as President 1996–1999. His law background

was useful as he helped farmers and other landowners write conservation easements to preserve their land.

Al was a strong and early proponent of the Antioch College independence movement in the late ’70s. When the College gained its independence and reopened, Al continued to provide invaluable guidance and support. Al and Donna’s love and commitment of the College led them to creating a legacy gift to create the New Generations Scholarship program in support of students.

For years, Al explored the question of when to die. He thought it was possible to live too long using scarce resources. He wrote, “I want to make my death a protest, an affirmation that death can be good, a friend, to be welcomed, even celebrated.”

On January 3, 2019, he decided the time had come and he began his fast. He was 91.

He is survived by his wife, Donna; children Todd Denman ’81 (Mariatte), Donn Denman ’79 (Nora), Linnea Denman ’83, and Matthew Denman ’87 (Karen); sister, Elizabeth Ann Phillips; and eight grandchildren.

Victor Manuel Garcia Perez, former faculty [November 20, 2019]

Victor was born in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1940. Victor immigrated to the United States in the ’60s to continue his education.

He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Missouri, which led him to teach at Antioch College as a professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature and History.

During his tenure at Antioch (1971– 2005), he pioneered an engaging, effective method of instruction, leading to a very high Spanish fluency rate in his students. He also developed and led numerous study-abroad programs, which allowed students to get a long-term, immersive experience in his native Mexico, Costa Rica, and Cuba. In addition, he conducted several scholarly trips to Cuba and Japan and served as an electoral observer in El Salvador.

Victor Manuel Garcia Perez

While widely respected for his teaching and scholarly activity, he was equally engaged with the community at large.

A progressive humanist and social-justice warrior, he championed racial, economic, and gender equality. He was an active member of HUMAN (Help Us Make A Nation) and DCASC (the Dayton Central America Solidarity Committee), and he helped found Del Pueblo, an advocacy group offering a range of services to the Spanish-speaking community.

Victor spent every day of his life as if it were his last: with energy, optimism, and compassion for others. His passion for life, love, and justice and his strong spirit made him a unique individual who positively touched the lives of many.

He cherished the time he spent philosophizing and debating politics with friends, and he could always be counted on to be the humorist. He was an avid aficionado of Mexican soccer and a loyal Cincinnati Reds fan. His adventurous spirit and natural curiosity drove him to

explore the world and taste different cultures. He treasured his family immensely and was a warm, respected father figure to many generations.

Victor is survived by his spouse, Erendira Lopez Garcia; daughter, Dinah Tolley (Mark); sons, Victor Garcia (Heather) and Emilio Rodrigo Garcia; five grandchildren and a great-granddaughter; sister, Dinah Garcia Cardenas; brother, Rafael Garcia (Rebecca); and several nieces and nephews.

Jenifer Ann Morgan ’57

[September 15, 2019] Jenifer was a gifted listener and a caring friend to the many people who relied on her comfort and wisdom.

Jenifer was born and raised in Yellow Springs and graduated from Antioch College with a degree in government and economics; she went on to obtain a master's degree in social work at the UniverTHE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 45

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Karen Lou Shirley ’61

sity of Chicago. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Morgan ’36 and Ernest Morgan ’29, and granddaughter of Lucy and Arthur Morgan.

Jenifer was a tireless advocate for people, families, and social justice. A social worker and community organizer, she worked in Chicago to combat housing segregation and “redlining,” the practice by which banks refuse to invest in poor neighborhoods and communities of color.

In 1976 Jenifer moved permanently to Celo Community, founded by her grandfather. There, she worked with families and children as a social worker; for the local Board of Education; for Celo Press, where she edited her father's books; and Rural Southern Voice for Peace. She served 12 years as member and chair of the Yancey County Department of Social Services Board and was a member of the Board of the Arthur Morgan School. She was active in local politics for many years.

Jenifer's heart was large. She helped to start the local Martin Luther King Jr. cel46 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

ebrations, sheltered Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees, and initiated the Sister City relationship between Asheville and San Cristobal, Mexico. She initiated a “local lenders” program and supported innumerable good people and causes.

Raised a Quaker, Jenifer ended her spiritual journey as a thoughtful and open-minded Catholic. She attended Celo Friends Meeting until her death, and joined and attended the local Methodist, Catholic, and AME churches. The daughter of a music teacher, she loved music, sang in choirs and played the piano and organ.

Jenifer was preceded in death by her parents; by her beloved sister, Benetta; and by her grandson, Gary Hart. She is survived by her brothers, Art Morgan (Sherry), and Lee Morgan ’66 (Vicky); by her children, Eric Hart (Pam Laser), and Linda Hart; her grandsons, Daniel and Corey Hart; cousin ("sister") Faith Morgan (Pat Murphy); and many other cousins, nieces, nephews and bereaved friends.

Dr. Janne E. Nolan ’74 [June 26, 2019]

Janne Nolan was an expert on international affairs and arms-control issues who advised politicians and diplomats and lamented the reluctance of skeptics to speak out against policies they believed to be wrong.

She earned her bachelor's degree in political science and foreign languages from Antioch, and received a master's in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Stanford University, and a doctorate in international economics from Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She was honored with the Antioch College Alumni Association's Horace Mann Award in 2016 for “winning victories for humanity.”

Nolan, who stood out as a woman in a field dominated by men, acquired her expertise through decades of scholarship and membership in numerous research

Jenifer Ann Morgan ’57

organizations. She held various teaching positions and wrote nine books, including Tyranny of Consensus: Discourse and Dissent in American National Security Policy.

Nolan lamented that while America trains its military officers to obey the Constitution and to disobey orders they know to be illegal, there is no comparable training to help civilian leaders navigate the difficult terrain where “morality, strategic imperatives. and self-interest” bump up against one another.

Nolan was for a time chairwoman of the Presidential Advisory Board on U.S. Arms and Technology Policy. She was also a member of the State Department's Accountability Review Board, which investigated terror attacks on United States embassies in Africa, and a congressional panel that assessed ballistic missile threats.

Karen Lou Shirley ’61 [April 16, 2019]

Karen Shirley taught in the Antioch College Art Department Faculty from 1967 to 1998.

Carolyn “Carol” Kramer Serling ’50

With a Midwestern background that included being a lifeguard, a cheerleader, and detasseling ears of corn in the summer, she developed a lifelong close circle of friends all college-bound. She set her sights on college as well, ending up at Antioch and graduated with a degree in art.

With a strong sense of adventure set in motion by the college and her Coop job experiences she moved to San Francisco, learned about Japan and on a dare, bought boat passage to Osaka in 1963. She settled in Kyoto living on scant funds for nine months, teaching English, studying flower arranging and calligraphy, and rubbing elbows with expatriate San Francisco Beats in the orbit of the poet Gary Snyder.

Returning to the U.S., she earned her MFA degree in Ceramics from Mills College. She received an appointment to teach at Antioch in 1967. At first her teaching focused on the making of functional ware, but soon broadened to include more eccentric object-making informed by the “California Funk Art Movement.”

She prodded her students and herself to branch out into more experimental

modes of working. She was invited to execute sand installations in a number of museum and university galleries around Ohio, as well as in Chicago and Stuttgart.

At Antioch, Karen worked tirelessly delivering a full complement of courses in Ceramics, advising students, serving on wide-ranging College committees, and took on additional teaching responsibilities in Art History.

In 1977, Karen’s focus on the use of natural materials moved to looking at the landscape itself. Over the next decade she produced an extended visual essay in media including painting, drawing, film, photography, xerox transfer prints, and celadon-glazed porcelains. In the ’90s her work was entirely abstract and increasingly minimalist whether derived from natural subjects or solely geometry.

However, it always carried a softness and nuance derived originally from her deeply rooted connections to the rural landscapes of Iowa and Ohio.

In her last decade she was particularly inspired by the writings of Emily Dickinson and David Hinton, the ethereal art work of the Buddhist nun Otagaki RengetTHE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 47

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su, and themartists Ellsworth Kelly, Carmen Herrera, Richard Tuttle, Vija Clemens and, most recently, Hilma Af Klint. At the time of her death she was producing a series of small monochromatic objects able to function as painting or sculpture.

Karen leaves behind her partner of 49 years, Michael Jones, along with her brother and many nieces and nephews.

Michael Spock ’59

Carolyn “Carol” Kramer Serling ’50 [January 9, 2020]

Carol was a longtime champion of Antioch College, and her ties to Antioch ran very deep. Carol was related to Horace Mann, Antioch’s first president, as a first cousin three times removed. Carol’s great-grandfather, Dr. George Caldwell, was professor of chemistry at Antioch 1859–62. His wife, Rebecca Stanley Wilmarth, was a first cousin to Horace Mann and taught at Antioch as well (1855–62). Another of Carol's great-grandfathers, Edward Orton Sr began at Antioch in 1865 as a professor of Natural History.

Carol was born in Columbus, OH, the daughter of Warren A. and Ann Caldwell Kramer. After her mother’s unexpected death when Carol was 18 months old, Carol was raised by her grandparents, Frank and Louise Orton Caldwell of Columbus, OH, who established the Orton Caldwell Scholarship at Antioch. Frank Caldwell had served as a Trustee for Antioch 1909–34.

During her freshman year at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH, she met Rod Serling ’50, one of the returning World War II veterans attending the College. They were married two years later.

Carol graduated from Antioch in 1950 with a BA in elementary education and psychology. Following graduation, they moved to Cincinnati, where Rod worked for a local radio station. Two years later, the couple decided Rod would devote himself fulltime to writing, and they moved to Westport, CT, to be near the center of live television activity in New York City. In the mid-1950s, the couple and their two young daughters moved to Pacific Palisades, CA. 48 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

In California, Carol was a volunteer for the Fair Housing Council, the PTA, the suicide prevention center, and served in various roles for the League of Women Voters. For 30 years, she was the volunteer toy and book buyer at Santa Monica Hospital auxiliary gift shop. A life-long learner, she took art classes in painting, ceramics, and glazing, and enrolled in political science classes at UCLA. She enjoyed sharing time with friends and was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.

Carol served on the Antioch College Board of Trustees 1983–1988 and was a member of the Alumni Board 1979–82.

She was a passionate supporter of many causes, most notably environmental and wildlife causes, women’s issues, liberal politics, and education.

Since her husband’s untimely death in 1975, Carol has managed his literary assets, providing access to his work and giving younger generations an opportunity to hear his messages of humanity, history, and morality. She was involved with negotiating, producing, managing, and publishing remakes of some of his works and a documentary on his life and writings. She was project consultant for the 1983 Twilight Zone: The Movie and was executive producer of the current CBS All Access revival of the Twilight Zone series, hosted by Jordan Peele. She was associate publisher and consulting editor of Twilight Zone Magazine. During their life together, Carol was Rod’s trusted reader, editor, and critic, reading all of his scripts in progress, before they were submitted.

Carol wanted her family, friends, and

associates to remember their joyous adventures and happy days together. At her request, no memorial service will be held.

Her ashes will be buried next to her husband in Interlaken, NY.

Michael Spock ’59 [December 7, 2018]

Michael Spock was a visionary pioneer and innovator in the museum field. Under his direction and mentorship, he inspired generations of museum leaders internationally, transforming the practice, and redefining what a museum could be and whom museums should be for.

Mike was known for his generous spirit; his principled, humanistic, and supportive leadership; and for never losing his childlike wonderment and enthusiasm for the world around him.

Michael was born in New York City in 1933, the first son of famed pediatrician, author and activist Dr. Benjamin Spock and Jane Cheney Spock.

A dyslexic who struggled to read and write, Mike found refuge in the museums of New York City as places filled with objects and experiences where he could look and learn according to his own pace and curiosity.

It was at Antioch College that Mike would experience the two most pivotal events in his life: meeting his future wife and collaborator Judith Wood and taking his first museum job at the Dayton Museum of Natural History where Judy worked.

Mike mastered exhibit design and cabinetmaking, married Judy in 1955, earned a BS in Biology, and started a family in Yellow Springs before moving to Cambridge, MA, to attend the graduate program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Before completing his graduate degree, Mike was hired as director of the then small Children's Museum in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston in 1962. The Children's Museum was transformed under Mike's leadership into one of the nation's first interactive, child-centered museums.

During this time, Mike's team at the Children's Museum produced such groundbreaking exhibits as "We're Still Here" in collaboration with members of the

Wampanoag tribe before other museums even considered including Native Americans in the telling of their own stories.

"What If You Couldn't" was a pioneering exhibit on living with disabilities for children and "Playspace" was an exhibit designed especially for families with toddlers.

In 1983, Mike's second son, Peter, took his own life at the age of 22. After this tragedy, Mike's life and career took on a new sense of urgency and purpose. He accepted the position of public programs director at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, starting in 1986 where, among other projects, he and his team redesigned the ancient Egyptian, Africa, Pacific, animal and evolution galleries.

Upon leaving the Field Museum in 1994, Spock remained in Chicago, a city he loved with characteristic passion.

He became a fellow at University of Chicago's Chapin Hall Center for Children and served as a consultant on museum projects. His final project was Boston Stories, a book and website chronicling the groundbreaking work of the Boston Children's Museum (www.bcmstories.com).

Michael is survived by his wife Judith Wood Spock ’54, son Daniel Spock ’83 and wife Lisa First ’82, daughter Susannah Spock, granddaughter Nadia Spock, and brother John Spock as well as by many nieces, nephews and their children.

Dr. Victor Ayoub ’49, professor emeritus [August 29, 2019]

Dr. Victor F. Ayoub was a professor of Anthropology at Antioch College, and also served as Trustee. His extensive academic and administrative career included teaching at Antioch College for over 20 years with distinction, teaching at several other universities as a visiting professor, spending many years abroad, mostly in the Middle East, where he conducted

anthropological field research, teaching at the American University of Beirut for two years He also served as USIA Academic-in-Residence for Near East and South Asia for over four years. Dr. Ayoub was noted for combining intellectual and critical thinking with fair, firm, reasoned, and balanced administrative decision-making.

Dr. Ayoub held a BA in Literature from Antioch College, an MA in Philosophy from Columbia University, and a PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University.

Wilson Hopkins “Tony” Bent, professor emeritus [December 17, 2019]

Tony joined the faculty of Antioch College in 1952, working in the Co-op Department. He joined Odiorne Industrial Advertising in 1957, became a partner, and remained with the firm until his retirement in 1981.

Tony was very active in the Yellow Springs community and with many local organizations. He was elected to the Village Council in 1969, serving terms across decades until 1995 including multiple terms as president of the Council.

He was instrumental in the creation of the YS greenbelt. Tony felt this zoning was crucial for keeping Yellow Springs from becoming part of the urban sprawl that was happening all over this part of Ohio, and would help to maintain YS’s unique village character.

He had a love for music, old cars, and was a regular runner and then bicycle rider well into his 80s.

Tony went to Oberlin College, although his time there was interrupted by World War II. Brought up in a Quaker family, he was a conscientious objector and served in Civilian Public Service. He returned to Oberlin, where he met his wife Ruth THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 49

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Farmer and received a degree in political science in 1948. He received an MBA in 1950 from University of Chicago.

James Dougan Bolle ’57 [April 14, 2019]

A native of the Chicago area, the conductor-composer's interest in music began at a young age, as the first concert he conducted was an impromptu lunchtime performance in which he led his 8th-grade classmates using a drumstick.

He went on to study French horn, viola, and violin, along with conducting and composing, and attended Harvard University, Antioch College, and Northwestern University. While still living in Illinois, he founded the Chicago Community Music Foundation, and also started several other music festivals and series throughout his career.

Bolle founded the long-running Monadnock Music, an annual chamber music festival in New Hampshire, in 1966. He founded the NH Symphony Orchestra, heading the organization for 29 years, and was a guest conductor for orchestras in the US, Canada, Israel, and Europe.

Margaret “Peggy” Champney ’54 [November 5, 2019]

Quakerism and her family’s strong pacifist values remained a lifelong focus for Peggy, who was also drawn to music from a young age. She felt truly at home at Antioch where she studied child psychology and early childhood education.

In 1951, she married Kenneth Hilbert 50 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

Champney, who had returned to his hometown to save the faltering Yellow Springs News, which he went on to print, publish, and edit over the course of his life. Pacifism was a driving force in the life of the young couple, leading to Ken's refusal to register for the draft and subsequent 20-month prison sentence. Peggy dropped out of Antioch after just one year in order to keep the YS News afloat during Ken's imprisonment.

Peggy and Ken led a consciously simple life in “The Vale,” an intentional community just outside Yellow Springs, where they raised five children and multiple foster children. Peggy co-founded the Vale School, taught Sunday School to generations of Quaker youth, and worked in many roles at the YS News.

Peggy played viola in various settings and sang in the MadriGals and the Yellow Springs Community Chorus. She co-founded “Friends Music Camp” in 1980.

Dr. Gordon F. Comstock ’66 [October 25, 2019]

Born in Miami, FL, in 1943, Gordon was the first child of epidemiologist George Wills Comstock ’37 and community activist Margaret (Karr) Comstock.

Gordon met his wife and life partner, Virginia “Ginger” Kelly ’66, at Antioch College where he majored in Chemistry and the Maples Volunteer Fire Department.

Gordon joined the Peace Corps, teaching math in Ghana for two years before marrying Ginger in 1968. He studied medicine at Case Western Reserve University and completed his residency at University of Rochester/Highland Hospital Family Medicine Program. He practiced family medicine in Arcade, NY, from 1980 to 2018. Originally contracted for two years to serve the in doctor-scarce area, he and his family chose to stay in Arcade because of the people and the community spirit.

Gordon dedicated his life to service and teaching. From 1989 to 2017, he made 29 trips to Honduras as part of NY/HELP mission. He inspired Ginger, both daughters, and at least eight community mem-

bers to travel with him, and they were supported by countless others. Both Gordon and Ginger have been continuously active with NY/HELP, and Gordon became the medical director.

Paul S. Fishkin ’55 [July 16, 2019]

A former member of the Antioch Alumni Board, Paul Fishkin was a serious, objective, independent person who loved his family and enjoyed helping others, language, humor, and

watching sports.

After serving in the Army, Paul was a CPA in Baraboo, WI, for 34 years. He served on many committees of the American and Wisconsin Institutes of CPAs including a term as a vice president. He was president of ACUTE, a national organization of CPA firm computer users, and received their second distinguished service award. In Baraboo he was an alderman, for many years served the United Way as president and board member, and received the Baraboo Jaycees Distinguished Service Award.

In retirement, Paul continued his community service in Madison with many local organizations and foundations.

Risa Anne Grimes, former staff [November 29, 2019]

Risa was hired in 2005 as a major gifts officer. At the closing of the College, she emerged as the institution’s chief fundraiser, and was instrumental in the Antioch College Revival effort working with the alumni to secure the funds to purchase the College and its assets from Antioch University.

She led a team of eight who secured $10 million to obtain the college and wrote grants totaling $4.5 million. As executive director of the College Revival Fund, she worked intimately with the Alumni Asso-

ciation Board of Directors and wrote the 501(c)3 application to establish the Antioch College Continuation Corporation.

As Vice President for Advancement of the newly independent College, she worked very closely with Interim College President Matthew Derr ’89 and Antioch Chair Lee Morgan ’66.

“I am especially proud of the Advancement Team,” she said at the time. “Against all odds, they never gave up on the fight to reclaim Antioch College. They are the unsung heroes of the Save Antioch movement and they are, without a doubt, the finest advancement professionals I have ever encountered.” Risa retired from Antioch in 2011.

Risa earned a bachelor’s in marketing education from Memphis State University and a master’s in counseling from Troy State University. Survivors include a son and daughter.

Wilberta “Billie” Eastman ’46 [November 1, 2019]

Billie Eastman grew up on a dairy farm during the Depression. She thrived on spending time with her father learning farming, carpentry and agricultural skills, and throughout her life preferred spending time outside on her tractor, gardening, raising chickens, and teaching her children basic woodworking and building skills.

She met Richard Eastman ’43 at Antioch College; they married in 1945.

Her religious faith was a spiritual guide throughout her life. With a strong belief in nonviolence, she supported her husband's decision to become a conscientious objector, moving with him to Philadelphia after he was drafted into the Civilian Public Service. Her later work in civil rights and hosting a student from Kenya for four years was consistent with her Quaker values.

Nutrition and health were enduring passions of hers. Her insistence on breastfeeding was considered shocking during a time when doctors adamantly recommended formula. During the ’50s, she stocked the local grocery store with whole wheat flour and organic products, and later founded

the Better Health Co-op and introduced Ayurvedic Medicine to Yellow Springs.

Community was important to her, and she was always willing to be of service to others. Billie and her friends successfully led an initiative to repurpose and preserve the former Bryan High School as the Yellow Springs Community Center. She and Richard were part of founding “The Vale,” an intentional community just outside Yellow Springs, where they lived nearly 60 years.

Dr. August “Gus” Ludwig Freundlich ’49 [October 24, 2018]

Gus lied about his age in order to join the Marine Corps after Pearl Harbor, against his mother's wishes. He served with distinction in Underwater Demolitions, was severely injured on Iwo Jima, and was awarded a Purple Heart.

After an extended rehabilitation, Gus attended Antioch College, where he met and married Lillian Thomson ’53, his wife of more than 50 years. He received his master's in Art History from Columbia, and a PhD from NYU. After brief stints teaching at the University of Arkansas, Eastern Michigan, and Peabody College, Dr. Freundlich was named Chairman of the Art Department and Director of the Lowe Gallery at University of Miami. Six years later, he became Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, and later Dean of Fine Arts at University of South Florida. During this time, he served a term as President of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans, and was one of the first Americans to visit newly opened China as a special cultural envoy.

After a short retirement, Gus was chosen as Director of the Florsheim Foundation.

He was the author of numerous books.

Lauren Heaton, friend [July 28, 2019]

Lauren Heaton was an award-winning reporter, columnist and photographer, as well as associate editor, at the Yellow Springs News for 15 years. At the News, Lauren's curiosity and perspective as a native Yellow Springer intersected with her gift for writing.

As a member of the News editorial team, she was also honored for her writing as part of several in-depth series, including those on the 2008 closure of Antioch College, local policing, water, health, and more.

She distinguished herself as a serious journalist with a healthy skepticism, tempered with a great sense of humor. Her discipline in striving for equanimity was a model to those with whom she worked.

Above all, Heaton's work was motivated by her love for her hometown and a desire to see her community thrive.

Dr. Fred I. Greenstein ’53 [December 3, 2018]

Fred Greenstein was professor of politics, emeritus, at Princeton University, and one of the nation's leading experts on the American presidency. Greenstein is best known for his contributions to the systematic study of political psychology and for its application to presidential decision-making and leadership. He joined Princeton's politics department in 1973 and was also the director of the Research Program in Leadership Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

He served as chair of politics from 1986 to 1990. Greenstein retired in 2001.

As a scholar with a long scope on the history of the American presidency and the facility to untangle the complexities of political issues in the vernacular, Greenstein THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 51

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was a sought-after expert by the media.

Among his honors, Greenstein had fellowships at the Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the Louis Brownlow Award and the Nevitt Sanford Award. He was a fellow and past-president of the International Society of Political Psychology. Greenstein wrote or edited more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles and reviews.

Mary K. Johrde Nefedov ’51 [October 17, 2019]

A gregarious networker, Mary lived in Old Town Alexandria for more than 50 years where she had a full, independent life of travel, friendship, and engagement. She loved music and museums, wildlife, and the great outdoors.

She received a “Federal Women's Award” in 1973 from the National Science Foundation for her tireless efforts on behalf of oceanographic research. Mary chaired her 50th Antioch College class reunion.

Dr. Sarah “Sally” Lupfer, friend [October 25, 2018]

Sally Lupfer attended Vassar College, graduating with the wartime class of 1945– 4 (the "class with the dash"). She received her PhD in pharmacology from Columbia University in 1957.

Sally had a scientifically inquisitive mind and a remarkable memory that made her one part naturalist and one part genealogist. She lived by her ethic that everyone ought to be a productive member of society and contribute in some way to the greater good, and she and husband Ed put their resources into action through ongoing support of the arts, environment, education, and justice, including Glen Helen and the College. Sally gave her time and 52 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

talents to numerous organizations such as serving on the boards of the Springfield Foundation and the Women's Association of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Margery Fels Palmer ’61

Robert “Bob” Press ’60

In 1956 Margery moved east from Los Angeles to attend A n t i o c h C o l l e ge where she met the love of her life, E. Macdougall “Mac” Palmer '61. She got her bachelor's degree in Mathematics, and on the day they both graduated in June 1961, they got married. Their daughter Abigail ’87 was born in 1965.

Margery earned a master’s degree in the Teaching of Mathematics at the University of Virginia, but skipped her graduation ceremonies to attended the graduation at Antioch, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the commencement address.

Both Margery and Mac were longtime Volunteer Work Project participants.

[March 18, 2019]

Bob Press was Professor Emeritus of Governors State University (Illinois). After graduating from Antioch he received an MA from NYU in 1962.

Bob helped to create the idea of the Antioch College Volunteer Work Project, along with Peggy Erskine ’60 and Mac Palmer ’61.

Ralph E. Ramey, former staff [April 29, 2019]

Ralph was the Director of Glen Helen Nature Preserve at Antioch College from 1973 to 1990, where he influenced everything from fundraising for the Glen to programs, outreach, and more. He was particularly proud of saving a covered bridge from elsewhere in Greene Country and having it moved to its current location within Glen Helen. Before his passing, he told his wife, Jean, that his time at Glen Helen was the best of his life.

Following his time in Yellow Springs, Ralph served one year as the director-secretary of Miami County Park District in Tipp City, OH, before becoming the chief of the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, where he served from 1991 to 1994. Ralph authored three books about hiking in Ohio, including 50 Hikes in Ohio, the 4th edition of which was published in 2016. Preservation of Ohio's natural areas was Ralph's passion. He was instrumental in the preservation of Cedar Bog Nature Preserve near Urbana.

A plaque there dedicates the boardwalk trail in his name.

[April 29, 2019]

Hazel Tulecke, friend [September 5, 2019]

Hazel attended University of Michigan, where she met Walt Tulecke. They married and had four daughters, moving in 1967 to Yellow Springs, where Walt taught at Antioch. She completed her master’s degree at Wright State University and worked as a counselor, eventually developing her own private practice. She and Walt divorced in 1973, and in 1988 Hazel married Antioch professor Bill Houston, her beloved partner of many years.

Hazel took great pleasure in life itself: people, the natural world, humor, playing the piano, riding her bike, and taking action to realize her dreams of a better world. She was willing to be jailed for her stances on environmental and foreign policy issues. In Yellow Springs, Hazel is known for her works to establish the sister village project with El Jicaro, Nicaragua, as well as the Saturday Peace vigil that has been held continuously since 2002.

We learned of the passing of these alumni and friends between April 2018 and January 2020. Read more online: antiochcollege.edu/ category/obituaries Stephen “Steve” Freschl ’42 Henry Sung ’44 John W. Senders ’44 Lois Pitkin Booth ’45 Folly Fisher King ’46 Wilberta “Billie” Eastman ’46 Constance Hannah ’47 Isabel Harvey ’47 Madelin Alk ’47 Norma Berman Nudelman ’47 Ruth G. Bernhardt ’47 Alice Mabelle Cooper Wright ’48 Claire Alma Hughes ’48 Col. John C. O. Donnell ’48 Gertrude Groveman ’48 Justin "Jup" W. Cowger ’48 Dr. Victor Ayoub ’49 Frederick A. Leedy ’49 John Warren “Jack” Day Jr. ’49 Charles William “Bill” Stonebarger ’50 Dewart “Dewey” Patterson ’50 Donald King Montez ’50 Elizabeth “Betty” Gates Clegg ’50 Jean Tansey Porter ’50 Lois Palmer Reid ’50 Dr. Robert J. Harder ’51 Helen Pitman Hammond ’51 Mary K. Johrde Nefedov ’51 Priscilla M. Forbes ’51 Robert “Bob” E. Newman Jr. ’51 Vera M. McKlveen ’51 Elaine Anne Quick ’52 Gilbert J. Gray ’52 Lewis Kings Wetzel ’52 Richard “Dick” P. Schnelz ’52 Walter F. Ingram Jr. ’52

Ann K. Bishop ’54 Carol-Faith Murray Hill ’54 Joan K. Oltman ’54 Judith Steiner Torop ’54 Margaret "Peggy" Champney ’54 Robert E. Roelke ’54 Beverly Bonn Jonnes ’55 Dr. Wolfgang W. Riedel ’55 Nancy Plum ’55 Paul S. Fishkin ’55 Cecil Connor Holland ’56 James T. Lee ’56 Sandra E. Wilks ’56 Alan J. Dale ’57 James Dougan Bolle ’57 Jenifer Ann Morgan ’57 Margaret “Marge” Porterfield ’57 Adolph “Art” N. Hofmann ’58 David A. Johnson ’58 George Thomas Johnston ’58 Hillery Susan Schneiderman ’58 Evelyn D. McKenney ’59 John F. Allen ’59 Ann Frye ’61 Irene A. Skolnick ’61 Karen Lou Shirley ’61 Margery Fels Palmer ’61 Carter H. Harrison Jr. ’62 Nancy Salen ’62 Deacon Michael David Ross ’63 Leandra Vicci ’64 Philip Nolan ’64 Martia Goodson ’65 Robin M. Holske ’65 Claudia Jean Winger ’66 Dr. Gordon F. Comstock ’66 Larry P. Cameron ’66 Penelope “Penny” Carpenter ’66 Rudolf “Rudy” D. Barchas ’66 Kenneth R. Miller ’67 Manfred “Macky” Rotermund ’67 Paul Chipkin ’67 Daniel E. Broyles ’68 F. Scott Tobey ’68 Sara Jane Spaulding ’68 Virginia May Stonebarger ’68 Edward M. Simon ’69 Sharon L. Liptzin ’69 Alicia R. Weber ’70

David A. Harlow ’70 Dr. Elizabeth “Betsy” Pollak ’70 Anne Fiske ’71 Audrey Johnson-Thornton ’71 John Warren Simpson ’71 Meredith “Merry” Kassoy ’71 Amanda Frances Renshaw ’72 Daniel Nathan Talpers ’72 Dr. Dianne S. Salter ’72 Jacob R. Jerningan III ’72 Jacquelyn G. Alston ’72 Linda B. Michalowski ’72 Rodney Sadler ’72 Rosamond Randall “Roz” Dewart ’72 Wendy Rae Dallas ’72 Arcadio Garza ’74 Dr. Janne E. Nolan ’74 James S. Calhoun ’75 Kelsey V. McCloud ’75 Alexander Richardson Dreier ’76 Berthelia M. McCormick ’76 Dr. Robert W. “Bobb” Stokes ’76 Fred “Fritz” Foulke ’76 Sharman Stein ’76 Jeanette Bubis Gordon ’77 Wanda Robinson Baily-Green ’77 A.J. Duffy ’78 Howard Gruetzner ’78 John D. Prior ’78 Janet R. Jepsen ’79 Michael R. Diehl ’79 Barbara G. Sterne ’80 Susan E. Drumm ’80 Bruce H. Shankin ’81 Elizabeth A. Welch Rectanus ’81 Donna D. Bennett Beekman ’84 George C. Quallen ’86 Robert “Bob” A. Bell ’86 Joanne Sultar ’88 Phyllis L. Pyles ’94 Alam M. Lehman ’68 Anna Pecht ’54 Susan Siegel Sharlot ’60

William Shulz ’61 Adam Hutchinson ’03 Jean Holloway ’08 Wilson Hopkins “Tony” Bent, former faculty Kathleen “Kathe” Brown, former staff Joan Christine Edwards, former faculty Aaron Everett, former faculty Elizabeth Ann Reed Fugger, former staff Victor Garcia, former faculty Marsha Glass, former staff Lawrence P. Goodman, friend Risa Grimes, former staff Mara Shannon Groves, former staff Kenneth James “Buster” Hamilton, former staff Lamarr T. Hamman, former staff Lauren Heaton, friend of the College Allan Laverne Jones, former faculty Emmett F. Joseph, friend Lloyd Luther Laubach, former staff Nancy Lengtat, former faculty Mary Patricia “Pat” Parsons, former staff Ralph E. Ramey, former staff Dr. Gene Reeves, former staff Larry Robinson, former faculty David “Peach Fuzz” Sebree, friend Hazel Tulecke, friend Uzahne Colglazier Westneat, friend Dudley H. Woodall, former staff

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 53

Class Notes Bert Ellentuck ’51 recently celebrated his 90th birthday. The only other Antiochian present was Bert’s wife, Shan ’55. Bert hopes to outlast his fellow graduates and, to this end, works out at the gym for four to five hours a week.

In September 2019, The Third Person in the Room: Stories of Relationships at a Turning Point was released

by Nolan Kerr Press. The first book by Bea V. Larsen ’51, The Third Person in the Room features essays describing her observations of human behavior under stress during her 48-plus years as a public defender, divorce lawyer, mediator, and trusted confidant. Each offers insight into how people communicate, or don’t, and probes universal concerns, including aging, friendship, loneliness, fear, anger, and uncertainty.

Longtime fair housing administrator Larry Pearl ’51 gave attendees of Home, Inc.’s (Yellow Springs) annual meeting a history of housing discrimination in America. The meeting was held at Antioch College’s Herndon Gallery on Sunday, May 5, 2019, and also commemorated the local affordable housing land trust’s 20th anniversary.

Mark Harrison ’57, a partner in the Phoenix law firm of Osborn Maledon, recently was elected to the State Bar Board of Governors for a three-year term. Harrison long has been involved in the State Bar, and served as its president in 1975–76.

(www.milaraphael.com).

In 2020, the Raphaels will spend the winter in Oaxaca, Mexico, a place they have grown to love for its beauty, history, arts and crafts, and its indigenous culture.

Karl Grossman ’64 wrote and hosted the documentary, Crimes Against The Future, which was selected for screening at the New Earth International Film Festival.

From left to right: John Bachtell ’80, Barbara Winslow ’68, Prexy Nesbitt ’67, and Eric Miller ’81.

Prexy Nesbitt ’67 Honored

Distinguished Antioch College alumnus and former trustee Rozell “Prexy” Nesbitt ’67 was honored by The Social Justice Initiative (SJI), a unit at the University of Illinois at Chicago, on October 2, 2019, for his exemplary career of service and activism.

For the event, “Honoring the Social Justice Career of Prexy Nesbitt,” SJI hosted an afternoon symposium followed by a reception at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Prexy Nesbitt has spent more than five decades as an educator, activist, and speaker on Africa, foreign policy, and racism. He was a national and international leader supporting the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. Closer to home, he worked as an educator, activist and union organizer and served as special assistant to Chicago’s Mayor, the late Harold Washington.

Nesbitt is currently the Presidential Fellow in Peace Studies at Chapman University’s Department of Peace Studies. He is a beloved educator, international delegation coordinator, and social justice leader who has traveled to Africa over a hundred times and has taught and mentored hundreds of students and activists. Nesbitt’s life and work have been widely profiled, and he makes an appearance in the two-part PBS series “Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise” in which he talks about his involvement as Martin Luther King Jr.’s bodyguard during a 1966 march in Chicago.

For the last 20 years, Mila McGarraugh Raphael ’65 and David Raphael ’63 have lived in Portland, OR, with their three grown children and their families,

54 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

including five grandchildren. David continues to do consulting in the non-emergency medical transportation field, while Mila is a full time watercolor artist

Robin Rice ’64 hosted a reading of her new play, A Wolf, a Rabbit, and a Crow Walk into Tomorrow in New York, at the Dramatists Guild Foundation on May 16, 2019.

Franklin Stage Company hosted an exhibition of the sculptures of Richard Friedberg ’65 titled “drawing exercises” from August through September 2019.

Barbara Benham Tye ’65 currently lives at Friends House, a small Quaker retirement community in Santa Rosa, CA, where she narrowly escaped a third year of nearby wildfires.

She is featured in a new book, Barbara and Elizabeth: Late-Life Lovers. A funny, sexy, thought-provoking exploration of how two lifelong straight women can find themselves in love at age 76, Barbara and Elizabeth is also a physical and philosophical adventure in unexpected territory and, in this respect, very Antiochian!

In May 2019, Philip Fried ’66 read poems from his book, Squaring the Circle, as well as more recent work at Manhattan’s Congrega-

15, 2019. Tuck’s presentation was followed by a panel discussion with Dayton-area higher-ed experts, which took and responded to questions from the audience.

tion Rodeph Sholom. The reading was sponsored by the progressive magazine Jewish Currents.

Katya (Nina Sabaroff) Taylor ’66 lives in Tallahassee, FL, where she still writes, and offers courses in the same both around town and in local prisons.

After publishing Prison Wisdom (Writing with Inmates) in 2016, she’s now at work on her next project: MY LIFE AS A POET. This collection includes poems she wrote at Antioch. Write her at katyata@earthlink.com.

AMINA-ELAHI

Evelyn LaMers ’69 and Tom LaMers ’68 celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with an at-home garden party on July 5, 2019. Yellow Springs alums attending were Sue Abendroth ’66, Richard Zopf ’73, Jim Spangler ’74, Fran Rickenbach ’73, Carolyn Smith ’69, Connie Crockett ’76, Joe Anthony ’69, David Anderson ’66, David Hergesheimer ’72, Joan Horn ’56, Peggy Erskine ’60, David Erskine ’58 plus VWP Volunteers David Vincent ’65, Penny Storm ’65, Louise Meller ’67, Helen Welford ’69, Roger Huff ’69 and Kathy Huff ’67, along with many friends and family. The grand celebration was followed by a trip to Bermuda.

Michael Griggs ’68 has been making theater in Portland, OR, since 1985.

He teaches at Portland Actors Conservatory, where he will be directing Never In My Lifetime by Shirley Gee, opening February 21, 2020. Following that, he is directing Song of Extinction

The legacy of Gregory S. Orr ’69 was recently celebrated as he retired from 44 years of serving on the University of Virginia’s English department faculty.

Orr co-founded the Creative Writing Program, which offers a Master of Fine Arts in poetry or prose, and served as its first director.

Eric Friedlander ’83 Appointed by Kentucky Governor In December 2019, Kentucky’s newly elected governor Andy Beshear appointed Eric Friedlander ’83 as deputy secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. Friedlander is currently the chief resilience officer for the administration of Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and will lead Health and Family Services on an interim basis until a permanent secretary is appointed.

Freidlander majored in economics at Antioch College.

Friedlander has more than 35 years of government experience, previous serving in the Steve Beshear administration overseeing human resources, budget and legislative departments of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. Friedlander has also served as the executive director for the Commission for Children with Special Health Care Needs; had executive leadership roles in the Office of the Inspector General, Behavioral Health, Office of Health Policy (CON), Department for Income Support and Family Resource and Youth Services Centers, as well as serving as Deputy Secretary for the Cabinet.

by EM Lewis at Twilight Theater Company, opening May 1, 2020.

Author, journalist, and defense expert Jay Tuck ’68

was the keynote speaker in an Antioch College-organized symposium on artificial intelligence at Dayton Metro Library’s Eichelberger Forum Main Stage on July

Memories & Miracles, a memoir by Dr. Erica M. Elliot ’70 was reviewed by Alex de Vore in the Santa Fe Reporter. The work documents her time as a white woman teaching, herding sheep, and practicing medicine on the Navajo Reservation in the ’70s and ’80s. de Vore describes Memories & Miracles as, “a book that easily could have slipped into the simplistic white-savior narrative [but] was instead honest, woke, deeply engrossing read about culture, friendship, and steep learning curves.”

Tarzan’s Jungle Plane is the second full-length collection of prose poems by Michael Malan ’70. He is the editor of Cloudbank Books, based in Corvallis, OR, and

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 55

Class Notes his writing has appeared in numerous journals over the years.

After retiring as Senior Circulation Supervisor from the Timberland Regional Library system in 2015, Patricia Chupa ’72 has enjoyed her life as a book artist. Her pieces are in museum and university collections, as well as in private collections, and she currently sits on the board of the Puget Sound Book Artists.

Patricia makes her home in Olympia, WA, with annual sojourns in Gloucestershire and Cornwall, UK. Saxophonist and composer Idris Ackamoor ’73, has a new production called “We

A new book, The Center of the World: Regional Writing and the Puzzles of PlaceTime, by June Howard ’73 was published last year by Oxford University Press.

According to her publisher, “In The Center of the World, Howard develops an interdisciplinary concept of region that overcomes the opposition between locality and connectedness.”

First Novel by Rachel Moulton ’97 Tinfoil Butterfly by Rachel Eve Moulton ’97 has received critical acclaim.

The Washington Post and Library Journal both included Tinfoil Butterfly on their 2019 lists for best horror fiction.

“Unputdownable, in every sense of the word,” writes Paris Close. “Moulton writes with such nail-biting suspense yet with the tried and true heart and emotion that makes for a wicked-good story.”

Gabino Iglesias’s NPR review says, “Tinfoil Butterfly is eerie, atmospheric, and almost unbearably dreary. Every time you think it can’t get worse, Moulton delivers another hit, another bleak revelation, another unnerving vision. She fully engages with the weirdness of the place and never shies away from gore. However, the most important thing about this horrific read is that it doesn’t need monsters to scare you— just cancer, heartbreak, abuse, and cocaine, all of which are normal things in our world. Now do yourself a favor and let Moulton’s darkness invade your blood.”

Moulton dropped by the WYSO studios in October for a “Book Nook” interview with Vick Mickunas (listen here: tinyurl.com/ moulton-wyso).

56 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

Doug Goodkin ’74 retired from his position at The San Francisco School in San Francisco, CA, at the end of the 2019 school year after 45 years of teaching elementary school music there. However, he will continue his work with the Orff Schulwerk method of music education by writing and teaching workshops and classes.

Place Yourself: Words of Prayer & Intention! Is the first book published by Trisha Arlin ’75. Author Amy Gottlieb says, “Trisha Arlin’s liturgical poetry breathes with authenticity, honesty, and a spiritual sensibility informed by the dissonance of real life. Her contemporary theology offers a necessary respite from the

DANIELLE NAPLES

Dr. Robert Schwebel ’71 has published Leap of Power: Take Control of Alcohol, Drugs and Your Life. Schwebel, a clinical psychologist who in 1991 founded the Seven Challenges program, which is now widely used across the United States, has written several books. With his latest, he continues his effort to provide progressive and empowering options to those struggling with alcohol and other drugs. His book will also be available in audio from Blackstone Publishing.

Live Here!”. The show features Afrocentric themes, culture, and sounds.

Ben London ’89 performed with his band Stag at the grand opening festivities of the Nordstrom New York City flagship store on October, 26, 2019. From left to right: Nivia Quinones Butler ’88, Perry Morgan, Greta Schwerner ’90, Ben London ’89, Jeff Wood ’88, and Shelli Bohrer ’90 lofty and flowery, and we have much to learn from her wisdom.”

Jon Schoenhorn ’76 continues to practice civil rights, criminal, and appellate law full time in Connecticut. In the past year, he was the keynote speaker on the topic, “Fighting for Justice in the Age of Trump” at the Middlesex County (CT) NAACP’s Annual Freedom Fund Awards Dinner; and elected to the Farmington Zoning Board of Appeals and named chairperson.

Peter Labermeier ’78 is settled into life in Los Angecont. on page 60

In June 2019, Barbara Walraff ’72 hosted a gathering in London. From left to right: President Tom Manley, Jay Tuck ’68, Jay Blumler ’47, Barbara Wallraff ’72, Jay Tuck ’68, Emma MacLennan ’76, David Ward, Helen Wilson ’72, Stephanie Scott ’89, Anita Bennett ’72 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 57

Class Notes Each year, the Antioch College Alumni Board of Directors recognizes those alumni and friends who, by their achievements and actions, best exemplify the values and successes held in high esteem by the Antioch College Alumni Association.

Award plenary sessions were presented during Reunion in July 2019 where the recipients were honored for their achievements.

HORACE MANN AWARD

Stephen Arpadi ’75 & Donald Thea ’76

The Horace Mann Award recognizes contributions by alumni of Antioch College who have “won some victory for humanity,” following Horace Mann’s advice to the graduating class of 1859. Recipients are persons, or groups of persons, whose personal or professional activities have had a profound effect on the present or future human condition. Mann was the first president of Antioch College.

Stephen Arpadi ’75 (MD, MS) is Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at Columbia University. He earned a BA in Biology from Antioch, MD from George Washington University, MS in Epidemiology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia.

Stephen started at Antioch in Environmental Studies. In the midst of second wave feminism, Marxist Thought, the Existentialism of Ingmar Bergman, and endless political debates on the path to revolution, Jim Howell’s inspired teaching about the elegant complexities of human physiology— and explaining the diuretic effects of beer— put Stephen on the path to medicine.

Over the years, Stephen has provided HIV care, implemented treatment and prevention programs and conducted clinical research. For the past 15 years, he has worked to expand HIV prevention and treatment across sub-Saharan Africa.

Stephen has served on advisory boards for WHO and NIH, authored dozens of articles and chapters, and taught and mentored medical and public health students.

58 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

He is married to Dr. Terry Marx, also a pediatrician, and is the father of Adina and Charlotte Marx-Arpadi.

Donald Thea ’76 didn’t expect to attend college; his Antiochian parents thought otherwise. Joint passions of science and social justice led him to health sciences and public health.

Medical training (MD Columbia, MSc London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, fellowship New England Medical Center) was punctuated by the first cases of AIDS. Don’s career path was set, taking him to the front lines of AIDS battlegrounds—the impact on gay men in NYC, ACT-UP resistance to speed drug development, the explosion of the epidemic in Africa, and linkages with malaria and childhood pneumonia.

After three years in Kinshasa, DRC, Don became Principal Investigator of the NYC Perinatal HIV Transmission Study. Then to the Harvard Institute for International Development, and finally to Boston University School of Public Health where he is Professor of Global Health and Director of MD/ MPH dual degree program. Don’s application for a Global Entry pass was recently denied due to an unresolved arrest for a 1972 demonstration at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

ARTHUR MORGAN AWARD

Laurence Pearl ’55 The Arthur Morgan Award recognizes contributions by alumni or friends of the College which exemplify the concept of “community” advocated by Arthur Morgan. The nominees for this award should be persons, or groups of persons, who have contributed to their community—either local, national or world—in a manner which brings members of the community together in order to work toward common goals. Morgan served as President of Antioch College for 16 years.

Lawrence (Larry) Pearl ’55 was born and raised in Philadelphia, son of a Philadelphia lawyer. He has degrees from Antioch and Yale Law School and studied Sociology at Harvard.

Larry began his Federal career in 1961 and retired 37 years later as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Program Opera-

Arpadi

Thea

tions and Compliance in the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Along the way, he headed a variety of offices responsible for enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and ensuring that all HUD programs provided equal opportunity and promoted fair housing.

After retirement, Larry developed a course for the National Fair Housing Training Academy, attends Supreme Court arguments, and volunteers with ACLU. He is a member of the DC Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights and served as its chair from 2012–2014. Larry has served twice on the Antioch Alumni Board as well as on the Board of Trustees.

He regularly speaks with Co-op students and attends DC-area alumni gatherings.

REBECCA RICE AWARD

Laurence Leamer ’64 The Rebecca Rice Award recognizes alumni of Antioch College who by their actions, achievements, and leadership have distinguished themselves and their alma mater.

The recipients of this award are persons who have excelled in their vocation or field of study. The award is named for the first female trustee—and longtime faculty member— of Antioch College.

Lawrence (Larry) Leamer ’64 credits Antioch and his Co-op experience with setting him out to experience as many kinds of lives as he could. After graduating, he

2019 ALUMNI AWARDS

Pearl

Leamer

joined the Peace Corps and went to Nepal.

Back in the States, Larry was awarded a Ford Fellowship in International Development to study at the University of Oregon and an International Fellowship at the Columbia School of Journalism. He then worked in a West Virginia coal mine; that piece led to covering the war in Bangladesh for Harper’s.

In 1979, Larry moved to Peru and wrote Assignment, a novel about the cocaine trade. Biographies followed: Willi Unsoeld, who climbed Everest and was a Peace Corps director in Nepal; the Reagans; Johnny Carson; the Kennedys; Arnold Schwarzenegger. Other books include The Price of Justice, the story of two lawyers' struggle against the most powerful coal baron in American history and The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought down the Klan. His latest book is Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace.

Larry is married to Vesna Obradovic Leamer.

J.D. DAWSON AWARD

Robert S. Fogarty The J.D. Dawson Award recognizes significant contributions to Antioch College by alumni or friends of Antioch. The recipients of this award are persons who have contributed in a significant way to Antioch College or a program of Antioch College. Perhaps best-known for his involvement with the Co-op depart-

Fogarty ment, J.D. Dawson’s entire career was dedicated to Antioch College.

Dr. Robert S. (Bob) Fogarty joined the Antioch faculty in 1968; he has been Editor of the Antioch Review since 1977 and is John Dewey Professor Emeritus in the Humanities. The Review competes against the most prestigious magazines in the country and is a regular finalist for Columbia School of Journalism’s National Magazine Award. Bob says that he feels fortunate to have no pressure to print what sells, as do commercial magazines. Rather, his only standard is aesthetic—“the best words in the best order.” During his editorship, the Review has published award-winning authors such as T.C. Boyle, Raymond Carver, and Aimee Bender. It receives 4,000 stories, 1,500 essays, and "too many poems to count" every year.

Bob is author and editor of eight books, numerous articles and essays, and recipient of the PEN/American Center Nora Magid lifetime achievement award for magazine editing and other awards. He has taught and lectured across the country and around the world.

Bob is married to Katherine Kadish, an internationally acclaimed visual artist.

WALTER F. ANDERSON AWARD

LaShann DeArcy Hall ’92

The Walter F. Anderson Award recognizes contributions by alumni and friends who have ad-

DeArcy Hall vanced Antioch College’s ideals by breaking down racial and ethnic barriers. The award is named for Antioch’s longtime music department chair, the first African-American department head at a historically non-black institution of higher education. Recipients have shown fortitude and effectiveness in promoting diversity within the Antioch community and beyond.

The Honorable LaShann DeArcy Hall ’92 is a US District Judge for the Eastern District of New York. After receiving her BA from Antioch, she waitressed in New York and Washington, taught conversational English in Korea, and served in the U.S. Air Force before entering Howard University School of Law, where she graduated in 2000.

Judge DeArcy Hall is a member of the American and New York City bar associations. She worked at several prestigious law firms and served as Commissioner on the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission and on the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

Judge DeArcy Hall’s pro bono efforts include winning a reversal of her client’s death sentence in Alabama and negotiating a favorable settlement on behalf of an inmate seeking redress of First Amendment violations. She works to introduce minority youth to the law through Sponsors for Education Opportunity, Constitutional Works, and the High School of Law and Justice, and was honored by the New York City Bar Association for her work in promoting diversity in the legal profession.

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 59

Class Notes

Shane Creepingbear ’08 and Melissa Vera ’16 at an Austin, TX, national college fair in April 2019. les, still working but looking forward to spending more time with family. Peter has been working on setting up an Antioch College Alumni Chapter, in “fits and starts” in LA and is looking for new ideas and ways to bring the local community closer together.

Ellen Stone ’81 retired from teaching high school special education at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2018. She continues to advise a poetry club at Community and also co-hosts a monthly poetry series in downtown Ann Arbor. Ellen’s poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and her first full-length collection, What Is in the Blood, will be published in March 2020 by Mayapple Press.

Barbara Winslow ’68 and Sonia Jaffe Robbins ’65 at the Women’s March NYC Foley Square Yoder School is the first published book by Phyllis Miller Swartz ’84. Swartz recalls

60 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020

she “found wonder once again” in the classrooms at Antioch College, similar to

the feeling she had at Yoder School, which features in her memoir along with her first

education this past summer at San Jose State University, Ruben Quinones ’04 started his first year of teaching elementary school music this fall at Saint Philip Neri School in Alameda, CA. He also continues teaching private music lessons all around the SF Bay Area.

teacher Alvina Livengood, before moving to Flint, MI, with her family.

Steven Oliver ’90 presented “Contemplative Pedagogy & the Journey of Becoming” at TEDx Salem State University in September 2019. Oliver is an associate professor of secondary and higher education at Salem State.

Amy (Schmidt) Gill ’06 is pursuing a PhD aimed at improving support for young parents with an outof-home care background and works part-time as a research assistant. Recently, her systematic literature review was accepted for publication in CYSR and she presented her work at the Australian Motherhood Initiative conference. Amy lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and oneyear-old daughter.

Felicia Chappelle ’91 presented her one-woman show, Interrupted Motherhood, at the Foundry Theater at Antioch College in July 2019. She was also featured on WYSO’s “Book Nook” with Vick Mickunas in November 2019.

The Honorable LaShann DeArcy Hall ’92 was the third annual speaker for Antioch College’s Honorable A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Distinguished Seminar Series. The presentation was open to the public and held during Reunion in July 2019.

Award-winning filmmaker Johanna Bermúdez-Ruiz ’98 has been on tour giving academic lectures and supporting her latest award-winning short film premiere of “Soléne,” which portrays migration and LBGTQ love set in the Caribbean. “Soléne” premiered at retrospective film screening of her work at The Center in New York City in November 2019.

Jesús Canchola Sánchez ’00 premiered his first feature-length film, Agua Agridulce, (Bittersweet Water) in Mexico City on May 4, 2019, as a part of the

Mentoring Award for Melanee Meegan ’01

Melanee Meegan ’01 was honored in May 2019 with the Alan and Diane Page Mentoring Legacy Award in recognition of her outstanding dedication to Bolder Options and support of Minnesota youth. Melanee has been a mentor to five young women for over 12 years with Bolder Options, a wellness-based mentoring program for middle school youth in the Minneapolis area.

Film Festival Mix 23 at the Cineteca Nacional.

Erika Nakamura ’04 was featured among NYC’s “best chefs” interviewed for The New York Times “New York City’s best restaurants” feature, and participated in The New York Times Food Festival in October

Katie Watkins-Brandt ’07 is working as the Sensor Systems Engineer for the Regional Class Research Vessel Program of the Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

2019. Erika co-founded J+E SmallGoods—a wholesale sausage company—with partner Jocelyn Guest. The couple previously led White Gold Butchers in Upper Manhattan.

Zachary Gallant ’08 has been serving as the managing director of Integrationswerkstatt (Integration Workshop) a refugee integration program which seeks to increase economic opportunity for refugees and combat prejudices and radicalism in both refugee and local German communities. Gallant and his team hope to eventually replicate the program in other small towns across Europe and the United States.

After completing his Level 1 training in the Orff Schulwerk method of music

See updates from recent grads in The Mound on page 18.

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2019/WINTER 2020 61

Antiochiana When Co-ops First Met Co-Eds

gan as Dean of the State Normal School in Plymouth, NH. She would spend 10 years at Antioch College in a variety of administrative and academic roles, most importantly in cooperative education securing jobs for Antioch College women. Her contributions to the College are honored with a residence unit named for her in North Hall, traditionally a women’s dormitory.

Her article is highly indicative of the time in which it was written—the 1920s— a time of dramatic change in American history, particularly for women, and that change that did not always come easy. She would have great difficulty, for instance, placing women students in jobs typically reserved for men, and even greater difficulty getting decent wages for them. It is also a clear and concise description of what kind of college Antioch was trying to be, and is an especially good explanation of how alternating work and study not only functions, but how it enhances classroom learning.

Adventuring at Antioch

By Scott Sanders College Archivist Helen French Greene (1868–1952), who wrote the following for the Smith Alumnae Quarterly in 1928, was raised in Lowell, MA, where her father was minister of the Eliot Union Church. In 1870, the Reverend John Morton Greene influenced 62 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL, 2019

a wealthy widow, Sophia Smith, to endow a women’s college to be named in her honor. After graduating from Smith College in 1891 and earning a master’s degree there in 1901, she ran a settlement house in New York City and helped organize the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, where she subsequently worked as its social secretary. Her higher education career be-

My first visit to Antioch College was in December, 1922. Yellow Springs, Ohio, with its railroad “ports,” Xenia and Springfield looked far distant on the map and proved still farther in reality as a blizzard stretched the nineteen hours of schedule into twenty-four. There was, however, great charm in the sincerity and simplicity of the hospitality that welcomed me; in the informal fireside talk with Mr. Morgan; in the friendliness of faculty and students. But the country looked bleak and drear; students delightful to meet individually appeared unlovely in their holiday revels; buildings were old and inadequate; and the flame of adventure that flared in my middle aged

heart was quenched. Lingering sparks were fanned in May when I found a violet-carpeted campus and the Glen—comparable to “Paradise”—wearing a garment of indescribable loveliness. In September 1923, my name appeared as an instructor—sub rosa, a volunteer in the English department for a semester’s course; “The Social Aspects of English Literature in the Nineteenth Century.” Thus timidly—I confess with humility—did I join the band of those “Who love adventure more than security,” to quote one of their number, who are finding that adventure in the educational experiment of Antioch.

The prophet and genius of this experiment is Arthur E. Morgan, a noted flood prevention engineer who has brought his keen, active mind unfettered by academic tradition, to the consideration of the procedures we call Education.

Many of these as he finds them functioning in the college of liberal arts he would have changed. In 1921 he became president of Antioch College, then attenuated almost to the point of extinction, with the purpose of achieving for the institution to which Horace Mann had devoted his last years, 1853– 59, a rebirth that should embody his own educational philosophy and ideals. Mr. Morgan claims originality only in the combination of the present distinctive features of the college: co-operative work, campus industries, self-directed study, the comprehensive examination. His most compelling interest in the program he expresses as follows: “The public sees Antioch Students in office, store, and factory, and comes to think of these conspicuous features of their work as representing the outstanding characteristics of the college. They are, in fact, only the result of taking into account factors of education that commonly are overlooked, and are but part of

the effort to achieve proportion. Antioch is a quest for symmetry.”

“This striving for symmetry, for right proportion, should be the dominant aim of all education—symmetry in the presentation of every element of the program, and symmetry in organizing all those parts into a whole to best prepare for the fulfillment of the whole life of the student.

That is the Antioch aim.”

One takes from Antioch as from Rome what she carries to it. To this devoted disciple of John Dewey it afforded the lure of the Hoped-for-Land where the Master’s conception of education as “the ac-

quiring of experience and the re-consideration of one’s life and ideas in the light of that experience” might become a reality. It was inevitable therefore that the plan for co-operative work should offer to me the greatest opportunity for exploration, and the second semester found me as a pay-roll member of the job-hunting, job-placing force called the personnel department. No longer was I an exile from the North Atlantic coast, but on

an eight month year, a rapidly seasoning commuter between Cambridge and Yellow Springs; a saleswoman of a new type of education; a companion and student of Youth; at last, a fledgling adventurer.

One hundred and seventy-five of the six hundred and fifty students enrolled at Antioch are girls, a proportion which the housing accommodations determine. This group whose co-operative work has been under my supervision, represents three type of students: about 45% of that number have had no previous industrial contacts; another 45% have worked one or more years or have transferred from another college, a practice much more common in the middle-west than in eastern states; and the remainder are mature young women with several years of business or teaching experience to whom Antioch with its flexible entrance requirements, offers rare opportunity.

The inexperienced freshman and sophomore girl may choose for her cooperative job one of several types of simple routine work in office, store or factory, either in Yellow Springs or in Dayton, where working conditions are carefully watched and are ion general without health hazard. In Dayton the girls live in a delightful club house that has been loaned to the College for three years. The arrangement for cooperative work is that two students fill a single position; one of them works while the other studies, and they change places every five weeks. If there are peculiar conditions which make a longer continuous period of work advisable the shift can take place at the end of ten weeks instead of five. This ten week period prevents a student from staying with the division, A or B, with which she entered, for she must study as well as work in blocks of ten weeks. In general the advantages seem to outweigh the drawbacks and nearly one fourth of the college is now operating on the ten week plan.

THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL, 2019 63

“As the quality of our young women becomes better known to us and our employers, the more responsible and significant opportunities steadily increase.”

—Helen French Greene

The question is often asked: What are the values of these routine work experiences? They are, first of all, both in their character and in their associations, adventures; they bring the discipline of daily regularity and responsibility; they give the reward of money earned; they develop a new kind of college loyalty—for the motive of “making good on the job” is the upholding of the college reputation; they test endurance; and at their successful close they give a sense of achievement that Youth holds dear.

The work of the third-year student or the more mature young woman just entering college should, if possible relate to some developing educational interest: teaching; household economics; library work; business affairs; social problems. As the quality of our young women becomes better known to us and our employers, the more responsible and significant opportunities steadily increase. For these we go far afield; to Toledo, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, counting the experiences of being “on one’s own” in a new environment and the association with the men and women who direct the work, a developing one.

Although the personnel department connects the students with their jobs, all supervisors of students’ cooperative work,—shop foreman, librarians, school principals, department heads in retail stores, are indispensable and valued members of our teaching staff. We call them our “field faculty” and endeavor to develop their interest in Antioch as an educational enterprise and in the student as a growing youth. We are not allowed to forget, however, that industry exists for profit and one of our problems is to find opportunity for the student who is “unplaceable” from the employer’s view point and who yet needs the discipline of a real job.

The wages our girls receive vary this year from a minimum of ten dollars a week to the highest maximum we have yet reached, thirty-five dollars. In only the exceptional cases does a student pay her 64 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL, 2019

way through a college year and this only in later years of her course. All freshmen are required to take a course in personal finance and keep a careful account of their expenditures. In 1925–26 the financial assistance that the majority of freshmen needed in excess of their earning was from $350 to $450. As the girls can earn less than the men the latter figure is probably more representative of their financial need.

The Antioch course as first planned was for six years with co-operative work each year. In practice it is reduced by many to five years by arranging for one year of continuous academic work. Seven of our young women are achieving this shortening of their course as well as receiving specialized training by spending this year at other institutions: at the University of Pittsburgh, Simmons College, Chicago University, the Merrill-Palmer School, the Yale School of Nursing and Barnard College. At the end of the year their credits will be transferred to Antioch where they are candidates for a degree.

I am often asked about Antioch’s scholastic standing. In general our requirements are high and disillusionment is in store for the student who likes to work with people and things but cannot learn from books. Altho there are but twenty weeks of study in the academic year, two of our girls after years

entered the junior class at Vassar and graduated with honor.

Another student transferred to Radcliffe this fall. I have not yet inquired about her progress.

The new Antioch is still too young for a critical evaluation of its program. Doubts and difficulties as well as rewards and exhilarations we have in common with all explorers. In the early days of the experiment, initiative was often developed at the expense of standard; exposure to factory conditions has not always given a social viewpoint; our variety of choices and fresh experiences sometimes hopelessly bewilder the immature freshman; lovers of the humanities find our curriculum overly weighed with the sciences. Per contra, the “try outs” the co-operative work affords have saved many students years of vocational floundering, and to others have brought illuminating self-knowledge; women students have shown the discrimination that William James pronounced the test of the educated person—they have not only known a good man when they have seen him, but have appropriated him; our campus with its informal mingling of faculty and men and women students has more the atmosphere and appearance of normal, happy living than any other campus I have visited.

Finally, it is a large part of the joy as well as the stress of carrying on at Antioch that its world is so largely in the making and that its visible crust is not yet penetrable.

The frequent and prolonged absences of Mr. Morgan on the drab task of securing funds for the current expenses of his unendowed college is our greatest handicap. Antioch needs the more constant inspiration of his rare qualities of mind and spirit—for the vision is his. The first large gift, $350,000 for a science building has heartened us all. My own Castle in Spain is familiar to every Smith alumna—a girls’ dormitory of simple beauty but equipped with conveniences needful for a life that is “off agin, on agin” every five to ten weeks.

If any of you know the name of a potential fairy godmother, please whisper her name in my ear.

Subscribe to The Antioch Review The Award-Winning Journal of Fiction, Poetry and Ideas Has Been Part of Our Antioch for 75 Years.

You know The Antioch Review—it’s been part of the fabric of campus life for more than 75 years, and many of you know me too—after some 40 years as editor (and many of those as a professor) I may have worked with you as a mentor, as an editor, or as a supervisor in the magazine’s offices.

Have you kept up with The Review? Whether or not you have, it still serves its same vital purpose on campus today and it remains an ambassador for the school. The Review, then as now, is a public reflection of the values of honesty, fearlessness and intellectual curiosity that we all share as Antiochians.

Today, I am asking you to consider subscribing to The Antioch Review, or supporting our work with a donation if you are already a subscriber. Not only will each quarterly issue be a vibrant reminder of the institution we all care for so deeply, you will find the pages full of engaging essays, captivating fiction by up and coming and established writers, and striking poetry—or, as we like to put it, “The best words in the best order.”

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WAYS TO CONTRIBUTE

Contribute Online: It is easy. Just go to antiochreview.org and choose the link on the left side of the page to contribute.

Write a Check: If you prefer to write a check, please make it payable to the Antioch Review and send it to The Antioch Review, P. O. Box 148, Yellow Springs, OH 45387.

I thank you for your consideration,

Robert S. Fogarty, Editor John Dewey Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus The Antioch Review is an asset of Antioch College. Founded in 1941, it is one of the oldest, continuously published literary magazines in America. Authors published in our pages are consistently included in Best American anthologies and Pushcart prizes. Learn more: http://review.antiochcollege.edu The Antioch Review is supported in part by a grant from the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Return to the Steps of Main Oct. 15–19, 2020

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