Vermont Chapter Update. Friday, October 12, 2007
There have been a couple meetings of VT alumni since our August meeting to check in about our preparations for our October 20th event. On 9/17 we also discussed what’s been happening with the College and alumni efforts, about our ideas and visions for what the college needs to become successful, and what the chapter can do to help, including fundraising and recruiting students.
October 20th Event!
We are are go-ahead with our event for Saturday, October 20th from 4-8 pm at Jill Wolcott’s house in Charlotte. Here is the information on the event, including directions:
SAVE ANTIOCH COLLEGE
Join your fellow Vermont & Upstate NY Antioch Alumni
To celebrate and support our alma mater
Saturday, October 20th, 4-8 pm
Share potluck supper by Lake Champlain
View The Antioch Adventure
Meet special Guest Aimee Maruyama ’96,
Director of Alumni Relations
Aimee will offer updates on negotiations between the University Board of Trustees and Alumni Board, what’s happening in Yellow Springs and at the College, and progress of Alumni efforts.
At the home of Jill Wolcott (’74)
158 McNeil Cove Road
Charlotte, Vermont
RSVP to: Jill at 802-425-2396 or jillwolcott or
Amanda Calder ’07 at 802-985-8926 or jazzypanda
To carpool contact Amanda
Bring tasty fingerfoods and your checkbook!
Take Route 7 to Charlotte, go west at traffic light onto Ferry Road. Take that road till it turns sharply left (about 2 miles). Stay straight on dirt road. Take first left at McNeil Cove Road. House is second on the right. Park at the tennis court.
There will be fundraising for the Revival Fund, and lots of good informal time to meet and talk with other alumni.
Very soon a postcard containing the above information will be sent out to all alumni in Vermont and nearby areas of New York courtesy of the Alumni and Development Office. Starting this week we will also be calling alums we have phone numbers for, with a focus on alums that don’t have email.
Amanda has been coordinating carpooling. So far we have people from several areas of the state confirmed as planning to attend and open to ridesharing, including an alum in Montpelier, and one alum in her 80s who is looking for someone to ride with from the Bennington area. As we’ve only communicated with a small number of alums so far, once we start calling people we expect the carpooling possibilities to increase quite a bit!
We want as many alums as can make it to come! It should be fun and informative, and it will really make a difference going into the October 25th-28th Board of Trustees Meeting and “Antioch Homecoming”/ “Reunion 2.0” weekend. In addition to the amount of pledges and cash raised, one of the key factors of being successful at convincing and pressuring the Board to accept the Alumni Board’s plan to keep the college open, is the number of alumni chapters and how active they are. Your participation is a vote for Antioch’s future. …As well as an opportunity to have a good time and meet or re-meet some great people.
In Other News…
Fundraising
We have set an initial goal to raise $20,000 in cash and pledges, hopefully before the Board Meeting at the end of October. So far we have raised $11,210.
Recruiting
We discussed the need to recruit more potential students (if the College remains open), and ideas of things we we could do here to help. Some ideas included meeting with high school counselors and visiting high schools on behalf of the Admissions Department to talk with potential students.
Some Brief Thoughts About the College
One of the most necessary things, we agreed, in order for people to feel confident about donating money and supporting efforts to save the College, is understanding what was wrong before, and how it will be fixed. Some of our thoughts on this include the following “Three-Pronged” assessment:
1. Morale. The alumni effort is changing both the feeling and actuality of lack of support for the college.
2. Money is part of the growing support for the College, and is a big part of what was wrong before. Something that’s helpful is having clear aims, such as $50 million to keep it open and $100 million for the endowment.
3. Antioch needs to step out and be a leader again, with something noteworthy and unique. We think there is a big opportunity for alumni to help shape this and make it happen. It would include building on past instances of such leadership which include things like Co-op, Antioch Education Abroad, Community Governance, and the SOPP. One area we think this could happen with is sustainability/environmental studies, but there are lots of areas in which Antioch has strength.
