Vermont and upstate New York alums enjoyed a tiki-torchlit “DIV dance” on the shores of Lake Champlain August 23.

Jill Wolcott, ’74, hosted. “It was an enchanted evening,” said Wolcott – with balmy breezes, the sound of the lake lapping the shore and northern lights above. “I was either right back on the stoop in Yellow Springs or I was in heaven.”

Kenny Peck, ’75, spun sounds from the ’60s and ’70s. Amanda Calder, ’07, caught everyone up on the latest doings in Yellow Springs. And the 25 or so alums in attendance, spanning five decades of graduating classes, from the Sixties through the Oughties, bonded over a viewing of The Antioch Adventure.

“Every time we alums get together, we seem to recreate some of the Antioch magic,” said Wolcott.

The impending launch of the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute was the impetus for the get-together – and cause for renewed excitement among the group about prospects for rekindling the spirit of Antioch College.

“We felt some need to celebrate the victory of the-college-formerly-known-as-Antioch in receiving its independence from the University,” said Peck. “Back in the early 70′s, someone scribbled ‘If dogs run free . . .’ all over the Yellow Springs campus, a sign of those times, but in hindsight it seems more now to be a metaphor of what Antioch was once and perhaps what the Non-Stop venture can still be.”

For photos of this event Click Here

VERMONT & UPSTATE NEW YORK ANTIOCH ALUMNI

It’s time to raise a glass and toast to the future of Antioch College

DIV DANCE SUMMER 2008
Saturday, August 23th, 7-11 pm

Put on your dancing shoes and shake your tail-feathers at a tiki torch lit Summer Div Dance on the shore of Lake Champlain

View The Antioch Adventure (1967)
.
At the home of Jill Wolcott (’74)
158 McNeil Cove Road, Charlotte VT

RSVP to Jill at 802-425-2396 or jillwolcott

Find out what’s going on in Yellow Springs. Come celebrate Non-Stop Antioch. Keep our local Non-Stop Antioch connections strong. It’s time to dance. The Summer 2008 Div Dance to mark the end of a long year and the start of the new Non-Stop Liberal Arts Institute in Yellow Springs – the new key piece in the effort to save our College.

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 to Wings Point. Take first left at McNeil Cove Road. House is second on the right. Park at the tennis court.

Minutes from February 10th, 2008 VT Antioch Alumni Chapter Meeting

Greetings!
Our February 10th Montpelier meeting was attended by 10 alumni, with representation from every decade from the 50s to the 00s.  We met for about 2 hours at the Montpelier Unitarian Universalist Church.  For 6 of the alums present, it was their first alumni event since the June Board decision.

We began the meeting with each alum sharing about their Antioch experience and Antioch’s significance to them.  Some of the things alums mentioned were: the way co-ops exposed them to the world; how academically strong Antioch was in the 50s, including the very thoughtful and “marvelous” ways of teaching that were employed; participation in and being surrounded by social action; strong relationships with faculty who were focused on teaching rather than research; significant generational and familial connections to Antioch that are held by several alums; fun campus life; great study abroad experiences; the fact that Antioch has produced so many great scholars; and students having a voice.
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Hello VT Alumni and Friends!

Our first VT Antioch Alumni event in Montpelier is going to be held next Sunday, February 10th from 1:00 – 3:30 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Montpelier.

The college is still in a perilous position, yet it is currently looking more hopeful that Antioch College will remain open. A group of Alumni from around the country have formed the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC or AC3), and they are diligently working on becoming the initial governing board for the college as an independent entity.

We may be listening to part of a recording of the Community Meeting that was held on campus on January 26th with members of the ACCC. Listening to meetings like these is a great way to connect with the conversations happening on campus and to directly hear from those centrally involved with unfolding developments.

This is also a wonderful opportunity to connect/meet and talk with other Vermont alumni from various years, share our experiences, and to learn about and discuss the status of the College, efforts to save it, and what we can do to help.

There will be light refreshments. Please feel free to bring something to share if you’d like.

Please RSVP to Jami and Chris Robertson (both ’85) at 802-223-0564 or robertsj.

Directions:
Unitarian Universalist Church
130 Main Street

I-89 Exit 8, Montpelier
Left at 4th light onto Main St.
Through light at State St.
UU Church is on left at 2nd corner, after light,
directly across from the Library

On street parking is free on weekends.
Jami & Christopher’s cell phone numbers: 802-279-4159 & 4160

Also, Amanda Calder ’07 is organizing a carpool from Burlington, leaving at 12:00 noon so if you live near Burlington and want to go, call her at 802-985-8926 or email jazzypanda.

If you haven’t made it to an alumni event yet, now’s your chance! Alums who have gotten involved since the Board of Trustee decision last summer have found it worthwhile and exciting to reconnect with other Antiochians. Whether you’ve been keeping up with what’s going on or not, we urge you to come out! It should be informative and a lot of fun.

Update on our Charlotte Meeting
At our gathering in Charlotte on the 26th we actually ended up listening to the recording of a Jan. 15th meeting of the NYC Alumni Chapter with members of the AC3 because the recording of the Jan 26th meeting hadn’t been uploaded to the website yet. It was really good and brought us all up to speed, and then we discussed things among ourselves afterwards. Jill, Amanda, Janet Kahn, and Elizabeth Skarie attended, and all of us said that it felt good to be together and to hear more about what is going on, etc. Amanda will be writing up some more detailed notes about the meeting soon.

We can’t wait to meet you all!

Be ashamed to let it die!

-Jami and Christopher Robertson ’85 and Amanda Calder ’07

P.S. See http://recordonline.org/ or www.antiochians.org for more on the AC3. For those who can’t make it or who want to get a head start, both recordings mentioned here (from 1/15 and 1/26) can be found at http://listen.antiochians.org.

Dear Fellow VT Alumni and Friends,

We have two events coming up, including our first-ever VT Alumni Chapter event in Montpelier! The dates are January 26th (Charlotte) and February 9th or 10th (Montpelier). See below for more details.

As some of you may have read in a recent alumni news email, the executive committee of the new non-profit group, the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC–or AC3 as it’s come to be known), visited campus December 17th and is visiting campus again January 26th and 27th.

Audio recordings of their December meetings are available online, and either audio or video recordings of an on-campus Community Meeting with the ACCC on the 26th or 27th will also be made available online. (see http://listen.antiochians.org/)

Listening to/watching the meetings is a great way for us to really get an understanding and feel for what’s going on and what’s being discussed. Other chapters have had successful events communally listening to or watching some of the important meetings that have taken place in the past several months.

This is what we have planned:

Saturday, January 26th 2:30-5:00pm
Casual snacks and watching (or hearing) a podcast of ACCC meeting on campus
or watching The Antioch Adventure
At the house of Jill Wolcott ’76 in Charlotte.

Please RSVP to Jill at 802-425-2396 or jillwolcott or
Amanda Calder ’07 at 802-985-8926 or jazzypanda

February 9th or 10th (Saturday or Sunday)
Casual snacks and watching (or hearing) of podcast of the ACCC meeting
In Montpelier at a location to-be-determined (the house of an alum?)

Jami and Chris Robertson (both ’85) are heading up the organizing of this event.
Please RSVP to them at 802-223-0564 or robertsj.

As I said, this will be the first VT Alumni Chapter event in Montpelier! If you are one of those alums for whom a visit to Montpelier is much more doable than Burlington, we urge you to see if you can make it to the Montpelier event!

Also, Amanda is organizing a carpool of people from Burlington to go to Montpelier, so if you live near Burlington and are unavailable the 26th, consider coming in February!

If you live in or near Montpelier and would be up for hosting the event at your house, please email or call Jami. All it takes is an area big enough to host some people, and a computer with speakers. If you want to host it at your house but don’t have a suitable computer set up, we also might be able to coordinate borrowing someone’s laptop to use. Likewise, if you have a laptop that you’d be willing to bring, let us know!

Our goal is to have an event every month. Please share your ideas! Each of the above events, in addition to being a time for discussion about the state of the College, etc., will also be a chance to talk about and plan future Chapter activities.

Future Event that is in the works for a Wednesday or Thursday in the first part of May:
A visit from Richard Coutu, editor of the book, Courses in Courage: Antioch College and the Social Sciences, and a founding faculty member of the Antioch University Leadership and Change PhD program.

Don’t forget to RSVP, and we look forward to seeing you soon.
For a strong, vibrant, non-stop Antioch!

Amanda Calder ’07 and Jill Wolcott ’76

P.S. See www.antiochians.org or http://recordonline.org/ for more on the ACCC. Exciting developments are unfolding.

P.P.S. Below are directions to Jill’s house in Charlotte. More specific information for the Montpelier event will be coming out as we get closer.

Take Route 7 to Charlotte (which is about 10 miles south of Burlington), 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 the first left at McNeil Cove Road. House is the second on the right. Park by the tennis court.

by Kevin J. Kelley for Seven Days, Wednesday, November 28, 2007

VERMONT — Throughout its 150-year existence, Ohio’s Antioch College has produced an eclectic group of graduates. The college’s best-known alum is Coretta Scott King, widow of slain civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Antioch is also the alma mater of “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling. Then there are lesser-known names, such as Robert Manry, who sailed a 13-foot sailboat across the Atlantic Ocean.

But in the Green Mountain State, we’re more familiar with names such as Jeb Spaulding, the state treasurer; Elizabeth Skarie wife of Ben & Jerry’s Jerry Greenfield; and Casey Murrow, son of famed newsman Edward R. Murrow. These and other dedicated Vermonters who attended Antioch College are taking part in a national campaign to save the 155-year-old Yellow Springs-based school from closing, due to declining enrollment and an insufficient endowment. Two hundred thirty students attend today’s Antioch, compared to more than 2000 in the 1960s.

Local Antioch alums and dropouts alike say they’re moved to help rescue the college because of what they see as congruence between Vermont’s ethic of neighborliness and town meeting-style democracy, and Antioch’s commitment to participatory governance. They also say the school’s pending end marks a disturbing trend in progressive college closings.

“Antioch has an amazing spirit of community,” says Jill Wolcott, a member of the Class of ’74 and co-organizer of the Vermont/Upstate New York Chapter of Antioch Alumni. The Shelburne resident says her current involvement with Charlotte’s co-housing movement and with the Waldorf School in Shelburne can be traced to her experience at the unconventional college.

“Antioch does give people a belief in their own self-determination and their responsibility for their lives,” she adds.

Skarie says the college forms “part of my identity I’ll never shed” — even though she left Antioch in 1971 only a year and a half after enrolling. “I went because it’s a politically active school,” the Williston resident and philanthropist explains. Skarie runs a foundation with Greenfield. She eventually received a nursing degree from Cornell — and returned to Antioch for a Master’s in counseling.

At an October 18 meeting at the Burlington home of Robin Lloyd — a former Antioch student who is known in Vermont as a longtime peace activist, filmmaker and publisher of the progressive online journal Toward Freedom — local supporters mapped plans for fundraising on behalf of the college. Lloyd didn’t end up graduating from Antioch, but some of the roughly 160 Vermonters who did already have contributed to an $18 million pledge drive. Wolcott, head of the local alumni chapter, says she can’t specify the sum of these private donations.

The fundraising effort was enough to persuade Antioch’s trustees to shelve their June decision to close the school next year. But the trustees also warned earlier this month that at least an additional $45 million must be raised by 2010 if the college is to remain open. The college also operates a New England graduate school in Keene, N.H., as well as campuses in Seattle, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.

Fundraising poses special challenges for a school whose graduates practice its ideal of social justice, Skarie notes. “It’s hard for Antioch to be financially viable because the students who become lawyers tend to work for Legal Aid and the doctors end up treating a lot of patients for free,” she notes.

It’s vital that the school continue to operate as “a bastion of progressive education,” says Amanda Calder, a Shelburne resident who graduated from Antioch earlier this year. The termination in 2002 of Goddard College’s residential undergraduate program acted as a “motivator” for her involvement in the save-Antioch campaign, says Calder. “We can’t keep losing these progressive institutions,” she adds, noting that New Hampshire’s Franconia College — a school with a similar philosophy — has been shuttered as well.

Lloyd says her life has been strongly influenced by Antioch’s pioneering co-op program, through which students leave campus to work in a variety of settings while continuing their studies. She recalls traveling to Africa with her father, anti-colonialist campaigner William Lloyd, as part of the co-op program while she was enrolled at Antioch in 1957 and 1958. She transferred to Brandeis University in Massachusetts after marrying a student there. She still remembers learning the Horah, an Israeli folk dance, in an Antioch campus gathering spot affectionately known as Red Square.

*For more detailed notes and comments on this meeting, download this PDF.

We met Sunday November 18 at 4 pm at Robin Lloyd’s house in Burlington.

There was lots to talk about. More detailed notes will be coming soon.

This was our agenda, which was sent out to VT alumni by email:

4:00 pm Gather, reconnect, have tea and cookies, cider and cheese.

4:20 pm Update with Jill and Amanda, back from YSO and trying to keep up with everything.

Much has happened since we last met. The Board of Trustees reversed its decision and lifted suspension, but there seem to be different interpretations of the agreement between the Board of Trustees and the Alumni Board. The Alumni Board has recently stood up to the Board, demanding that they continue to act in the spirit of the agreement. Also, Jill’s been working with the Greening Antioch group of alums, faculty, students and townspeople.

4:45 pm Conversation by Speakerphone with Mike Brower, member of the Executive Committee of the Alumni Board; chance to ask him everything that we still don’t understand….

5:15 pm What can we do to support Antioch College? Should we be making good on our pledges and helping to fundraise? When can we recruit new students?

5:45 pm What activities and events should our chapter plan?

If you haven’t read the latest, please check out the following:
Antioch College Alumni Association website.

Inside Higher Ed story on the lifting of the suspension.

Interim President Andrzej Bloch’s letter to the faculty (later retracted)

*For more detailed notes and thoughts on this meeting, download this PDF.

Our first Chapter gathering was inspiring and exhilarating and I think we all felt it was a great success! Eighteen people attended, fifteen of which were alumni ranging from graduation year 1939 to 2007 and from nearby towns of Morrisville, Montpelier, Milton, South Burlington, Burlington, Shelburne, and Charlotte.

We shared potluck supper and gathered in a circle where we each named two or three things that have proved valuable to us in our post-Antioch lives. There were many shared themes and memories: finding Antioch, co-op experiences were a big one and the life lessons that came from them. We remembered, too, things like late night wholewheat donuts, walks to Young’s Dairy, dancing in Red Square. We all agreed on the uniqueness of Antioch, the importance of the participatory governance we experienced, and the great teaching.

Then we turned the evening over to Aimee Maruyama from the Office of Alumni Relations. Aimee was articulate and encouraging about current events, offering perspectives on how we got here in the first place and what might come next. We discussed various questions and also solutions.

Several alumni, including two high school teachers, signed up to help with admissions recruitment efforts, in anticipation of the BOT reversing its decision and the need to spread the word with college-bound students. Several also pledged and/or donated to the Antioch College Revival Fund.

We await the October 25-27 meeting where the Antioch College Alumni Board will present its business plan to the Antioch University Board of Trustees. Amanda Calder, ’07, and Jill Wolcott ’74, will both be in Yellow Springs for the Board meetings. We will be attending open meetings of the BOT, a community dinner in the Caf, alumni homecoming events, and some of the Peak Oil conference put on by Community Solutions.

Amanda and Jill plan to share our experiences in Yellow Springs at a next chapter meeting. Alums expressed interest in getting more information about the Alumni Board’s business plan. We are thinking of having someone familiar with the plan come to give a presentation of it, perhaps at several locations in the state (Montpelier, Brattleboro, and Charlotte?). We are eager to support a separate chapter (or chapters?) in Southern Vermont—there are many alumni in that area for whom Charlotte was just too far.

You will be receiving a more detailed summary of the discussion soon.

For a non-stop Antioch College,

Jill Wolcott and Amanda Calder

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.

Save The Date! October 20th 4-8 pm

Our first big event is on for Saturday, October 20th from 4-8 pm at Jill Wolcott’s (’74) house in Charlotte (near Burlington). The event will include potluck food, a screening of Antioch Adventure, fundraising for the Revival Fund, lots of good informal time to meet and talk with other alumni, and maybe the opportunity to hear from and talk to Mike Brower by speaker phone, and/or a representative from the Alumni and Development office in person.

Amanda Calder ’07 is coordinating carpooling. Email her at jazzypanda to let her know if you’re planning to come and what your carpooling availability is. She can also send you directions and answer any questions you may have. We already have one alumna in her 80s looking for someone to share a ride with from the Bennington area. Don’t let her down! Come out to meet your fellow VT and Upstate NY alumni, have fun, and make a difference!