Antioch College to Remain Open (antioch-college.edu)
As an alum of Antioch (even though I never graduated from there, Antioch considers anyone who completed any course credit there an alum due to the academic and financial difficulties involved in getting all the way to the final degree), this news brought a huge sigh of relief from me. Not only do I still feel incredibly strong ties to Antioch from my time there and how it influenced me, but Antioch’s historical influence on this country from the sixties onward cannot be overstated. I didn’t like how little coverage the decision to close Antioch got this past summer, but this story seems to have hit a couple of more newswires, at least. Just like Kucinich doesn’t seem to get that much press even though he’s one of the few Democrats out there who espouses traditional Democratic values, I have to wonder if the American "left" is trying to sweep Antioch and its historical importance under the rug because of their misguided grab of the political centre.
On that level, I’m happy. On a professional level, I have to admit that I’m kind of sad. I’ve been thinking about my future a lot lately — I’m still happy with how things are going at MCCC, but I’m agonizing over some possibilities that lay ahead of me — and teaching at Antioch would be a dream for me. If Antioch had closed for those four years, all the professors there would have had to have found other jobs, and starting with a "clean slate" in 2012 would have put me in a much better position to go in and snag a job there. Now, not only is the college staying open, but it’s cutting services and jobs, which means it will be all the more unlikely that a teaching job there will open up any time soon. I realize this is kind of a selfish way of looking at this announcement, but Antioch is a tremendously special place for me and it feels like my chances of ever landing a job there have just took a huge downturn.
That being said, I would love to give money to the college now so that they can stay open for these next few years, but I am just in no condition to do that right now. I’m hoping that I can pick up a second class to teach this coming semester to increase my steady income, but until then my finances will be kind of tight. You know, there is this one son of a former music professor at Antioch (the professor before the one I studied under, Dr. John Rinehart) who still lives in Yellow Springs and is kind of flush with cash … and it sounds like he’s feeling a wee bit guilty for leading a generation of young people to think it’s okay to drop n-bombs all over the place … just a thought.