Antioch College & Shared Governance

Today marks an historic event for alumni, students, and faculty of Antioch College, the private liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, known not only for its socially progressive politics and liberal curriculum, but also for its many distinguished and influential graduates. Today, following years of rancorous debate and finger-pointing, Antioch reopens its doors (it closed a year ago) as a standalone college, independent from multicampus Antioch University. The reborn Antioch College is owned by the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC), a consortium of alumni, students, faculty and staff, and will be financed by alumni gifts and, of course, tuition and fees.

A few years ago my wife and I walked around the campus of Antioch College and were shocked at the dilapidated condition of the physical plant. Paint was peeling off buildings, window frames were rotted, and the campus lawns were weedy and neglected. Worse, save for an occasional student walking between buildings. the campus seemed nearly empty. Any casual observer could see that Antioch was a college facing serious financial problems. Not until later did I learn how serious those problems really were. In the 1960s and 70s, Antioch was thriving, enrolling about 2400 students. Homemade ice cream at Young’s Jersey Dairy, buckwheat pancakes and maple syrup at the Clifton Mill, miles of hiking trails in the spectacular college-owned Glen Helen nature preserve, and a coterie of cool boutiques, bookstores and restaurants in downtown Yellow Springs drew visitors from all over Ohio.

At its closing last year, Antioch College had become a grim vestige of its former self. It had lost nearly ninety percent of its students, and the faculty had dwindled to three dozen professors. Sustained by life-support revenue from the other five Antioch campuses, the college’s shaky financial footings threatened the viability of the entire university.

The day before yesterday, the American Association of University Professors formally weighed in on the circumstances surrounding Antioch’s rocky road to renewal, and the report of the AAUP Investigating Committee makes for fascinating reading.

Characteristically, the AAUP's report laid most of the blame for the college’s closing on alleged violations of the AAUP’s shared governance guidelines. “Small liberal arts colleges,” the report observes, are “filled with faculty members and students who question decisions and who wish to take an active part in decision-making processes.” Such schools, the report says, are “often a challenge to administer,” concluding that “while respect for the principles of shared governance may not have been sufficient to ensure the life of Antioch College, without an active system of shared governance, the college had little chance of surviving…..”

So what is one to make of this assertion? Could Antioch College really have been saved if the university had scrupulously followed the AAUP’s governance precepts? (The AAUP report claims that the Antioch central administration failed to consult appropriately, claims denied by Antioch.)To me, that’s highly unlikely. In fact, viewed from the outside, Antioch College’s unusual governance model was part and parcel of the reason for its demise.

At Antioch College, shared governance was implemented by a group called the Administrative Council, or AdCil. The AdCil membership consisted of elected students, staff members, faculty, and administrators. As cited in the AAUP report, AdCil’s responsibilities were far-reaching: “All major matters of college policy … come to it for review and decision, or originate there. It passes on all questions of personnel. It counsels with the president concerning college finances and passes on the budget. It appoints faculty policy-making and administrative committees to handle admissions, student counseling, curriculum, and examinations, as well as to establish the policies of the cooperative plan.”

In other words, AdCil was set up to mirror the college’s historic commitment to inclusiveness, participatory democracy, and social justice. It did so by giving freshmen, secretaries, professors and all other members of the college community unprecedented responsibility for running the institution. A well-intentioned and noble idea, perhaps, but also a recipe for disaster. At heart, the Antioch model of shared governance substituted constituency-based politics for reasoned and informed leadership.

Former dean of the Harvard faculty, Henry Rosovky, in his classic 1990 book The University: An Owner’s Manual, cites his “First Principle” of academic governance: “Not everything is improved by making it more democratic.” It is too bad that the people who set up Antioch’s governance structure in 1926 didn’t have an opportunity to read the book. Had they read it, they might have seen some wisdom in another Rosovsky precept (here I’m paraphrasing from memory): “Those who have the most know should have the most say.”

Antioch College now has a chance for a new beginning, and I wish the college all possible success. It would be terribly unfortunate if the nation should lose forever this unique educational resource. However, the road ahead will be extremely difficult, and will require firm leadership from all quarters. In its new incarnation, Antioch needs to think deeply about its governance model. For starters, AdCil should not be resurrected, the former faculty should not automatically be rehired (as recommended by the AAUP), and the curriculum should be redesigned from the ground up. In essence, Antioch College needs to press “RESET” and start over. It has done this in the past with great success, and let us all hope it can do so again.