Antioch College
(2009-10-01)
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YELLOW SPRINGS, OH
(WYSO) -
Over the last year, Antioch College has been a very quiet campus. After years of low enrollment, the college closed down temporarily.
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However, there's been a lot of activity going on this week. A work crew is taking down dead branches off of trees and another woman is working on a building, pulling down ivy and branches.
This weekend, Antioch College alumni are gathering in Yellow Springs for their annual meeting. This is the first reunion since the college separated from the University. And now, the alumni are needed more than ever to resurrect the college.
On the day that the University and the college became officially separate, religion professor, Al Denman, referred to this plaque and posed this question.
"Tomorrow, the rising sun will shine on those two grand old towers of a new Antioch," he said. "And someday, that plaque will be changed to note what has happened here today. What do you think it should say?"
The answer to Denman's question means a lot to Matthew Derr, who graduated from Antioch College two decades ago. He was a history major, which is pretty relevant to the work he's charged with now - reopening the college.
A big first on Derr's list of things to do is restore the historic Main Building.
"This building really is such a landmark for the state, a landmark for the county," he says. "If you look at any brochure for Yellow Springs, this is the building, so we're really hoping some significant support for restoring it."
And they're going to need some major support. Derr is hoping to raise $50 million in the next five years to reopen the college and keep it open.
Derr says they will be looking to foundations, creating a rigorous planned giving initiative, and they'll even try to channel federal stimulus money. But that will only make up a small part of the money needed. In the past year, alumni have raised over $10 million, and their job has only just begun.
"The truth of the matter is the alumni of the college need to do the heavy lifting," he says.
That's something that hasn't always happened at Antioch. Fundraising efforts for the college in the past were unsuccessful. Derr says it's not that Antiochians won't give, it's that they give to causes, rather than institutions.
"So now, we're really making the argument that the college is a cause and that the alumni need to support this cause because this is a moment in higher education, a moment in global culture and history that needs a strong Antioch College,," he says.
Despite the seemingly daunting challenge, Derr uses words like "honored", "privileged" and even "lucky" to help breathe life into Antioch again. He says he thinks about the day the college separated from the University and that question that religion professor Al Denman raised as he gestured to the plaque that tells the story of Antioch's past. What will the future of this college be?
"My hope is that it is the robust and contentious presence in higher education that it has always been," Derr says.
And of course, one that is financially sound. Time will tell if the Antioch alums will make that happen, but if this weekend is any indication, it's off to a good start. There are already 100 more alumni registered to attend this year's reunion than there were in 2007.
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