Capital Area Antiochians

A group of alumni from several eras wants to make sure Antioch’s history of community government isn’t lost amid regular student turnover and the loss of institutional memory with departing faculty and staff. So, together with several current students and faculty members, they pooled their talents and experiences, combed through the college archives, and published the Community Government Survival Guide to keep the century-old tradition alive.

A professionally produced 48-page magazine, the Guide recounts the history of Community Government (CG), the philosophy behind it, as well as recurrent efforts to improve it. Describing CG as “a central part of Antioch’s identity,” the authors aim to show “what commu­nity governance was intended to do, what it has done in the past, what it means for a community to self-govern, and what Com­munity Government (CG) can accomplish now.” While written for current students, it makes for worthwhile reading by college history buffs and alumni who are still trying to figure the place out.

The Guide acknowledges early on that “Community at An­tioch can sometimes be frustrat­ing and amorphous,” and “should not be exclusively con­flated with harmony and good feelings.” Nor should CG ”be conflated with the administration, or the institution, as sometimes–or even often–the community conflicts with both.” ­

Although initiated by students in the 1920s, CG was never the same as student government, found at many liberal-arts colleges, that grants undergraduates control of a limited number of non-academic activities. “At Antioch, Community Govern­ment was developed both as a way for students, faculty, and staff to equitably and democrat­ically share power and represent their needs with the adminis­tration, and as a pedagogical tool to provide a hands-on, lived experience of democratic com­munity management,” the Guide says.  

CG’s beginning roughly coincided with the birth of an independent campus newspaper, the Blaze, which in 1925 quoted then-President Arthur Morgan as saying he was inclined to favor “a community government elected by the student and faculty at large with student and faculty representations.”

Power-sharing between students and faculty was not always easy, as evidenced by a student demand in 1941 “that fac­ulty-only committees be abolished and all committees contain some student reps, including admissions and tenure review.” How much power the CG had in relation to the administration was also uncertain, although the formation in 1940 of an elected Administrative Council (Adcil), in addition to the Community Council (Comcil) gave students and faculty decision-making powers and a voice in actually running the college.

While illuminating, the history section, listing milestones by selected year, shows the authors’ apparent struggle to penetrate the “amorphous” decision-making and nail down what actually happened, and when. There’s a three-decade gap after 1942, picking up with the six-week student strike of 1973, when CG broke down.  

From 1975, when the Administrative Council was replaced by an advisory body—though still abbreviated as Adcil—CG’s clout diminishes. The trend lasted through the period when the Yellow Springs campus became one unit within Antioch University. CG suffered a decisive blow in 2001, when, the Guide tells us: “The University takes control of the College’s budget, undermining Ad­Cil’s ‘power of the purse.’ Increas­ing outside control of the College’s administrative functions coincided with a decline in enrollment and undermining of Community Gov­ernment.” CG still hasn’t fully recovered; the Community Council performs an advisory role.

Several participants in the Guide‘s preparation served as elected community managers, a role the publication describes as holding “a wide variety of responsibilities, some of which were practical and some of which were more symbolic.” It serves “to guide the campus through the inevitable intermittent crises (internal and external).” An implementer of decisions made by others, the community manager must rely heavily on persuasion. The Guide says, “The Com­munity Manager works to build strong relationships with every campus constituency, supports the efforts of, and ensures the critical functioning of the CG’s elected bodies and their symbi­otic ecology.”

Students who participate in CG will probably get a taste of what former President Algo Henderson and co-author Dorothy Hall called “the American search for utopia,” of which Antioch was a part. The Guide adds: “There’s a key detail that many have discovered about utopias, however — they’re never finished.”

In an idealistic vein, the Guide quotes another deceased president, Bob Devine ’67, as saying “the college’s shared gover­nance was not the strategy for running the college and administering it: it was a pedagogical strategy.” Students who participated in CG might find his comment patronizing. To be sure, all of college is a learning experience, but students who got elected to those jobs– the good ones, at any rate–saw them as more than that, and their voters probably did as well. They were there to fix things and make change happen. If today’s students bring that same attitude into CG now, it’s a sure bet some alumni will cheer them on.