The Antioch Word

Last quarter, The Word recorded Antioch’s Co-op Swap. If you’re not familiar with it, Co-op Swap is an event at which students who just came back from their respective co-ops share their experiences and answer questions from the audience. In past episodes, we have heard stories from all the panelists. But this time, we decided to zero in on the co-op story from Malka Berro '18 and Lucas Bautista '18.  

In last episode of the Antioch Word, we explored community through Toni Jonas Silver’s Community Voices story about Gene the rat. This episode continues to look at the things that bring us all together, but this time, it’s about a place. Community Voices producer Frank Fortino ’17 takes us to the Emporium in Yellow Springs.

Antioch’s year-round schedule is sometimes grueling, and always exhausting. However, it also creates space for variation and diversity that more typical models don’t always facilitate. In this vein, The Word is undergoing a few changes. Episodes will now feature projects from people in the Antioch community such as students, staff, and faculty. We also remixed the theme song!

During Antioch College's alumni weekend in September, current students and past graduates participated in an open forum about their co-op experiences. In this forum, recorded by WYSO Miller Fellow Mari Smith, you'll hear perspectives from current students Lucas Bautista '18, Malka Berrow '18, and Catalina La Mers-Noble '18 and alumni Bruce Lebel '76, Karen W. Mulhauser '65 and Robert Goldsmith '76.

Last May at Antioch College, students of color filled the Coretta Scott King Center in secret to have a difficult discussion about race and culture. They called it a "day of disappearance". The idea was to show the college what a day without people of color, or POC would look like. Community voices producer and Miller Fellow Mari Smith     sat in on the day of disappearance and spoke with the participants to hear their experiences. 

  Sonia Sanchez, a prominent black rights activist and critically acclaimed poet, came to the Dayton area to speak at Wilberforce University's 160th anniversary celebration. Sanchez is best known for her part in helping create the first Black studies program in higher education. She came to the WYSO studio to speak with Gabriel Civil, a performance arts professor at Antioch college. The two reflect on Sanchez's life,her poetry and the black arts movement through years of change and intergenerational influence.  

A pivotal part of the Antioch experience is leaving the campus once a year to go on co-op somewhere around the world. Antioch College's second year students (the class of 2018) recently returned from co-op and shared their experiences during a special edition of Community Meeting called Co-op Swap. WYSO hosted the event with Juliet Fromholt moderating the discussion, and WYSO Miller Fellow Mari Smith recorded the students' responses.

At Antioch College, there are solar array fields with solar panels that soak up the sun and convert it to energy for the college to use. These have been around for a couple of years, and have worked extremely well for the college. For a few years on the Antioch College Farm, sheep have been raised for meat for consumption in the dining halls. This year, Antioch College implemented a new program where they combined these two things together, the solar array and the sheep, to make a pilot program to cut down on fossil fuel emissions.

On September 28, the class of 2019 arrived on Antioch’s campus. This is the first class that didn’t receive a full Horace Mann Scholarship, but a half scholarship.  Yet due to an anonymous donation worth over $1 million, Antioch extended full tuition to a group of first-generation college students and environmental science majors. These environmental science majors are called LEAF (Leadership in the Environment at Antioch Fellowship) Scholars.  I had never heard of them until we had co-existed on Antioch’s campus together for several weeks so I decided to find out: Who are they?

When Antioch College re-opened its doors in 2011, it admitted a small group of individuals on a scholarship that covered their tuition for all four years. When the class of 2015 entered Antioch, they brought the flesh and blood to a bare-boned campus with only two functioning buildings. Over four years, the class of 2015 shrank, changed, and experienced a wild rollercoaster ride as Antioch College grew, pulled itself up by its bootstraps, made new rules, and started its accreditation process.