The Antioch Word

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.

In the Antioch College Wellness Center, there is a game called pickleball, and if you frequent the gyms as well as Studio B, you could stumble onto a game. A bright green ball whizzes back and forth as it is hit, and the noise echoes and cracks off of the walls.  Pickleball is gaining popularity at the Wellness Center, and Ellie Burck went to the Antioch and Yellow Springs community to learn more about the sport.

The Antioch College Wellness Center has recently started to include women’s only swim time in its schedule and is also considering the possibility of implementing some women’s only hours of the entire facility. In this episode of the Antioch Word, Miller Fellow Wyatt Souers talked to class of 2018 student Layla Saad, Class of 2017 student Taylor Larson, Wellness Center Director Monica Hassek, and Dean of Community Life Luis Rosa about the reasons behind including women’s only hours in the Wellness Center and whether or not it will be possible to include them in the schedule.

On September 21, Antioch Students and Faculty as well as residents from Yellow Springs took a bus to New York City to attend the People’s Climate March and show their support for taking action against global climate issues. Wyatt Souers talked to Antioch College class of 2017 students Frank Fortino, Hannah Craig, Perin Ellsworth-Heller, Sean Allen, Ian Rosenthal, and Lauren Gjessing about why they were at the March.

On August 5th, 22-year-old John Crawford III was shot and killed by police officers in the Beavercreek Walmart after officers responded to a 911 call about a man holding a gun in Walmart. It was later discovered that Crawford, who is black, was actually carrying around a BB gun that is sold in Walmart stores. Both Walmart and Attorney General Mike DeWine refused to release surveillance footage of the shooting, which sparked a series of rallies demanding that the tape be released.