Below is what I wrote on the SaveAntioch mailing list on 3/14. I’m posting it here for archival purposes since it was really a rant/brainstorm I’d like to revisit more in the future. Probably only interesting to those of you who are famliar with Antioch College.
Thanks Bob for joining this list and posting such a verbose response. Man I miss chatting in the caf with you 🙂 Anyways, while all your notes about the campus & the BOT were quite sobering, your mention about your excitement about the current academic program really gave me some needed boost of optimism that there’s still hope alive there. I’ve really been struggling as of late to find the energy to keep caring about Antioch. I’ve joked for the past few years that on the ‘love / hate pendulum’ of my relationship with Antioch it seems to be stuck closer to the hate end of things, especially when things I cared about at Antioch kept disappearing (college tech resources office, EFP, Comp Sci major and now the Dean of Students office). In fact I’ve been saying the only thing left on campus that I ‘love’ is the CG office, which to my knowledge hasn’t been “Lawry’d” yet. But I digress, what your note got me thinking about in my sleep deprived moments as I sit here with an 8 week old boy who refuses to go back to sleep, is that I think what the Alumni need, what the campus needs, is more “Real” communication between alumni and the campus. This was my motivation last fall when i tried to get the Record online (which I believe will still eventually happen if ComCil ever votes in an editorial policy).
Here’s what I’m thinking;
The point of this list is ostensibly to Save Antioch. Part of that is understanding what exactly is going wrong and thus our current discussion on the YS News article, BOT etc. Fun stuff but a bit dull and also frustrating in that there’s not much us ‘mere mortals’ can do to affect change on that level.
But part of it is also figuring out how alumni with energy & enthusiasm can make a difference and “Save Antioch”. To that end here’s my latest thoughts on things along this topic (though I’m sure I go off on a number of tangents). Mind you most of this is somewhat tech related based on my “horseblinds”. Reading what I wrote below I think the summary of all this is that some of us want to be informed about the campus community/events/issues, and I think that’s something that Antioch currently doesn’t understand. We’re supposed to graduate and just donate money, not actually be involved active members in community to any degree. Maybe that’s how it used to be but I know I’m not alone in wanting to be in touch with the ‘real’ campus life more. Apologies in advance if any of the stuff below is repetitive.
Campus to Alumni communications
Alumni Publications – I’m not faulting the folks in alumni/development office, but the fact that all I ever hear from the campus is the perky, now glossy even, Antiochian and the ‘Good News’ mailing list leads me to be very wary of trusting anything they publish. I worked at the college for 5 years after graduating, I know the drill on marketing, everyone makes shiny pretty admissions/alumni publications to market things, but I don’t trust them to give me the full story.. and I know the campus well enough to know that I WANT the full story. I want to see the good and the bad of what’s going on on campus. That’s Antioch, the give & take, the debate, the issue’s du jour etc, but I can’t get that info now. The campus could be in crisis and I’d never hear anything from the alumni office on this end. I’m sure there’s some marketing philosophy out there that says you never tell alumni what’s really going on on campus, or only ever say positive things, but the fact is, I, and others who ‘watch’ are finding out from other sources anyways. My point here is why am I getting my campus news from the antioch Livejournal community (http://community.livejournal.com/antioch_college), facebook, the Antioch92 board/list, the YS News, SaveAntioch.Org and even AntiochSucks.com. This is Antioch College information/news/discussion, it should be coming from Antioch directly. By tightening things down Antioch has lost control of it’s news/audience. Good news or bad news, it’s Antioch news and the people seeking it are people who care about the college. These are the people we want to be in touch with!
Record – The Record is “raw” information from the campus. It’s likely to have some poorly written articles, inside jokes, and a whole bunch of content that I couldn’t care less about, but it’s a real, unfiltered (hopefully, depending on the above referenced editorial policy) feed of what’s going on on campus. I trust the Record more than I’ll ever trust something from the Alumni office. I’m pissed at Lawry for his actions this past fall but lately I’ve been frustrated with ComCil on not passing an editorial policy so we could move forward on this. Or let me rephrase, as far as I know ComCil hasn’t passed anything and the ball is still in their court on getting things online. I’m guessing they don’t “get” the idea that having the Record online is important. Or they could be dealing with more important issues, I wouldn’t know because… I have no source of campus information outside a few verbose current students with blogs!
Antioch Website – The current website is nice, functional and gets information out. However, it’s also a PR piece and it’s my understanding that the Record and CG can’t even update their own pages. Perhaps this is a security concern, in which case I’d be happy to help CG get their own webserver up. IMHO the CG website/server should have lots of photos/video from campus events (AMP should be inhouse!), minutes and agendas for various committees, the campus events calendar, contact info for all the independent groups etc. I’ve heard there’s alot of stuff going on in the First Class forums etc but as an alum I cant get access to that, so really anything that doesn’t need to be ‘private/in-campus only’ should be done in a more open manner. There should be open forums and a CG “Community” site involving on & off campus community members, as well as alumni and even perspective students. What better admissions advertising than to let a perspective student see the dynamic active community discussions between current community members and alumni?
Alumni-Chat – anyone else remember the Alumni-Chat mailing list? I know Bob does, after spending god knows how many hours responding to Katy Jako’s paranoid delusional rants, but it was another ‘Raw/Uncensored’ source of Antioch communication. The college killed it off a few years ago since I guess having alumni actually chat with each other was a bad marketing angle in someone’s book. They replaced it with the ‘good news’ mailing list which is nice, it tells us what nice show is happening in Herndon gallery, who the commencement speaker is and what other nifty fun exciting-enough-to-tell-alumni-about events on campus are happening, but again it’s just more filtered information. There are other lists out there, the Antioch92 one (which is basically ‘alums from the 90’s or so’), and a yahoo group that I never heard about until the other day, but again, why are we letting ‘others’ control Antioch lists. This should be in house. And yes I realize every unmoderated mailing list of any size attracts a few nuts that start abusing it but in my experiece lists police themselves well. It’s just like a big community meeting or an announcement in the caf, one nut stands up, starts waving their arms and ranting, people tune them out, or tell them to shut up if they get too annoying. Some people get the hint, others don’t, life goes on.
Alumni Board – I have high hopes for some changes in the availability of information about the alumni board now that Christian Feuerstein is a member She’s on this list, just a bit busy these days). I’ve been grumbling for years (even back as far as 2000 when I was on the board) that it’s agendas and minutes should be online. Ideally some of those folks should be on this list but this is brand new and they’re all busy folks. But the alumni board just advises the college on a number of issues right now, I think this could change and they could become more active participants in campus/alumni discussions, online forums/lists, projects both at Antioch and elsewhere. I think there’s a lot of potential in this group and or sub-committees of it (that could consist of non-alumni-board members) to do some online community building that is sorely needed.
Admissions Marketing – Check out http://youtube.com/watch?v=qUNet5IkrAU In my book this is the kind of stuff Antioch should be using for recruiting. Real stuff, from real students. In house produced stuff with a sense of humor. Not award winning fancy publications from some designers in NH, but rough around the edges but REAL stuff. Ok this combined with the fancy brochures, but really woulnd’t it be neat to have videos like this on the website? (moderated of course) Perhaps alumni in conjunction with current students could make some more things along these lines. I’ve heard that on-campus right now there is a self-published book called ‘Why I Stay’. That should be on the web and sharable too. (I’d love to see it).
That’s all for now, I’ve gone on on this for too long and have swerved far off the current topics of Lawry & the BOT & even alumni related stuff.
Hope some of this made sense or is of interest to someone besides me. Thanks for listening.
-Matt ’92
nothing if not verbose