Tag: antioch college

I have a theory….

(how many caf conversations have started with that line)

But hear me out.. this theory came about while taking Chem 1 with
Stan Bernstein back in 1990 or so. Stan was, at least at that time
and that class, a real jerk (I had other adjectives but I’m trying to
keep the message kid safe). I’d never in my life encountered a class
where there was so much confusion about what a test was going to
entail (“Well of course you were supposed to memorize all the
periodic chart weights, what you thought I just meant the names &
symbols?”) or what a homework assignment exactly was (“oh you were
only supposed to do 3 of those questions, didn’t I tell y’all that.
Surely you didn’t do all 10!). I’d say about 80% of my academic time
that term was taken up by this class. Those that didn’t drop out in
the first few weeks formed a very tight community, none of us was
going to let this jerk break us, we were going to pass his class if
it killed us (and it got damned close). We studied together in the
library, exchanged notes, met in people’s rooms, went to Young’s
together to study there etc. Through the struggle of what was
supposed to be an entry level Chemistry class, we formed a community.
So Michael Groteke and I came up with a theory about this though..
that Stan wasn’t just a chem professor he was a brilliant
psychologist, secretly hired by Guskin (even before Guskin officially
arrived at the college!) to bring the Antioch science student
minority together in a tight knit community to increase retention.
(Oh and for the record Chem II with Kab Butamina was a breeze
compared to this class (as was Physics I & II, Calc I & II… and
just about every other class I ever took at Antioch)) (And for the
record I like Stan now and don’t think he’s a jerk, he just was in
that class at least from my limited point of view at the time)

But it gets better… This led to our “Guskin Theory”. That
underneath his cold Adcil gavel wielding, community & process hating
public persona he was actually a brilliant community minded social
engineer and that he cared deeply for Antioch’s tradition of self
governance, community and activism. However he realized that as
president he couldn’t just state this outright that in order to
foster these ideals within the Antioch community he had to take the
opposite stance and provide a local target for the activists in
training.  He specifically engineered various events to cause the
student body to get all riled up and organized. By the time people
graduated they were ready to do this in the real world against real
enemies. While retention suffered somewhat those that remained became
some of the most organized and dedicated activists to graduate from
the school from some time (especially the few science students that
survived Dr. Bernstein’s brilliant experiments there). Sadly after
Guskin left the college attempted to hire a President Crowfoot who
actually appeared community minded and open for discussion , though
admittedly a little strange, and the entire structure began to fall
apart. Thus Guskin, in a desperate attempt to save the college, was
able to convince Bob Devine, a popular professor on campus at the
time, to take the helm. This seemed to stabilize the community for
some time and through a series of pre-planned “8th week community
crisis” moments (of which Bob’s dog was named after) the campus was
still able to unite together under a common flag. Meanwhile Guskin
along with the brilliant tactition Lois Mann was able to convince
current employee Katy Jako to create a separate group, the AIF, to
try to unite the alumni to save the college. She was able to convince
hundreds to unite under her charge but was then brilliantly publicly
ignored thus making it appear that the campus didn’t really care what
the alumni thought at all. This set the stage for ‘fear and loathing’
of the ‘federalist’ university structure that Guskin had set up. To
further this the college was forced into a ‘centralization’ of many
of it’s offices, including technology resources so all e-mail could
be monitored to make sure plans were progressing well. The college
also lost it’s own CFO through this and thus confusion about money
and distrust of the university was further advanced. After Bob
stepped down and Guskin supposedly left to teach in Seattle, a pre-
planned set of several interim and short term presidents were
contracted to upset the campus community and to further instill
apathy in the alumni base and the campus community. Toni Murdoch,
after being ably advised by Guskin in Seattle, assumed the Chancellor
position in the unversity and positioned herself as the apparent
central source for all the University’s evil manipulations of the
college. Meanwhile the university began engineering the third part of
this plan…

Realizing that the college would eventually fail completely without a
sudden influx of Alumni involvement and money, the University Board
of Trustees secretly spent $5 million planning the perfect time &
method to announce an unexpected closure of the college. Brilliantly
timing this announcement just 2 weeks before reunion the Alumni,
including those well trained and armed from the Guskin & Bernstein
model of the early 90’s, were left to organize. Murdoch and the
board, with able assistance from sympathetic members of the military
industrial complex and intelligence communities succeeded in
engineering a crisis while secretly leaving enough smoking guns in
the recent history that once things came to light that the alumni
would feel that all hope was not lost. Most board members agreed to
appear removed and uncaring and thus provided just enough mixed
messages and vague responses to further upset the now united Antioch
community. Murdoch, now fully experienced in the Guskin model of
leadership, deftly compiled plans for an ‘Antioch University, Yellow
Springs’  that implied that all green spaces around the college would
be paved and developed, and thus was able to get the entire Yellow
Springs community united as well. One board member whose term was
expiring joined the alumni board, thus giving them more of a sense of
momentum and hope. By making it appear that the community had come up
with the solutions of including the alumni as the ‘fourth pillar’ of
the Antioch academic model, they were able to insititute a paradigm
shift in the way the college was governed. This ‘saving of the
college’ also resulted in a huge public relations boost that made
Antioch hit the headlines of national press numerous times over the
next year or two. By the end of 2007 the name Antioch was on
everyones lips, enrollment skyrocketed and the college became more
popular than it ever had been. It later came to light that while
doing all this for Antioch that Guskin, Devine, Mann, Murdoch, Jako &
Bernstein were had been secretly hired by the Democratic party in the
late 90’s to help them appear to be moving to be more ‘centrist’ so
as the energize the left to take back the party and finally get a
real liberal in office in 2008.

It’s a theory.. and i’m sticking to it. 🙂 If anyone knows of any
parts of the master plan that I missed please share them. I’ll share
some of my other Antioch theories at a later date.

-Matt ’92

Note – Obviously Michael Groteke’s input on this theory sadly ended
in 1992 as a result of his tragic death but I credit his devious and
humorous mind with setting me on to this path of thought. I’m certain
he’d be here with the rest of us, quite possibly a dot com
billionaire who could save the college. But he’s not here.. so we
have to do it on our own, even if we are just rats in Guskin’s maze 🙂

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