by Barbara Winslow, Former Trustee, Current Antioch College Alumni Board Member. August 10, 2007

Dear Trustees,

Thank you for Board Chair Art Zucker’s prompt reply to our letter of July
28.

We greatly appreciate the Board of Trustees’ commitment to resolving Antioch’s structural and governance issues. As Art mentioned, the suggestions in our letter are in agreement with the substance of the governing structure that has been previously proposed. In fact, during our time on the Board these issues were discussed repeatedly. These are not new ideas, but they are certainly ideas whose time has come.

You mentioned that it is heartening when former Trustees demonstrate their commitment to Antioch. You’ll be excited to hear that since sending our letter to you, a number of former trustees have asked to become signatories to the letter, so that twenty former Trustees are now asking that you act on our proposal at the August meeting. As you can see by their names below, these committed Trustees include the past five Board Chairs as well as three Vice Chairs.

Among us, we have a total of 165 years of experience in service to Antioch as Trustees. We are intimately familiar with Antioch College¹s challenges as well as its strengths. We all feel strongly that the first and immediate step on the road to rebirth must be the creation of a separate Board of Trustees for Antioch University/Yellow Springs, with the power to hire and fire the College President and administer the College, and with responsibility for both Antioch College and McGregor, as detailed in our previous letter.

We cannot emphasize strongly enough how taking this step at your August meeting will send a strong signal to all Antioch College alumni, major donors, and others who care deeply about the College, that the current Trustees are serious in their intentions. We believe that such a strong and immediate signal is essential to building the trust necessary for there to be any hope of raising the considerable amount of money that will be needed to re-open the College.

We are delighted by your invitation to work with you toward the goal of re-opening a stronger Antioch College. Given your positive response to our suggestions, we would like to begin that partnership by including a subset of the signatories below as participants at your August Board meeting.

While we understand that you are inviting various stakeholders to speak with you on Saturday to represent their constituencies, we must observe that we are not stakeholders, but statespeople. We are all former Antioch University trustees, including the last five Board Chairs. We share with you the unique experience of having functioned as guardians of the whole University. We respectfully request that you include us in at least part of your closed session on Sunday.

We realize this is an unusual request, but Antioch is in unusual circumstances. We ask that you broaden the brain trust leading the rebirth the College by including another 165 years of Antioch Trustee knowledge, experience and wisdom. (Since this was originally drafted, 4 trustees, Spock, Granai, Ayoub and Richards signed on with 30 combined years of service)

We understand the pressure you are under, and your fiduciary responsibility to insure the long-term fiscal sustainability of all units of Antioch University. We believe we can assist the Board in regaining the trust of the alumni, major donors and other stakeholders so that everyone who loves Antioch College can begin moving in the same direction, towards rebirth. We are sure that our expertise and our commitment to this mission will make us invaluable contributors and help effect a positive and united outcome.

We know that you are as committed as we are to Antioch College rising like a phoenix from the ashes, reborn, healthy, and once again educating students to win victories for humanity. We look forward to working with you to light the way forward.

Sincerely,
Dan Kaplan*-11 years of service
Laura Markham -2
Barbara Winslow**-12
and
Eric Bates 4
Tamara Guzik Bliss 2
Susan Boren 13**
Leressa Crockett - 12
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein-11
Zelda Gamson**-9
Alan Gartner 3
Jewel Graham - 3
Meg Hansson - 6
Frances Degen Horowitz- 6
Bob Krinsky*-20
Pegene McPhaden - 9
Karen Mulhauser- 14
Larry Pearl* - 5
Jordan Tamagni -2
Hardy Trolander* -6
Malte vonMatthiessen*-15
Ed Richards - 10
Ed Granai - 10
Judith Spock - 12
Vic Ayoub - 2

* Former chair
**Former vice chair
(Each name is followed by the years of service as an Antioch Trustee.)

Barbara Winslow

Last Modified : September 29th, 2007 Filed under : Alumni_Board, Letters, news Navigate : Previous post / Next post