Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2007 > August > 09 > Entry
Interview with Antioch College president
Outgoing Antioch College President Steve Lawry accepted an invitation to talk with the editorial board. He came in last Monday. He is very eager to deliver the message that Antioch University has to reorganize if it wants to revive the college. He says that the first order of business must be to create a board of trustees for the college, rather than having one only for the university. He says his experience in trying to raise money from alums is not so much that they don’t have money (though that is often said about Antioch alums). He says the problem is that they don’t have confidence in the way the school is run, and aren’t sure enough about how their money will be used. He says they’re willing to contribute a little, but not a lot.
He has already said much of that publicly. We got a chance to question him, however, on some other subjects that have gotten less attention. Most specifically, there was the matter of Antioch’s political atmosphere. He said Antioch has an unusually high number of undergrads who leave after a year. He said he tries to interview those who leave as to why. And he said that one of the main reasons they give is a sense of being pressured to hold certain political views. He says they come to Antioch out of a sense that it is a place given to questioning, but that they find that the questioning may only be directed in a certain way.
As he has in other interviews, he said he stopped the campus newspaper’s practice of printing unsigned denunciations of specific students over politics, denunciations with threats in them.
At the same time, however, he was eager to put the political issue in context. He didn’t suggest that it was much of a problem in recruitment. He said the big issue there seemed to be the quality of campus facilities. And he suggested that the atmospheric problem had been coming under control recently.
On a related subject, he was emphatic in his view that Antioch University McGregor never should have been broken off from the college. He suggested that that was done largely out of a concern about the college’s political reputation and the problems it would cause McGregor. He said the better approach would have been to fix the political reputation. He said the two schools have to be recombined now.
This was the first time I and at least some other people at the DDN had met him. I think he impressed most people as straightforward, easy to talk to, clear-headed, and obviously knowledgeable.
He was a little fuzzy on why he’s leaving the job, rather than try to help the school re-launch in 2012. When I suggested that the re-launch seemed like an interesting challenge, he said he had been challenged enough for a while. He said he has enjoyed being here, but has family on East Coast and expects to end up there.
A few days after his visit, Eric Fingerhut, the new chancellor for higher education in Ohio, was at the paper. Antioch came up. Fingerhut said the school’s financial situation had been creating “angst” at the Board of Regents, which is required to give all schools in the state, both private and public, its Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. With the school losing enrollment and faculty, he said that was becomingly increasingly difficult. So he was pleased to see the trustees do what was necessary now, even if the possibility of eventual rebirth is there.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Higher Ed
Comments
By bob
August 10, 2007 5:13 AM | Link to this
I THINK THEY SHOULD CHECK WITH THE LEADERSHIP OF COMMUNIST CHINA TO SEE WHICH DIRECTION CHINA THINKS ANTIOCH SHOULD GO.By yeah_right
August 12, 2007 6:58 AM | Link to this
Well, if they used China as its model, they’d privatize the college, institute an MBA program, and encourage foreign direct investment. Look at China. Over 70% of its GDP is in private hands. They’re more capitalistic than your beloved party and its dear leader.By D. Greene
August 13, 2007 8:57 AM | Link to this
It is interesting to compare and contrast what happens to a college that is somewhat private and mismanaged. It goes out of business. Contrast this with Dayton Public Schools, which has perpetually been mismanaged, and what do some people try to do to reward them for their incompetence? Give them more money. Truly, a striking contrast, that.