Antioch College alums plan joyful Ohio reunion

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio — The past two Antioch College alumni reunions have been cry-in-your-beer affairs. This year’s reunion is shaping up as a champagne popper.

After enduring the closing of their alma mater and wondering whether the school would reopen, an alumni group last month bought the place from Antioch University for $6 million and plans to revive the college as an independent school in the fall of 2011.

“It’s ours now,” said Matthew Derr, chief transition officer who helped spearhead the effort. “There are people who have been talking about this for 10 years, and now it’s here.”

This weekend’s reunion on the tiny campus in this southwestern Ohio village will feature a state-of-the-college address, a celebration dinner, a building light-up and the ringing of the tower bell as a symbol of the college’s new independence.

“It’s going to be a very joyful reunion,” said Christian Feuerstein, a member of the alumni board. “Now it really feels our destiny is in our own hands.”

The private, liberal-arts college, founded in 1852, combined academic learning with experience through a co-op program in which students left campus to work in various fields. Over the years, social activism and civil disobedience became part of the school’s fabric, with anti-war protests and weekly peace vigils in the 1960s.

The school has produced two Nobel Prize winners, and alumni include Coretta Scott King and “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling.

Until last month, Antioch had been part of Antioch University, which also has campuses in Seattle, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Calif., and Keene, N.H., as well as a second campus in Yellow Springs.

“I walk across campus now, and it feels like home. For the past year, it felt like occupied territory,” said Scott Warren, a former faculty member at the college who has been hired as a fellow to help develop a new curriculum.

Preparations for the reunion have brought the campus to life this week. Freshly planted white and maroon mums highlight the “Antioch College” sign on the main lawn. Dozens of alumni and other volunteers clamber about the library, replacing ceiling tiles and painting.

Helen Welford, who graduated from Antioch in 1969, said the planned reopening of the school is one reason she volunteered for the work crew.

“This seems like the right time to come and give a show of support,” said Welford, of Dexter, Mich.

With a Phillies painter’s cap on her head and armed with a bottle of spray cleaner and a white rag, Joan Stockton was polishing the library’s glass entrance doors.

Stockton, a 1965 grad from Philadelphia, said she’s unhappy about the ordeal her alma mater has endured.

“But maybe it’s the best thing that could possibly happen because we should be able to go forward being who we are: Antioch College, a school for renaissance people,” Stockton said. “This school is needed. It’s important.”

Few private colleges and universities that have closed have been able to reopen, said Tony Pals, spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

Derr said Antioch plans to enroll about 125 students in the fall of 2011, with one teacher for every 12 students. He hopes to build enrollment to about 600 over the years and then decide whether to continue growing.

Derr, a boyish-looking 43 who gave up his job as vice president of advancement for the Boston Conservatory to work for Antioch, said he was driven by the fear that the college would go out of existence.

“The idea that it wouldn’t be around for other generations was not acceptable,” he said.