Night falls on Ohio's historic Antioch College

Antioch College President Steve Lawry listens during a meeting of
alumni, faculty and school officials Friday.

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio - It was perhaps the last great protest at
Antioch College.

The call to arms came last week, when Antioch College's board of
trustees said the school - representative of the '60s counterculture
and the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements - had run out of
money and would close in July 2008.

The news came as a shock to students, local residents and alumni, who
descended upon the village Friday with one goal: to fight "them" and
save their alma mater.

The shutting down of Antioch College is seen as more than the end of a
university; it is another sign of the passing of an era when the
search for knowledge brought greater rewards than a degree, a job and
a comfortable place in suburban society.

So the Antioch faithful came by the hundreds, from across town and
throughout the nation. Some wore anti-Vietnam War T-shirts, others
crisp linen suits. But all shared a connection to the liberal-arts
institution founded in the heat of the abolitionist era, in a place
that was one of the final stops in the Underground Railroad.

"It breaks my heart," said Ralph Keyes, 62, who met his wife at
Antioch on their first day of school in 1962. "It wasn't just a
college. It was a cause."

On Friday morning, trustees and college administrators tried to
explain what went wrong to an auditorium packed with more than 600
people, many of whom hissed and jeered as college President Steven
Lawry outlined the problems and how the school came to rely almost
completely on student tuition to cover operating costs.

Ever since a student-driven strike divided the campus in the 1970s, at
one point closing the school for six weeks, enrollment has steadily
declined from its peak of more than 2,000.

Now, a few hundred undergraduates are willing to pay $35,400 a year
for tuition, room and board to attend this laboratory for American
liberal education, where verbal assessment - not grades - is a measure
of academic performance.

The school's current endowment of $35 million is also lackluster.
Denison University in Granville, Ohio, lists its endowment as $545
million; the endowment at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., is $279
million.

While there is a long list of famous alumni, the school became known
for educating artists, activists and nonprofit organizers instead of
wealthy business leaders.

It's not enough. The school will finish the 2007-08 academic year,
officials said, and close.

Closing "was the only answer we could find," said Arthur Zucker,
chairman of the Antioch University board of trustees.

Antioch University is the larger organization that, among other
things, encompasses the undergraduate college and five satellite
campuses, including one in Seattle. Only the college is closing; the
satellite campuses are scheduled to remain open.

"Some trustees have taken out mortgages on their homes to keep the
college going in the past," Zucker said. "This wasn't a matter of a
couple million dollars. This was a matter of needing $30 million to
$50 million to save the school."

Such explanations, however, were met with derision.

Time and again, the crowd members expressed how they were shocked that
Antioch, whose mantra has long been to rally support for making the
world a better place, did not rally to save itself.

Some spoke about their willingness to help close the financial gap and
how their efforts to help had been fruitless.

"Why is it when you call the alumni office, no one answers the phone?
The phones roll you to an answering system that's not configured
correctly" to allow callers to leave a message, said Michael-David
BenDor, 62, a 1967 graduate who lives in Ypsilanti, Mich. "How are we
supposed to give money if the phones don't even work?"

Many firsts

The Antioch College of today is a shadow of the institution that took
risks that many others did not dare.

Founded in 1852, it was one of the nation's first co-educational
colleges. It was the first to name a woman as a full professor. And,
while slavery was legal less than 100 miles south, it was one of the
first to eliminate race as an admission requirement.

By the 1960s, the school and Yellow Springs had evolved into a haven
for radical thinkers and social reformists, surrounded by the
cornfields of conservative southwestern Ohio.

But today, the exteriors of many of the school's structures, including
the main building that housed Friday's meeting, have chunks of brick
missing. The bricks have crumbled after years of harsh weather and
neglect.

Some sewage pipes need repair. Several buildings don't have running
hot water. Lawns in front of the residence halls, once lushly green
and neatly mown, have become fields of dirt and dead wildflowers.

Last academic year, nearly 400 undergraduate students were enrolled.

When students who were accepted for admission but chose to attend
other schools were asked why, Lawry said, the top reason was the
shabby condition of the school's facilities.

Having a tiny staff doesn't help. Finances have kept the school's
classroom faculty to 40 and there is only one professor per subject
matter; one person charged with teaching history, one for instructing
literature, one for lecturing on psychology.

And Antioch faces fierce competition, administrators say, as other
colleges have adopted the same educational approach - such as
cooperative learning and pass-fail coursework - that once made Antioch
unique.

Painful blow

Antioch's golden age endures in Yellow Springs, a village of 3,600
about 19 miles northeast of Dayton.

The closure will be a painful blow. Many residents attended the
college, and the university is the town's largest employer. Its taxes
make up 40 percent of Yellow Springs' general fund, said Village
Manager Eric Swanson.

"Everyone knew that the school was in trouble, so this didn't come as
a huge surprise. But when it closes, that's going to mean about 130
jobs lost here. And that's a lot for a village our size to lose."

School officials are hoping to retrench and raise enough money to
reopen the campus in 2012. It's not an impossible dream: The board has
closed and reopened the school three times in the past, mostly due to
financial issues.

Antioch alumni

Some prominent Antioch College alumni include:

Leland C. Clark Jr.: Chemist, built the first practical heart-lung
machine.

John Flansburgh: Guitarist and songwriter for the musical group They
Might Be Giants.

Stephen Jay Gould: Paleontologist and author.

John Hammond: Blues guitarist.

Coretta Scott King: Activist and wife of civil-rights leader the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Horace Mann: Abolitionist and the first president of Antioch.

Sylvia Nasar: Journalist, economist and author of "A Beautiful Mind."

Leonard Nimoy: Actor.

Eleanor Holmes Norton: Congresswoman.

Cliff Robertson: Actor.

Louis Sachar: Author of Newbery Medal-winning children's novel
"Holes."

Mark Strand: Former U.S. poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner for
poetry.

Rod Serling: "Twilight Zone" creator.