or, a guide to helping community government survive at Antioch
2025 · Community Government Institutional Memory Task Force, Antioch College Alumni Board · 48 pages · CC BY-NC-SA
The Community Government Survival Guide documents the evolution — but hopefully not the dissolution — of 100 years of student-led democracy at Antioch College.
Since the 1920s Antioch students have held real power, unique in higher education, with real ability to engage in the work of budgeting, governance, and policy-making, including making Antioch's famous and pioneering Sexual Offense Prevention Policy. This zine shows how and why.
Community government is not advisory boards, hired student advocates, or "student government." It is not symbolic gestures. It is actual authority and responsibility.
Antioch's example matters. As students nationwide face arrest for protesting genocide, as faculty are forced to censor their teaching, and as administrators sign "voluntary" compacts that amount to loyalty oaths, it is of crucial importance that the model of community governance be sustained.
After Antioch closed in 2007 and reopened in 2011, institutional memory of the governance structures was partially lost. This guide preserves that knowledge and provides practical tools for the present.
Inside
A timeline of Community Government, 1925–2025
Detailed descriptions of current and former governing bodies and their powers — Community Council, College Council, Faculty Assembly, Board of Trustees, and the role of the Community Manager
Practical guides for forming committees, running for office, proposing policy, facilitating Community Meetings, and accessing community budgets
How students formed and occasionally challenged administrative decisions throughout the college's history
Frameworks for democratic decision-making
Archival photographs of student organizing across generations
"If you want people to be leaders, if you want them to be problem solvers, if you want them to be good citizens in society, then they've got to have a meaningful experience in making decisions that are problematic decisions."
— Bob Devine, Antioch College alum, faculty, and former president (and former member of video supergroup TVTV)
Nicole Irizawa's picture of students standing behind AdCil members discussing the Sexual Offense Prevention Policy (SOPP) at Antioch, 1990
Credits
Created by the Community Government Institutional Memory Task Force: Jane Foreman '17, Liz Flyntz '02, Coco Gagnet '18, student El Mele, and faculty member Natalie Suzelis. Design and layout by Liz Flyntz; production by Jane Foreman. Additional contributions from alums Angel Nalubega and Soleil Sykes. With the help of Antioch's archivist Scott Sanders and Antiochiana, and input from former Community Managers April Wolford and Shannon McCarville, along with many CG members past and present. Initiated by the Alumni Board's CG Institutional Memory Preservation Committee in 2021.