July 6, 08

Hi from Tex Allen, Antioch College Ohio alumnus (Email me directly at TexAllen@Hotmail.Com):

Attacks on Antioch College Ohio by media personalities who themselves were Antioch College alumni were used as ammunition by naysayers anxious to support the Antioch College Ohio closedown which finally (and tragically) occured last June 30, 2008 (7 days ago!).

People part of the Antioch alumni community dissatisfied with events and power personalities part of Antioch College voiced objections, and this was used by Antioch College Ohio critics and enemies to justify support of the Antioch College Ohio closedown.

Antioch College Ohio was closed down importantly due to media attacks supporting the closedown (national right wing political writer George Will wrote an infamous attack in Fall of 2008, and there were many others by right wing writers and personalities of both fame and obscurity).

Understanding the history of Antioch College Ohio, why it was shut down, and what part recollections of controversies part of Antioch College Ohio's past played, requires a knowledge and review of "Anti-Antioch public writing."

What follows is a dredging up of the infamous Sexual Offense Prevention Policy of 1993 by a radio talk show host and journalist named David Benzion, who was (and is) an Antioch alumnus, class of 1994.

He recounts the spoof of the Antioch SOPP on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, the famous national TV comedy show, which used and named Antioch College in a now famous comedy skit. The point of the skit was to ridicule and defame Antioch College, and Mr. Benzion's writing about the subject is an example of public writing by Antioch alumni of media fame whose disapproval of parts of Antioch's past were used to justify the Antioch College Ohio closedown which occurred on June 30, 2008.

Antioch College Ohio history can only be understood if the attacks on it (selective and self-interested) are studied carefully and also understood.

What follows is a recent example which appeared in national media during the Fall of 2008, after the announcement of the Antioch University Board Of Trustees to close down Antioch College Ohio in 2008 was made, but before the final event occurred.

Read it carefully.

Students of Antioch College Ohio history must know how attacks on the school worked, what ideas were presented to support the attack in major media.

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David Benzion, Antioch '94, now works in Texas as a radio talk show personality and also as a journalist.

He responded to the Antioch Closedown crisis last Fall 2007 by providing readers with a transcript of the 1993 famous SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE comedy show spoof about the then new Antioch College "SOPP" policy which dealt with date rape and efforts to stop it.

Benzion also recalled particulars about events and campus politics which led up to the policy achieving status and national notoriety, and recalled his own (failed) efforts to challenge the policy while he was an Antioch student.

Below is a transcript of the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE show about the Antioch SOPP (stands for "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy"), followed by David Benzion's recollections about his time as a student at Antioch and effort to challenge the policy.

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Transcript of the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (1993) TV broadcast skit about Antioch College's then new widely publicized rules about sex between students:

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Is It Date Rape

Dean Frederick Whitcomb.....Phil Hartman
Ariel Helpern-Strauss.....Shannen Doherty
Mark Strobel.....Chris Farley
Male Date Rape Player #1.....Mike Myers
Female Date Rape Player #1.....Melanie Hutsell
Male Date Rape Player #2.....Tim Meadows
Female Date Rape Player #2.....Ellen Cleghorne

[ open with the theme from "Casino Royale" ]

Announcer: Live, from Antioch College in Antioch, Ohio.. it's time to play..

Audience: Is.. It.. Date Rape?!

Announcer: ..with your host, the dean of intergender relations - Dean Frederick Whitcomb!

[ Dean Frederick Whitcomb enters the game show stage ]

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright, ladies and gentlemen, students and faculty! We've got an exciting show! Back with us is our defending champion, she's a Junior and a major in Victimization Studies. Say hello to Ariel Helpern-Strauss!

[ show Ariel at her podium ]

And our challenger - he's a nose tackle and a Sigma Alpha Epsilon brother. Say hello to Mark Strobel!

Mark Strobel: S! A! E! Yeah, yeah!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Welcome, players. Let's take a look at our board. The categories are: "Halter Top"; "She Was Drunk"; "I Was Drunk"; "Kegger"; "Off-Campus Kegger"; "She Led Me On"; "I Paid For Dinner": and "Ragin' Kegger". Alright. Ariel, you're our champion, the board is yours.

[ lights bounce across the board squares, until Ariel presses her buzzer and stops the light on one of the squares ]

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: "She Led Me On"! [ reading card ] "It is the last day of school, a female student asks a male student to help her move her futon-" [ Ariel buzzes ] Helpern-Strauss?

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: Date Rape!

[ sound effect dings for a correct answer ]

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Well! [ laughs ] I didn't even finish the question.. but it is Date Rape! Okay, for those of you not familiar with the rules to our game, it's quite simple. Antioch College defines date rape as: any sexual contact or conduct between two or more persons, in which consent of such contact, which includes: the touching of thighs, genitals, buttocks, or the breast/chest area is not expressly obtained in a verbal manner. If the level of sexual intimacy increases during an interaction: ie. if two people move from kissing while fully clothed to undressing for direct physical contact, and the people involved do not express their clear verbal consent before moving to that level, that too is.. date rape."

Alright! Mark.. you get the board!

Mark Strobel: Come on, "Halter Top".. [ hits buzzer, lighting up one of the squares ]

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: "I Paid For Dinner"! [ reading card ] "She orders a steak and a shrimp cocktail.." Strobel?

Mark Strobel: Not Date Rape.

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Ohhh.. sorry! Helpern-Strauss, would you like me to finish the question?

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: Date Rape!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Correct!

Mark Strobel: Come on! Surf 'n Turf?! That's like forty BUCKS, man!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright, let's move on.. Helpern-Strauss.

[ Ariel hits her buzzer, lighting one of the squares ]

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: "Halter Top"! [ siren sounds ] Oh.. that siren means one thing. Here to help us with the question are the Antioch College Date Rape Players.

[ curtain parts to reveal the two players in a scene together ]

Male Date Rape Player #1: May I compliment you on your halter top?

Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. You may.

Male Date Rape Player #1: It's very nice. May I kiss you on the mouth.

Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. I would like you to kiss me on the mouth.

[ they kiss on the mouth ]

Male Date Rape Player #1: May I elevate the level of sexual intimacy by feeling your buttocks?

Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. You have my permission.

[ Male touches Female's buttocks ]

Male Date Rape Player #1: May I raise the level yet again, and take my clothes off so that we could have intercourse?

Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. I am granting your request to have intercourse.

[ scene ends ]

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Contestants?

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: [ buzzes in ] Date Rape!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Ohhhh.. sorry! Mark, what do you say? Is it date rape?

Mark Strobel: Uhhh.. oh, man! [ beats himself up ] Uhhh.. Date Rape?

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Ohhhh.. sorry! We were looking for "It is not date rape.." Not Date Rape.

Mark Strobel: [ pounds his podium ] Oh! Man! I KNEW IT!!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright.. let's meet our contestants. Mark Strobel, you have been charged in three hazing deaths.. with two counts of hate speech, and one instance of sexual harrassment when you referred to the women's field hockey teams as, "a bunch of lezbos."

Mark Strobel: [ smiling ] Glad to be here, Dean!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright! And over here, our lovely young champion.

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: [ pounds her buzzer ] Take your hands off me!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Very good! That's good for 10 points, Ariel! And.. you've got the board!

[ Mark hits his buzzer, lighting one of the squares ]

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: "Ragin' Kegger"! [ siren sounds ] Alright.. once again, the Date Rape Players.

[ curtain parts to reveal the two players in a scene together ]

Male Date Rape Player #2: I sure had a nice time at that ragin' kegger. May I kiss you on the mouth.

Female Date Rape Player #2: Yes. Kissing me on the mouth.. is sometihng I feel.. com-fort-a-ble with. [ they kiss on the mouth ] Mmmm.. that.. was nice!

Male Date Rape Player #2: Would you mind if we had sexual intercourse?

Female Date Rape Player #2: No..

[ Ariel buzzes in ]

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Helpern-Strauss?

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: Date Rape! No always means no!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: That's correct! Good job, Ariel! A bit of a trick question there! [ final game buzzer sounds ] Well.. it looks like the round is over, and, Ariel, you are still our champion! Now, it's time for our Bonus Round. You know how it works, Mark. You have thirty seconds to win Ariel's consent. Are you ready, Mark?

Mark Strobel: Okay..

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Go!

[ timer plays down, as Mark tries to win Ariel's consent ]

Mark Strobel: I was wondering if, uh.. you're not busy, uh-

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No!

Mark Strobel: There's gonna be a party at the frat house-

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No!

Mark Strobel: Can I.. kiss you..?

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No!

Mark Strobel: Can I put my hands on your buttocks..?

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No!

Mark Strobel: Do you wanna do it, or what..?

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: NO!!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Alright! Ariel! Congratulations! You win a trip.. for you and Mark to.. Acapulco!

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No-oh!

Mark Strobel: Whoooooo!! Yeah! Hah hah hah! Whoo!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: You will spend two nights in Acapulco, at the Lover's Hideaway Beach Hotel!

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No! This is so wrong!

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: I want to thank our contestants and the Date Rape Players. Come on, everybody! Let's give them a big kiss goodbye!

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: No... no.. please..

[ fade ]

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Here is David Benzion's (Antioch '94) account of his time at Antioch College Ohio as un undergrad and connection with and opinions about the SOPP policy.....other aspects of Antioch College Ohio, it's history and its troubles, were ALSO included in his writing done in Fall 2007:

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The widely-publicized date-rape policy that catapulted Antioch onto Saturday Night Live and into nationwide ridicule in 1993 was a kind of object lesson in what can happen when demographic implosion (reducing the student body to its most radical core) unites with a laissez-faire administration philosophy that consists of giving even the most extreme factions everything they want.

The extremists in this case consisted of a group of student feminists who called themselves “Womyn of Antioch” (a title that might have sent up a red flag to administrators elsewhere) and claimed to be reacting to two incidents of date rape on the Yellow Springs campus in 1991, which they said the administration had ignored.

No Antioch students were ever charged with those offenses either formally or informally, much less found by a college tribunal to have committed them, much less prosecuted for any crime by outside authorities. Antioch’s archivist Sanders said that the alleged rapes might have been more a matter of “perception” than reality.

Nonetheless, when the Womyn “stormed” (the word comes from Antioch’s website) an Antioch community meeting and insisted on pushing through the policy they had drafted regardless of parliamentary niceties, the administrators and faculty who were supposed to be on at least an equal footing with the students at those meetings, if not their superiors on the basis of maturity and experience, said, oh, okay.

I have the distinct honor of having been booed and hissed (hyssed?) by the “Womyn of Antioch” at that exact meeting– my sins consisting of

…

Being a man;
Speaking out in favor of due process and civil liberties;
In the course of my comments using the phrase “don’t want to open a ‘Pandora’s Box’” (“BOOOO!! HISSSS! How dare you employ a patriarchal, misogynistic trope!”)
The Womyn-drafted sexual-offense policy read: “Verbal consent should be obtained with each new level of physical and/or sexual contact/conduct in any given interaction, regardless of who initiates it. Asking ‘Do you want to have sex with me?’ is not enough. The request for consent must be specific to each act.”

The penalty for even being accused of failing to obtain consent for one of the “levels” was immediate expulsion without a hearing or any other rights. Not surprisingly, when word leaked out (it took a while) that Antioch’s board of trustees had actually approved the policy and made it official, the reaction of the non-Antioch general public was .  .  . laughter all around.

One wag estimated that Antioch required a student seeking a home run in the baseball game of sex to ask for the consent of his beloved a total of 150 times. A few years later, after much media mockery and several threatened legal challenges over the lack of due process, Antioch modified the policy to bring it into line with other colleges’ procedures for handling accusations of date rape and related sexual offenses.

One of those “threatened legal challenges” was from a foreign exchange student who was accused of rape by a woman whose romantic interest he had earlier declined… and who had a self-admitted history (sorry, “herstory”) of false rape allegations.

Self. Admitted.

The night she was supposedly wrestled, pinned-down and violated, the man in question was in fact recovering from an accident that kept him (in full-neck brace) in bed and being fed a steady supply of high-octane pain-killers from the school nurse (an honorable woman, classic Vermont liberal, who insisted on telling the administration that the accusations against the man were “complete crap”).

Could a Hollywood screenwriter even contrive a scenario in which it was more clear that a man was being falsely accused of rape? And yet, the p.c.-bureaucracy at Antioch allowed this psychologically-agonizing farce to grind on for months, afraid of staring down the Womyn who ideologically had them by… well, I’m just going to say it, by the balls.