Hundreds of Antioch College alumni returned this week to Yellow Springs, Ohio, for their annual reunion, just a week after its Board of Trustees announced that it would close in 2008 for lack of money and students. The missionary zeal and counterculture ethos that made alumni so passionate about their alma mater also appear have played a major role in driving the liberal-arts college into the ground, with minimal fund raising, a minuscule endowment, a student culture that even its president likened to “a political re-education,” and a diffusion of energy and resources into branch campuses that eventually came to outdo the parent.

In a packed meeting with alumni on Friday, top Antioch officials tried to explain what had led to last week’s abrupt announcement, which seemed unexpected to everyone but them. They cited an immediate need for $30-million to $60-million. They mentioned a plunge in enrollment, to just 300. They described a dilapidated campus.

Angry alumni hissed, hooted, and jeered in response. They asked why the college had never seemed to seek their help. They demanded answers. They assailed the trustees’ bombshell conclusion that closing was the only answer. Trustees replied that they should have made a final appeal for help, and talked openly about the possibility of a shutdown, before taking their vote.

Faculty members on hand said the crisis was exaggerated, asserted that the plan to close was part of a scheme to get rid of Antioch University’s only campus offering tenure, and declared that they were considering a lawsuit.

But however ardent the alumni and faculty, a college can’t survive without students, who increasingly have enrolled elsewhere after seeing Antioch’s shabby campus. As one recent alumna told The Plain Dealer, a Cleveland newspaper, “My generation likes … things.”

Coverage in the national press came from, among others, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. —Andrew Mytelka