Mound Return of the CM The
round began. It quickly became clear that Noah’s guide was taken into great consideration as the questions asked during the forum were both challenging and tenacious. It was an unmistakably Antiochian session. Following the meeting the choice of CM was put to a community vote, and Coco Gagnet ’18 was elected the first CM in more than a decade. Following an unusual spring term where courses were conducted entirely online, Coco assumed the Community Manager position in August, 2020, as the College prepared to welcome students back to campus for fall.
Q+A with Coco Gagnet ’18
On Tuesday, February 25, 2020, students, faculty, and staff gathered in McGregor 113 as usual for Community Meeting. This meeting, however, had a special purpose—it was the first Community Manager Candidates Forum since 2007. For decades, the Community Manager position (commonly known by the acronym CM in typical Antiochian fashion) played an important role 18 THE ANTIOCHIAN FALL 2020
in the structure of Antioch’s timehonored system of Community Governance. And now, the position was finally poised to be reinstated at the newly independent Antioch College. One day prior to the Community Meeting, Noah Greer ’21—who had served as Community Council (ComCil) Co-Chair and was now in the interim role of Community Facilitator—sent out an email to the en-
tire campus with a helpful guide for properly interviewing job candidates. The meeting went as planned. After the customary announcements, updates, and expressions of gratitude, the CM candidates were welcomed to the front to introduce themselves and talk about how they would carry out tasks in the role of CM. All was calm and non-contentious. Then the question and answer
What did you do after graduating from Antioch in 2018? “After graduation, I spent the summer working on a farm in Hotchkiss, CO. From there, I moved back to Ohio and worked as a baker for a while. During that time, I was able to build and launch a website for my experiential philosophy framework, Come Again (apologies, the site has not been updated for a bit). In August of 2019, I moved to Troy, NY, to work on a farm, and, in the winter I moved an hour south to Hudson, where I was working in the kitchen at a queer seafood restaurant, Lil’ Debs Oasis. I moved back to Ohio at the beginning of the pandemic, and now I’m back at Antioch.” What is your definition of community? “This question is really hard for me. In some ways, I think there’s some
