Living History at Antioch

or, how I helped bring back The Record and Camelot

by S. Quinn Ritzhaupt ’23

Photos by Zoe Ritzhaupt ’20

Since you’re reading The Antiochian, I’m sure you’re well aware that Antioch is a school of many unorthodox traditions. I’m a fourth year student here, and my interests lie primarily in history. If you’re me, there are some things you read about in the college’s archive, Antiochiana, that’ll never leave your mind. Things previous Antiochians did that you would like to do now, like newspapers and bike races. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

Let’s start at the beginning. When I started my Antioch journey in fall 2019, I had the benefit of a built-in guide at the school –an older sibling in their fourth year. My sibling Zoë, much like me, had a vested interest in the continuation of Antioch traditions, and did some work for the student-run newspaper on the side. I had some experience in journalism, but mostly I just enjoyed writing. I had looked forward to contributing to The Record, perhaps by ways of something fun like horoscopes,

but by the time I got to Antioch, there was no Record to write for. Sent to its early grave by a few misfortunes, The Record laid untouched. Sad but swamped with first-year responsibilities, The Record went to the back of my mind and I plodded on, newspaperless.

I got a job at the Yellow Springs News during my first quarter instead and published an article, but I had hoped to work on campus instead. I applied for circulation desk at the Olive

Kettering Library instead, and I managed to snag the position. Well, sort of. Then-librarydirector, Kevin Mulhall, sent me upstairs to Antiochiana, where I could be Scott Sanders’ problem. The good news was Scott didn’t see me as much of a problem, and extended many kindnesses and very intriguing history stories to me instead. It was at this time that my major pivoted from creative writing to archives.

It’d be unfair of me to bore you with every detail of my Antioch career from Winter 2020 to Winter 2021 when The Record became a twinkle in our eyes, but I will set the scene for the first day my dear friend Loretta Philip ‘24 and I settled upon our involvement in the paper:

Antiochiana. Maybe February. I’m leafing through a massive bound copy of The Record from a few decades ago, either for my own personal enjoyment or seeking an article on Scott’s behalf. Loretta’s looking through a separate issue, and there was this unspoken sense of loss.

There were years and years of history in these volumes. Big news stories, small op-eds, doodles and comics, advertisements. People’s best days and worst days, all

I don’t recall who said it first, or if some Dickens-esque Ghost of Antioch Past appeared and made Loretta and I think it at the same time, but we made a realization: we could be The Record.

We thought it through for maybe five minutes. Loretta had attended a graphic design school in lieu of normal high school before starting at Antioch, and I had put out at least one successful article for a newspaper. It wasn’t much, but it was just enough experience that we had some type of (maybe misplaced) confidence in our ability to be a two-man newspaper team. With new resolve, Loretta and I decided we were going to put out the first new Record in three years.

It’d be dishonest to say everything went swimmingly. We struggled to convince facilities to let us have a key to the longuntouched Record office. We found multiple unpaid bills to the Yellow Springs News for printing costs from years ago. We

struggled to figure out how to get content when there were only the two of us, with me being the only writer. The solution to these problems and many more came by ways of the Record Advisory Board (RAB). RAB has existed alongside The Record for quite some time, offering guidance to wayward editors such as ourselves. It became clear we’d get nowhere without their help, and so Loretta and I began crafting our own advisory board.

Two constants on this era’s RAB are none other than Scott Sanders, archivist and all-around cool guy that has bore witness to The Record in many iterations; and Chris Welter, Antioch class of 2020, WYSO reporter and on-call for the many, many crises Loretta and I have had while working the paper. Both of them have contributed more to The Record’s success than I can even put into words, and we are beyond appreciative of their continued support.

The rest of RAB drifts in and out every few quarters, students and staff who are invested in the paper, donating any time they can to us. We meet every Friday in the Mul-hall at the Olive Kettering Library, discussing the trials and tribulations of the paper, the highs and lows and

successes and struggles. RAB doesn’t exercise prior editorial restraint, but they do offer us advice when we need it, and try to steer us in the right direction.

With our newly formulated advisory board, we began shaking up some typical Record things. We did away with only allowing people to write of The Record after taking a class – instead, hoping to make journalism accessible for all, we shifted to a freelance model. Students that contribute stories, columns, art, poetry, and photography are compensated fairly for their work. Another change was the layout, brilliantly handled by Loretta quarter after quarter.

The first Record we put together was in spring 2021. We stayed up all night in our McGregor office, me editing works that had been submitted and Loretta painstakingly putting them all into an InDesign document. It was the wee hours of the morning by the time we sent it over to the Yellow Springs News to be published, finally able to let out a breath. We were exhausted, stressed, afraid of what the final product would look like, and wondering how people would respond.

Two days later, we picked up 250 paper copies of The Record: Volume 69, Issue 1. I think I cried a little bit on the way back to campus, beyond proud of us and the work we had done. We triumphantly went to the OKL first, The Record’s second home, putting the first copy on the front desk. This was the birth of The Record.

Since then, we’ve released six more issues of The Record. I’d like to say it’s become easier, but each issue comes with its own set of, well, issues. I think I can say we’re more confident, at least. Both in ourselves and our paper, and the confirmation that the Antioch community needed this type of outlet for information.

If you’d like to read The Record, you can go to https:// recordonline.org/.

I also mentioned bike races at the beginning of this article, if you recall, and bike races might be a bit more interesting than newspapers, depending on who you ask. This bike race in particular is a bit divisive, but most Antiochians remember the Camelot Gran Prix. Don’t you? Camelot is another one of those traditions that I had heard about and longed to see. Sure, it’s not a publication serving the information needs of the community, but I had read many an account of Camelot, and I was intrigued. I am not inclined to athletics (is anyone who attends/ attended Antioch?), but Camelot seemed less like athleticism and more like a Herculean labor, an impossible task – and yet, people had won it before.

It was also spring 2021 when a peer of mine, Delaney

Schlesinger-Devlin ‘22, and I decided it’d been far too long since the last Camelot. Camelot largely died out when Antioch reopened, mostly because it had a rather lurid history that is best left out of the Antiochian. A few attempts at revival were scattered about from 2012 to 2020, with the new and very vital stipulation that all things thrown must be compostable and vegan. This rule seemed valid, given what Delaney and I knew of Camelots long passed, but everything else was simple enough. I don’t really remember us asking anyone for permission to put on a Camelot – I think it was one of those “better to ask for forgiveness”type things. We sent out a signup sheet to see if people would even want to participate in a 100-lap bike race with compost being thrown at them.

Turns out, people did.

We planned Camelot for May 8th, 2021. There were a multitude trashed bikes laying around Sontag-Fels, so we picked a few decent-ish ones for riders to choose from. The day before Camelot, Delaney

and I, armed with a few five gallon buckets from the kitchens, marched our way to the farm to create Camelot juice. We made five buckets: about one part compost to four parts water, and we let them sit outside on the Horseshoe overnight.

Six brave riders arrived on the Horseshoe that fateful day, facing the unknown. It was sheer chaos for about two hours.

One of the riders (who happened to be previously mentioned coeditor Loretta) dropped out after a mere eight laps. I was running commentary for this first year, a little intimidated of what Delaney and I had wrought. Flour and compost were flying, and a loose pineapple top had made its way across the course multiple times. The five buckets of juice ran out far too quickly, and people resorted to throwing rocks, sticks, leaves, and nowempty buckets at the riders

as they circled around and around the small course we had designated on the Horseshoe. It was brutal, but four people made it 100 laps. The winner, Bella Wolk ‘23, received a tiny pendant of Barack Obama as the Virgin Mary for prize, taken from the free store maybe a day before the race.

Camelot was a success. Feeling rather pleased with ourselves, Delaney and I already began plotting for a 2022 Camelot. We settled on a date of May 7th, 2022 for the second reborn Camelot. Our participant number more than doubled, from six to thirteen, as did our buckets of Camelot juice. 2022 saw throwers becoming more devious in their projectiles, with biodegradable balloons full of vegetable oil, raw potatoes retrieved from a dumpster, and vegan glue all becoming fair game. Perhaps foolishly, given my witnessing of last year’s race, I participated in the 2022 Camelot.

It’s difficult to describe what it feels like to ride in Camelot if you’ve never done it before. As mentioned previously, I am not particularly athletically inclined.

A hundred lap bike race was a death sentence as-is, but coupled with the sheer amount of slop thrown on me was a recipe for disaster. My teammate, David Klasovsky, and I quit after 58 laps. I felt fine about our fourth place standing.

I left the track relatively unharmed, though I think I might have dry heaved for an hour following Camelot. Others were not so fortunate. Lola Betz, class of 2022, fell so hard on a curve covered in oil that she chipped a tooth, a permanent memory of Camelot. Despite more riders, the race ended in a mere hour and fifteen minutes, with first year E. Fried and

Delaney themself taking home first place.

Camelot, to me, is such a quintessentially Antiochian tradition. It’s truly an “only here” kind of thing, and I feel particularly honored to have contributed to its resurgence on campus. I graduate in June of this year, meaning I’m going to be present for my third Camelot in May 2023, and I truly look forward to it every day.

I’ve been at Antioch for four years now. When I look back on my experiences here, two things stand out the most: my involvement in The Record, and my involvement in Camelot.

I’m grateful to attend a college so willing to allow its students to take control of things like newspapers and bike races, letting me become a piece of living history at Antioch.

S. Quinn Ritzhaupt is a fourthyear student, majoring in Archival Preservations at Antioch College. A history lover since childhood, she has found her place in the College’s archive, Antiochiana, and currently works at the Olive Kettering Library and as the editor of The Record. Outside of classes, she is the co-coordinator of Chess Club at Antioch, and can often be found boring her friends with stories of Antioch’s past.