Antioch Scratch

Antioch Scratch was a broadside published in 1988 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, U.S.A.

In early 1987, a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio was determined to be psychotic and removed from the campus, surprising him immensely.

The student does not deny an episode of insanity following the first expulsion, but maintains that he was lucid until the removal from the campus. The removal was executed by telephoning the student's parents, who traveled to campus to get him. When they arrived, the student was aware of no grounds for their presence, and presumed that the action had been initiated by the parents.

The following year, in an attempt to inquire into the politics surrounding the previous year's expulsion, said student, having returned to the college, self-published a collection of miscellany he had written, both entirely on his own, and as homework for a poetry class, under the title "Antioch Scratch". The title was a reference to the weekly student newspaper, The Antioch Record.

The student was promptly re-expelled.

Other students cried foul, and a series of additional issues were created by remaining students, critical of the college administration's policies.

References to some of the poems appearing in March 1988's "Antioch Scratch #1" are apparent in surprising places, such as the lyrics to Madonna's "Bedtime Story." The handwritten portion might be referred to by the handwriting in http://vimeo.com/1976212

Antioch Scratch #1 in its entirety was included in Pavement of Surface #1, which was handed out at the 1989 Without Borders anarchist convention.

In 2002, the student learned that a vandal, who was not him, when apprehended vandalizing, had falsely given the student's name. The chief of the volunteer fire department, who had been on the vandal apprehension call, (campus security would deputize members of the VFD as needed) related the story.