Ezekiel: You were from a conservative family, and even voted Goldwater in College.  WHY did you choose Antioch?  Was it just the work-study program?

Reichert: That was a big part....  I think I was hungry for EXPERIENCE and Antioch offered that via co-op and via Antioch Education Abroad.  I had really no idea that Antioch was radical or that I was "conservative."  Where I grew up everyone seemed to be Republicans, there were no Jews.  As a High school freshman, I knew I wanted to go to college and I knew it would be up to me to make that happen.  So during lunch I would go to the library and page trough one of those big college listing books.  I sent postcards to literally dozens of colleges starting at the beginning of the book..  Antioch begins with A, so it was one of the first I received, therefore one of the first I really read carefully.  Basically I wanted to GET OUT and Antioch was far, far away.

On a family trip our west I insisted we stop in Yellow Springs.  I was maybe 16.  We got to the campus just at dusk.  I remember three things.  Girls with long straight hair and guitars slung on their backs, my dad looking at the names on the student mailboxes and noting how many were Jews, and the wail of a saxophone coming out of an upper dorm room.  That last thing really did it.

Julia Reichert email to Judith Ezekiel, 8 August 2001.