Will Wootton’s Letter to the Vermont Attorney General

March 26, 2020 T.J. DonovanAttorney GeneralState of Vermont109 State StreetMontpelier, VT 05609 Dear Sir: My name is Will Wootton, and I write to you over deep concerns I have regarding the upcoming closing of Marlboro College and the transfer to Emerson College in Boston of Marlboro’s endowed funds of some $40 million and the proceeds

Letter to the Editor

By Amy Tudor In a March 19 Berkeley Beacon article, Emerson-Marlboro merger still on track despite growing opposition, Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley made several erroneous statements.  The President was reported to say “The [I Believe in Marlboro College] group as a whole has brought several resolutions to Marlboro College’s weekly Town Meeting, which have

Lt. Governor Letter of Support

March 11, 2020 To the Marlboro Board of Trustees: In the past few years Vermont has seen the closure of four of its small, independent liberal arts colleges. These colleges represented four distinct regions of our state, hundreds of teachers and employees, a few thousand students and tens of thousands of alumni, as well as

How to Downsize Marlboro College: A Retrenchment Primer

by Will Wootton I’ve been encouraged over the past few weeks to further explain what “retrenchment” means, not in higher education generally, which I tried to do, but at Marlboro specifically. I resisted because retrenchment is on the first level an exercise in financial planning. But because the original Challenge met with refusal, the institutional data were unavailable. Now, I thought I’d try to explain something of how the process works, in the form of a primer, sans financials. This is something of a challenge itself: I was introduced to the concept of retrenchment in colleges at the Harvard Seminar for New Presidents in 2006, and it took a whole day and three instructors to examine the process in relative detail.

We Believe

Hello Petitioners!  We’ve not forgotten that over 1000 of you in the extended Marlboro College community felt that a second opinion on the current proposal to merge with Emerson College was warranted.  Unfortunately, the Board of Trustees appears unmoved by our entreaties.  We have heard about the changing landscape of higher education. We are told

Open letter on Marlboro College: Working for a new future

The news of a decision to close Marlboro College came suddenly and blindsided people at the college now and in the larger community of Marlboro alumni, retired faculty and staff, and supporters of this unusual institution. It is shocking to think that the hard-won endowment and assets of Marlboro will be handed over to a

Retrenchment, A Description

To: Marlboro College Alumni and FriendsFrom: Will WoottonRe: Retrenchment Colleagues:I’ve complied here a number of somewhat disparate papers, articles, and reports on the definition and practice of retrenchment in higher education, which can also be referred to as “down-sizing” or “right-sizing.” Some are reproduced in full, and others you will have to search on titles

Timeline of Events

The wider community was told time and again that Marlboro College campus was in no danger of imminent closure. This timeline of actions and statements was assembled by Becca Boyden, daughter of Roland Boyden who was a founding faculty member of the college, acting president, dean, and trustee. September 18, 2016 New semester brings big

Marlboro College Website – Archived!

Guest post by David Torke Do you remember what the Marlboro College website looked like in 1996 when it first launched? When you were a student?  Now you can. Marlboro College’s website is archived. You can now interact with the website as if you were using it during your time at Marlboro. This includes the