Media
July 28, 2021 The Commons Marlboro Music Agrees to Buy its Home on Potash Hill
July 22, 2021 Vermont Digger Marlboro Music Festival Says it Will Buy Former Marlboro College Campus
July 22, 2021 Brattleboro Reformer Marlboro Music Festival Buys Marlboro College Campus, Ending Year of Turmoil
August 5, 2020 Brattleboro Reformer Letter: Observations on the closing of Marlboro College On or about July 22, Marlboro College trustees transferred the remaining Marlboro College endowment of $20.250 million to Emerson College in Boston and sold the 366-acre campus including over 50 buildings to Democracy Builders for $225,000, with Democracy Builders assuming a 40-year $1.5 million note to the Marlboro Music Festival, all for a total of $21.975 million.
July 25, 2020 Vermont Business News Marlboro College: Sale Price Generates Uproar The college founded on Marlboro’s Potash Hill 74 years ago is no more – but it hasn’t died quietly.
July 23, 2020 VT Digger Sale of Marlboro College campus finalized Democracy Builders, a nonprofit that founded a network of charter schools, has purchased the Marlboro College campus.
July 22, 2020 The Commons Marlboro set to sell campus, give assets Attorney General will permit Marlboro College’s merger with Emerson College and the sale of campus to Democracy Builders Fund. Meanwhile, tensions continue over allegations of racial harm in founder’s background.
July 21, 2020 Brattleboro Reformer Marlboro has ‘difficult and messy’ conversation Community members are closely watching the group anticipated to be the next occupant of Potash Hill.
July 20, 2020 VT Digger Attorney general OK’s Marlboro College deal The Vermont Attorney General’s Office has given the green light for Marlboro College to merge with Emerson College and sell its campus to Democracy Builders, a nonprofit headed by a charter school network founder planning to create a new kind of institution of higher education on Potash Hill.
July 18, 2020 Eagle Times Lissa Harris: The burden of proof is on the victim In our justice system, the burden of proof is on the accused. Assuming there is enough evidence to make a case, the accused stands trial in defense of the allegations. But outside our court system, the burden of proof is almost always laid upon the shoulders of the victim. What The Brattleboro Reformer and The Commons failed to do in their recent articles “Anonymous allegations roil Marlboro College sale” and “Critics urge opposition to campus sale” is to hold Democracy Builders Fund Inc. accountable for the accusations of racism and abuse against their founder Seth Andrew during his time leading Democracy Prep charter schools.
July 17, 2020 Brattleboro Reformer LeShae: The case for postponing Marlboro sale I am J LeShae and I run an activist education initiative called Ms. J’s Classroom. For the last four years I’ve served as the Principal of Conscious Consulting, where I’ve led social justice education and coaching for several institutions including The Black Teacher Collaborative, The Budd Center at Southern Methodist University, American Baptist College, One Goal, Teach For America, The Commit Partnership, and The Teaching Trust.
July 17, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Vermont Attorney General cannot stop Marlboro campus sale amid allegations of racism against buyer Despite mounting allegations of racism against the Democracy Builders founder, the sale of the Marlboro campus to the non-profit cannot be stopped by the Vermont Attorney General, according to the state office itself.
July 15, 2020 The Commons Critics urge opposition to campus sale The Marlboro Selectboard has asked college trustees to investigate race-based allegations against the leader of the group intending to buy the facility. Meanwhile, the largely-BIPOC staff of Degrees of Freedom is frustrated at the effort to scuttle a venture that would largely serve people of color.
July 14, 2020 Brattleboro Reformer Anonymous allegations roil Marlboro College sale Marlboro College’s Board of Trustees intends to go ahead with the sale of the campus to Democracy Builders Fund Inc., a nonprofit hoping to “re-imagine” higher education in Marlboro. That’s even after the Board became aware of online, anonymous allegations of racism, abuse and favoritism at the nonprofit’s project Democracy Prep, a network of charter schools founded by Seth Andrew, who announced his plans for the Marlboro College campus in late May.
July 14, 2020 Non-Profit Quarterly These Nonprofit Merger Pains Are Complicated by…Well, Everything Mergers are never easy, and we never thought this particular one would be painless, but add in a pandemic and the most carefully considered recipe can go seriously awry. A great deal has changed in the world since NPQ first reported on Marlboro College’s efforts to merge with Emerson College—or, as it appears, become subsumed into the Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies program there. Marlboro, a liberal arts school founded in 1946, already has a buyer for its site; its 58 buildings on 530 acres, which includes 17 miles of campus trails in southern Vermont are in contract, have been sold to Democracy Builder, a nonprofit with affiliates that include charter schools.
July 9, 2020 VT Digger Questions raised about Marlboro College buyer in 11th hour The founder of Democracy Prep Public Schools, a national charter school network, made a big splash in late May when he announced an ambitious plan to create, from the ashes of Marlboro College, a first-of-its-kind institution of higher education.
July 8, 2020 The Commons Marlboro’s deals with Emerson, DBF await state decision Sale of college campus by July 31 is a firm condition of the merger; both transactions are under scrutiny by state Attorney General’s Office
July 4, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Marlboro Alumni condemn campus sale amid reports of racism at Democracy Builders The Marlboro Alumni Council urged the Marlboro Board of Trustees to cancel the sale of the Vermont campus to Democracy Builders due to recent public accusations of racism against the group’s founder, Seth Andrew, in a letter published Friday.
June 30, 2020 Vermont Business Magazine Marlboro College: Going, going … The sale of the Marlboro College campus, announced on May 28, is moving forward – slowly. A statutory review of the deal by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office (AGO) will postpone its consummation into July, past the original June 30 target date. A State Board of Education review of the plans may mean an even greater delay.
June 15, 2020 VT Digger Stop sale of Marlboro campus In late May, the Marlboro College board of trustees announced the sale of the campus in Marlboro to Democracy Builders, a charter school incubator. This transaction may be finalized mid-June unless Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan intervenes.
May 28, 2020 VT Digger Marlboro College announces campus sale to Democracy Builders The parent organization of a national charter school network plans to buy the Marlboro College campus and hopes to establish a first-of-its-kind higher education program on the 500-acre property. The southern Vermont college on Thursday announced the deal withDemocracy Builders, a nonprofit whose affiliate organizations include several charter school portfolios, including the nationwide Democracy Prep network and the Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy network in Rhode Island.
May 14, 2020 Bennington Banner Marlboro College’s so-called merger From this experience, I learned how board members and a senior administration that contained intelligent, well-meaning individuals who were successful in other fields, could make the wrong decisions about a college in trouble. Small, insular groups, fearing that honest talk about the institution’s finances might scare away donors and prospective students, work behind the scenes to hatch weak plans under the auspices of a “merger.” “Merger,” though, is just another word for extinction, because with further analysis, their plans were found to be pipe dreams and the ethos of the original institution would have disappeared.
May 11, 2020 Brattleboro Reformer Marlboro College alumni call for pause on Emerson merger A group of Marlboro College alumni wants the school’s Board of Trustees to hit the pause button on its merger with Emerson College in Boston.
April 17, 2020 Brattleboro Reformer Podolsky: Marlboro using false allegations to divert attention Adara Miter’s recent opinion article, in response to my opinion article contains numerous false allegations, some of which are very serious in nature. Her article inadvertently exposes some of the methods used by some interested parties on campus to silence those who are opposed to the proposed “merger” and it reveals some of the flawed rationale for closing the college.
April 13, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Amy Tudor responds to Kevin Quigley statements In a recent Berkeley Beacon article Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley made several erroneous statements.
March 18, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Emerson-Marlboro merger still on track despite growing opposition With over $200,000 in pledged donations and 1,100 signatures on a petition, “I Believe in Marlboro College” is pushing back against the merger, now with support from the state’s Lieutenant Governor.
March 13, 2020 Brattleboro Reformer Marlboro College leaders abandon ethos ahead of ‘merger’ The leadership of Marlboro College claims their proposed “merger” (which would actually close Marlboro) will preserve the college’s ethos. However, during recent Marlboro events, the administration has damaged their credibility by violating the core tenets of their own institution, even before the finalized agreement has been signed.
March 11, 2020 The Commons More than $57,000 pledged to effort to preserve Marlboro Now, inspired by the more than 1,100 friends and alumni of Marlboro who have signed the online petition questioning this “merger,” we have launched the movement “I Believe in Marlboro College.” You can join the 40 friends and alumni of Marlboro who have pledged over $57,000 in a new campaign to support a fiscally responsible, reorganized, and rejuvenated college right where it is today, where it belongs.
March 9, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Letter: Secrecy at Marlboro College “Recently, access to the full Town Meeting minutes, which had previously had been shared on various Facebook pages, has been limited to an “abbreviated procedural version”. And now the Emerson College Berkley Beacon student reporters are asked to issue “requests to report on our events to Town Meeting so that the community can deliberate and vote on whether or not to invite their reporters to campus for each individual event”. And, on February 29, the Board of Trustees had a special meeting that was not announced in advance. All this comes after the deal to give the College endowment and campus to Emerson College was crafted in secret in October/November of last year.”
February 25, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Marlboro College Selectboard to restrict access to detailed Meeting minutes “In light of recent events, Selectboard has made the decision to circulate a more abbreviated procedural version of the minutes for both Selectboard and Town Meetings,” the statement reads. “The transcript-style minutes still exist but will not be shared outside of the immediate members of the respective bodies of Selectboard and Town Meeting.”
February 20, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Marlboro professors face difficult decisions as merger looms ” I did talk to some of the Emerson people and explored what it would be like to go there, but teaching at Emerson would have been very different, for me anyways, than teaching at [Marlboro]’ Mahoney said. ‘Emerson’s not offering any science majors, so it would have been mostly supporting introductory and general education requirement work with classes of 30 or 40 students, teaching introductory code.
February 11, 2020 The Beacon Podcast Chief Marlboro reporter discusses “expedited” merger
February 6, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Letter: A response to the Marlboro Board of Trustees by T. Wilson “Since the members of the Board are intelligent people who have dedicated years of service to the college, it is now obvious that the Board must have signed some sort of agreement with Emerson that prevents them from engaging in the exercise Will proposes and prevents them also from even describing that agreement…..We are at a crisis point. The Board is beyond persuasion and constructive dialogue, and probably previous appearances of dialogue were a pretense, designed merely to kill time. We must assume now that such an agreement exists and that the Board has effectively abandoned to an Emerson veto their fiduciary responsibility to consider whether better possibilities than closure might exist.”
February 4, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Emerson College will not cover housing cost difference for Marlboro students
January 30, 2020 VPR Marlboro College Community Members Sign Letter Asking To Keep Campus Open
January 30, 2020 Berkeley Beacon Faculty Assembly addresses departmental concerns over Marlboro college merger
January 29, 2020 Brattleboro Reformer It’s a Closure, Not a Merger
January 23, 2020 VT Digger Open letter on Marlboro College: Working for a new future
January 22, 2020 The Commons Marlboro, Wootton at odds over details of ‘challenge’
January 17, 2020 Brattleboro Reformer Marlboro College alum, former administrator laments ‘missed opportunity’
December 27, 2019 Brattleboro Reformer Adrian Segar: College board should accept Wootton’s offer
December 14, 2019 Brattleboro Community Television Marlboro College Board Meeting: Public Comments 12/14/19
December 10, 2019 WCAX TV Critics of Marlboro College closure search for alternatives
December 9, 2019 Inside Higher Ed Group Forms to Fight Marlboro Absorption
December 9, 2019 Associated Press Former faculty work on plan to keep Marlboro College open
December 6, 2019 The Boston Globe Marlboro College community members push back against Emerson merger plan
November 23, 2019 Brattleboro Community Television Town of Marlboro Community Forum: The Future of Marlboro College 11/23/19
November 17, 2019 Brattleboro Reformer Will Wootton: An Open Letter to the Marlboro College community
May 27, 2019 Vermont Business Magazine Wootton: Small college demise doesn’t have to be
October 2, 2018 The Berkshire Eagle Marlboro College Confident Despite Scrutiny from Accreditors
August 29, 2018 Seven Days Survival of the Smartest: Vermont Colleges Must Adapt
March 3, 2018 VTDigger Despite financial and enrollment woes, Marlboro College president optimistic
September 18, 2016 VT Digger New Semester Brings Big Changes to Marlboro College Campus
I Believe in Marlboro College 