New College Independent Alumni/ae Association

With the demise of New College imminent, I thought this post from last summer might be appropriate as well as informative.

For those who prefer not to slog through the blogs to find the gory details of New College’s 14-year decline into oblivion, I’ve selected what I deem the most pertinent pieces and condensed them into a handy pocket-size edition for posterity. What with hackers, disappearing urls, and blurry pdfs, I figured this might be easier on the eyes and certainly easy to share with off-line friends. For those who dread reading lengthy bureaucratic reports, you’ll be pleased to know I’ve only included one short summary from a key report, while printing verbatim the more interesting stories that seem to convey the essence of the tale. Get a preview of Waco on Valencia.

I recently had occasion to reread the January 24-30 1996 San Francisco Bay Guardian feature story New College’s Brave New World by Nina Siegal. Besides being some of the best reporting I’ve ever read, it also sheds considerable light on the pathological liars that comprised the ruling cabal at the school for three decades. The textbook paranoia and ruthless condescension of the “spiritual community” embodied by Peter Gabel, Martin Hamilton, Milly Henry, Michael McAvoy, and Colleen O’Neal, is so revolting and transparent, it makes me wonder why the Western Association of Schools and Colleges let this abuse of New College faculty, staff and students go on for so long.

Having been thoroughly excoriated in the January 2008 Special Investigation Team report from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, for his deliberate subversion of the interim New College administration’s attempts to finally comply with the laws governing financial and academic integrity, you’d think the disgraced former trustee Peter Gabel would be humbled. Not so.

In fact, despite his personal responsibility for almost single-handedly destroying this academic institution, Gabel’s response to New College being shut down by WASC and the U.S. Department of Education, due to its repeated failure to correct serious shortcomings under Gabel’s thirty-year tenure, is to start a new school. Good luck.

We’re not holding our breath, but given the now public record of Gabel’s ongoing breach of trust at New College, it shouldn’t be too difficult for anyone interested in preventing him from causing further harm and ruining more lives, to make a case to the IRS, the State of California, or the Department of Education that this megalomaniac has no business participating in any way in public-interest organizations. Of course, that would require hiring a competent attorney — something for some reason no one has ever done when it comes to stopping this deleuded trust-funder.

(Back in early August, as the imminent collapse of New College became public knowledge, we received a letter from a former graduate/faculty member who went through the battles of the 1990s at the school. His understanding of the institution’s failures is exceptionally clear and articulate. We reprint it verbatim.)

To the Board of Trustees of New College of California,

I had meant to write sooner regarding the recent WASC report at New College of California and the ensuing public discussions about the implications of the report but have had a difficult time finding the names and addresses of current Board members. Each of you receiving this letter is or has at one time been associated with the Board of Trustees of NCOC.

I am a graduate of the Humanities Program (1997), and of the Grad Psych Program (1999), as well as Adjunct Faculty in Humanities. I returned to teach at NCOC because of my commitment to the vision and mission of the school; it is deeply distressing to me to see how those values have been so severely compromised by the decisions and actions of the NCOC Administration. I applaud the Board’s decision to replace Martin Hamilton and I hope that this step is just one of many prerequisite steps that need to occur before the necessary structural changes can be made and sustained at New College. As you are aware, the current WASC report cites institutionalized problems at the school that have lead to the erosion of trust among faculty and students, and have contributed to the College’s current state of financial jeopardy. These conditions have come about over the course of many years and it is imperative that the Board not relinquish its responsibility to make all of the necessary corrections that will enable the College to survive this Administration. First and foremost, I want to offer you a piece of my own personal history at NCOC as it relates to these issues.

I was a member of the Student-WASC committee of 1995/6 that organized in reaction to the faculty tumult that plagued the Undergraduate Humanities Program at that time. Our concern was that there was an absence of clear lines of power and responsibility at the College which prevented issues from being properly addressed. In the absence of mechanisms for redress these conflicts became personalized as the Administration sought to portray the faculty who raised pertinent questions about the governance of the College as ‘out to destroy New College’. Such accusations, sanctioned by school officials, created an atmosphere of distrust and division among students, the faculty and staff. In the words of Dr. Samuel Gerson, the consultant who was hired to observe and report on the situation in 1993, the pervasiveness of the problem was “…a direct outcome of the administration’s denigration of the common practice of instituting rules and procedures of faculty governance.” To be clear, by administration he meant Peter Gabel and Martin Hamilton. This entrenched hostility of the College administration, both past and present, to the establishment of the most basic structures of faculty and student governance and fiscal accountability has continued to erode the integrity of the College. Dr. Gerson’s observation of an administrative culture that attempts “…to deny or otherwise mask a pervasive interest in the covert exercise of power” is as true in 2007 as it was in1993. I have attached Dr. Gerson’s report to this letter - it serves as an historical document as well as an example of how deep these problems go at the College.

Our student group was formed in 1995 as a result of our belief in the necessity for transparency in governance, accountability with power, and integrity in academia. We organized because we believed that the absence of institutionalized structures of student and faculty governance were a hindrance to the effective functioning of the College and a threat to its long term survival. We were motivated because the absence of such structures precipitated a mass exodus of faculty, students, and staff from the College and jeopardized the academic integrity of our school. Our attempts to educate ourselves and other students about these issues were met with open mockery and hostility by certain members of the faculty and administration who continue to be involved with College today. I am explaining this to you so that you will have some sense as to how students and faculty are being made to feel today, as they are raising these very same issues and finding themselves on the receiving end of some particularly nasty comments from administrators and staff at the school. Unfortunately, this type of personalized attack in response to criticism of the institution is part of the history of this administration and emblematic of the culture that has taken root at New College.

In 1995 we appealed to WASC – as students and faculty have done again - because there was no one else to appeal to. This, in and of itself, is a core problem at New College, where a closed-system of power, often referred to as ‘a family’, is actually an entrenched group of people who brook no criticism, and who resist all calls for academic and fiscal accountability. Given the dramatic erosion of trust at the school, I suggest to you, above all else, the immediate creation of an independent ombudsmen position, staffed by someone completely and undeniably unaffiliated with the College (and unaffiliated with someone who works at the College), which would provide an office to which faculty and students may appeal to in the coming months.

As part of our work to create an independent WASC report that would convey our concerns about the school, we educated ourselves about the function and role of WASC and became familiar with the standards by which WASC determines accreditation. We believed then, as I believe now, that these standards are a fair and valid baseline for Colleges. I believe that meeting these standards is the least that a college can do; meeting them does not jeopardize the unique mission of NCOC, rather, I believe that accreditation serves to enhance it. It is imperative that these standards be met and maintained by New College and that any barriers to meeting them, whether individual or institutional, be removed from the College. Issues of governance aside, it is the importance and gravity that WASC places on the fiduciary aspects of the academic institution, and the coming investigation into these aspects of the school, that will ultimately lead to the more distressing truths about New College. It was in reaction to our questions about financial issues that we met the most open hostility from the Administration. Every avenue of investigation into the financial status of the College was, and has remained, blocked; requests for meetings with the Board of Trustees at that time were denied to us. Eventually we appealed to the Bay Guardian to assist us in exploring these issues (please see attached copy of this article).

Current allegations about the improper use of federal financial aid and the ‘shell games’ that enabled the College to purchase the Casa Loma building and the Roxie Theater, while being unable to meet payroll, only deepen my sense that New College is in danger of collapse. Continued resistance on the part of the administration to submit to financial oversight makes it unlikely that alumni/ae will continue to donate money to the College. The College’s continued reluctance to fully disclose the complex connections and relationships between administrators, employees, Board members and other staff only serves to reinforce the notion that there is indeed something very shady going on. Perhaps this is why there have been numerous calls for
investigations into the College’s handling of federal money. Fiduciary integrity and the creation of a just and sacred world are not mutually exclusive; the latter without the former is, in fact, hypocrisy.

Since 1993 faculty, students, and staff have been challenging the administration of New College to live by its own values and to create an institution that embodies trust and integrity in its own internal processes and governance. Our concerns have been dismissed as baseless, and those who have raised these concerns have been made the target of personal attacks on their character. Perhaps now the full weight of these issues is sinking in as it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the signs of imminent collapse at the College. The Board of Trustees, students, faculty, and the larger New College of California community have an unprecedented opportunity to create a model for higher learning. For this to happen a radical restructuring of the College is necessary. The severing of all NCOC ties with Martin Hamilton, Peter Gabel, and the remaining Academic Vice Presidents is a prerequisite for the fundamental change that is necessary for the survival of this school. For the Board to allow these administrators to continue in any capacity at New College of California is tantamount to sacrificing the future of our college. It remains to be seen whether this Board has the perseverance, courage, and intention, to guide New College into the future. I hope so and I wish you well.

Respectfully,

Raymond Buscemi, Psy.D.

August 3, 2007

Spring Semester has again been delayed because there are no registrar, financial aid, or other services. Normal start is second week in January. The postponement is now until third week in February, possibly to coincide with the expected ruling by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges as to whether New College will lose its accreditation. Meanwhile, invited interim president James Waddell and acting president Luis Molina will meet on February 1 with the U.S. Department of Education to discuss the student loan funds frozen in the aftermath of the recent WASC report.

For those of us who are enrolled for the next semester it’s not so easy as it is for others to pronounce New College dead and go our merry way. Last semester was hell as the tension and uncertainty was palpable. With classes delayed, board members resigning, a new president announced and student work/study checks unpaid, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get any easier. However, the fact that we registered and committed our financial aid to continuing with New College this semester speaks volumes as to our commitment to the institution. What would help most right now is for the new president to communicate with students and faculty whether classes will continue as normal or if New College will be forced to go into “teach out” mode so that we can complete our degrees before they close the doors. The rest is just more noise and posturing to me.

—Kevin Pina

Given their propensity for blowing smoke, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the remaining scoundrels on the New College of California board of trustees issued a fawning press release announcing Peter Gabel and Colleen O’Neal’s resignations from the board. Of course, some might understandably suspect that the resignations have something to do with the scathing indictment of Gabel and O’Neal’s subversion of the transition team and obstruction of the reform process, but what has reality or the law ever had to do with the New College trustees?

Still, we’re glad that the two ringleaders of resistance to transparency and accountability are gone from the board. Now, what about the rest?

Looking over the San Francisco Superior Court docket, by my count there are five lawsuits either pending or continuing against New College. Another that was settled in December is returning to the court to enforce the settlement. Apparently, even a successful judgment against the school is no guarantee that payment of damages will be made. With the bankruptcy scenario fast approaching, it looks like those U.S. Department of Education escrow funds will be tapped sooner than I thought.

If I were considering filing a personal or class-action suit against the school or the trustees, I wouldn’t dither in getting my claim before a court.

Those who found our research to have been a useful educational and organizing tool in the conflict with the school trustees, might enjoy reading this paper by Public Good Project research director, Paul de Armond.

“The prospects for success are dim.”

–WASC Special Visit Team Report

As a former core faculty member and coordinator of the Masters of Teaching Critical Environmental and Global Literacy program during 2003-2004 I can attest to the incompetence, disorganization, internal power struggles, discrimination and unprofessional activities of New College. When I was hired it was like a dream come true to be part of an institution of higher education that can contribute directly to struggles for fundamental political change. By the end of my tenure I couldn’t stand it. The faculty in my department were psychologically abused, the students cheated and the academic integrity of the department was compromised. New College is a rare established foundation for working class, social justice and environmental movements that needs to be saved but not under its current leadership. Removing just Gabel is not enough. Many of the deans and department heads have created their own little fiefdoms that have catastrophically impacted the quality of education and working conditions of the faculty and staff. I would like to help save New College. If any one would like to contact me I can be reached at: rfovetz[at]riseup[dot]net

–Robert Ovetz Phd , Jan 15, 2008

Some alumni/ae feel that unless the trustees are held accountable to the full extent of the law, then the efforts to democratize the school have been in vain. I disagree.

While I would personally like to see a successful class-action lawsuit against those responsible for the institution’s demise, the benefits of having held the trustees accountable in the court of public opinion is nothing to sneeze at. That took a lot of guts and effort.

So whether or not justice ends up being served by the confrontation, truth has already been. One of the truths discovered, in fact, is that justice is a rarely attained commodity, but sometimes we find that the dignity we achieve in courageously pursuing it is in itself worth the endeavor.

It’s both amusing and painful to observe the political illiteracy and illogic of 

students and others attempting to come to grips with the reality of New College. 

I suspect after listening to conspiracism promoted from the campus studio by 

people like KPFA’s Dennis Bernstein, they are already prepared to be susceptible 

to the bogus “innocent victim” angle proferred by the New College trustees.

Other than the laziness of expecting useful information to be handed to them 

free of charge, or easily found through a quick search on the Internet, the 

inability of college students and teachers to comprehend the process of research 

is a disheartening phenomenon.

I guess that means we have our work cut out for us.

Last summer, I talked about how the alumni/ae v trustees conflict at New College of California could serve as a learning lab on the use of research as an organizing tool. Since then, I also examined the netwar aspect of the conflict in wresting control of the historical narrative of the institution away from New College officials, in order that lessons could be learned from the school’s demise.

Now that both these objectives have been accomplished, I feel it’s time to proceed toward constructing something lasting and useful for preventing tyrannies like the New College administration from happening in the first place. When you have time to look over my learning center proposal, I’d appreciate your feedback.

One of the standard practices of corrupt administrations caught with their pants down is to form blue-ribbon committees to get to the bottom of things. By using this tried-and-true diversionary tactic, criminal cabals in public institutions are able to both control the selection of participants, as well as set the agenda. Including legitimate participants on these committees lends credibility to the charade, and often prevents lazy reporters from investigating further.

As I see it, the transitional administration at New College of California, headed by New College trustee Luis Molina, was a front set up by the trustees to take the flack after the Western Association of Schools and Colleges threatened to yank the school’s accreditation. The transitional team, headed by trustees Luis Molina and Jane Swan, was set up by the trustees to placate students and faculty outraged by the U.S. Department of Education decision to pull the plug on federal financial aid.

As such, the transitional front has never served as a route to integrity, but rather served as a diversion from accountability. As usual, the enormity of the deception takes a while to sink in.

“I was actually there in the faculty during that upheaval. Peter [Gabel] and Martin [Hamilton] quashed the report, discredited Gerson and tightened its grip on governance. It’s been like living under the KGB since.”

— Genny Lim, New College core faculty

As long ago as last February, when the WASC Special Investigation Team descended on the New College administrative offices to audit the school’s files, key administrative officials and figures on the board of trustees knew the gig was up. Certainly by July, when the scathing WASC report and letter to president Hamilton were made public in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, those in the know realized it was time to go to the mattresses.

By Labor Day, as the exodus of key administrative personnel and flight of long-standing trustees became a stampede, anyone following events closely could see that the institution was imploding rapidly.

Setting up a transition team front to appease WASC and hoodwink the public while remaining trustees got their asses and assets hopefully beyond the reach of federal investigators beginning to take an interest in the financial aid fraud, was a bold if not bright move by the Gabel cabal. Now that the walls are beginning to tumble down around them, clueless faculty and other employees are predictably lashing out at the transition team flacks rather than file suit against the trustees pulling the strings–an all too familiar albeit misguided response by ignorant victims. So it goes.

[The following e-mail text was sent from New College student Brooke Lober to New College director of alumni relations Kathy Voutyras on January 7, 2008 in response to a chastising note from Ms. Voutyras. We thought it was worth sharing.]

Hello Kathy,

Thanks so much for writing to me. I couldn’t really read what it was you were writing about, but still, thanks for being in touch. Too bad I never get any official school news by email! But I do really appreciate your interest in the activist group that I am involved with. For more info, please take a look at

http://www.savenewcollege.org

–we post all of our important news there, which would be a really great model for the rest of the college to follow. Please tell your friends!

I hope that you are working hard on Alumni Relations, which is your job, I think? I’m not an alumna yet though–I’m still a current student. But I am cc’ing a few alums I know on this email. Perhaps you should consider being in touch with them.

Happy New Year!
-Brooke Lober, student, ASC MA

A while back, I recounted how my political science curricular proposal, Communication for Change, had been hijacked by a washed up professor trying to hold on to his prestigious teaching position, but plagiarism is the least of the damage he apparently wrought. I have since encountered some of the graduates of the Activism and Social Change program he took charge of, and was sadly disappointed at the orthodoxy of radicalism associated with what I call the moral theatrics industry.

At the heart of the problem, I am convinced, is activism as a career, as opposed to activism as a civic duty. Those who view civic involvement as a way to make a living will naturally adopt doctrinaire tactics oriented toward philanthropic marketing, rather than painfully examine strategies for achieving a public benefit. Unfortunately, for those absorbed in pious posturing, this distinction is largely lost in the rhetoric.

One of the habitual tactics of this corporate activism is the perpetual building of paper coalitions –- frequently described as supporters, allies, or affinity groups -– supposedly to convey a working combination that wields political clout. Usually unexamined or fictitious, these combinations mostly signify delusions of grandeur, and are illustrative of a fairly common desire to appropriate a sense of cohesion that doesn’t exist—often expressed as solidarity within a vaguely defined movement. Mostly, it serves as a fetish or pointless distraction.

Coalitions, like other tools of community organizing, should be used when they help make you more effective. Same with non-profit corporate status, litigation, or lobbying. When they simply drain limited energies and other resources, they should be avoided.

Having managed litigation for a coalition of non-profits for five years, I know from experience how much energy goes into keeping a real coalition together. Better for each organization to work individually, than to add to already demanding administrative tasks. Of course, if they’re just paper allies, the whole exercise is just another fruitless distraction—something career activists seemingly spend a lot of time on.

Careerism is certainly a draw to political activists, but an even greater appeal, I think, is the prestigious identity associated with activism. What I find fascinating about this (and it very much applies to my alma mater and the plethora of Bay Area producers of moral theatrics) is that they simultaneously conform to the capitalist framework of social discontent-–a very predictable, very controllable, very ineffective commodity.

It takes a long time for people to unlearn useless information and ineffective practices, especially when they learned them as part of an alternative education they believed to be avant-garde learning for social change. In the meantime, they mostly get in the way.

Early on in the current New College conflict, we encouraged students and alumni/ae to look into filing a class-action suit against the board of trustees. Six months later, we still believe they will get nowhere without competent legal representation. As an example of how to go about fighting to win, we offer a recent example of another San Francisco-based institution that conspired to defraud its students and alumni/ae.

Over the years, many alumni/ae have attempted to help put things right at our alma mater. As students, these valiant attempts were either neglected or punished. In our present effort to reform the institution, we have found documentation of earlier efforts helpful in understanding the current conflict. Here’s my testimony. Maybe others will offer their’s.

As a 2007 graduate of the Writing and Consciousness MFA program, I believe in the core mission of the school and in the talent and committment of the faculty. That being said, the level of mismanagement of the administrative offices is inexcusable. My Petition to Graduate form and check was lost, which resulted in a three month delay in my degree being posted to my records. Eight months after graduation, neither me nor anyone else in my graduating class have been mailed their degrees, nor have we been contacted by the registrar’s office about when we should expect to receive them. I finally phoned the registrar’s office and was informed that there was no money for paper to print out our degrees and no one knew when they would be printed. While a lack of funds is understandable in light of the present situation, how difficult would it have been to send out emails to the graduates explaining the reason for the delay. Last week I sent in a request for an official transcript which I need asap. The negative feedback I’ve received from fellow-graduates who are just now beginning to request their transcripts be sent out doesn’t give me much hope that my request will be honored. Losing checks, failure to post degrees, inability to mail out degrees/explanations within a resonable length of time, and not responding to requests for official transcripts is a shameful way to run a college. New College’s students are some of the finest and don’t deserve to be treated this way. One of my writing instructor’s said it best when she wrote “What has happened is nothing less than obscene.” I wholeheartedly concur. Mr Molina and the Board of Trustees, I implore you to show your hard-working students the respect they deserve by immediately taking action to hire one of the three candidates for president and doing whatever it takes to satisfy the WASC report. In doing so you can begin to focus on becoming the forward-thinking institution we all believe you can be. The truth is there is nothing progressive about ineptitude.

Sincerely,

Florence Mayberry, MFA Alumna Writing and Consciousness Program

[this letter was originally posted here, the topic was first broached here]

For those who’d appreciate a short history of the 2007 conflict between New College alumni/ae and New College trustees, Netwar at New College is now available as a pdf.