New College Independent Alumni/ae Association

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.