Jan 09 2008
“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
Jan 09 2008
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.