New College Independent Alumni/ae Association

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.