New College Independent Alumni/ae Association

One of the lessons New College administrators and trustees learned too late, was that alumni are a college’s greatest asset. Blow them off as irrelevant, and you might as well hang up the For Sale sign. In the case of New College of California, that is exactly what happened.

With the exception of a handful of well-heeled notables, New College has always treated its alumni this way. It fits perfectly with the tyrant trust-funder syndrome of its big benefactor, TV starlet progeny Peter Gabel. Surround yourself with fawning lackeys and everything will work out. Except it didn’t.

For thirty years, the MO of New College has been to systematically rip off students and faculty. Without tenure or a grievance system, it was like taking candy from a baby. Both these groups were so dependent on the institution for their loans and paychecks, they almost never complained. When they did, they were replaced.

But alumni are a different kettle of fish. They have moved on with their lives, and while some might have fond memories of their college experience and be willing to donate time or money to help current students make the most of their’s, alumni do not respond to being treated with contempt, let alone being blown off as insignificant.

So when New College tried pulling another fast one with its accrediting agency and the Department of Education last summer, a stunt that was obviously going to land the school in hot water – not to mention its students and employees – alert alumni decided enough was enough, and that the ringleaders of this psychopathic circus had to go. And go they did, one after another, dragging the school down with them.

New College’s board of trustees have been pulling the same con for so long that they apparently don’t know how to do anything else. After a while, though, even oversight agencies can catch on to the basics of shell games.

Judging by their past behavior, the Friends of New College LLC ruse is just another attempt by former school presidents Martin Hamilton and Peter Gabel — along with their trustee cronies Ted Corman, Phillip Knowlton, Luis Molina, and Jane Swan — to bamboozle WASC and defraud the Department of Education. What better way to launder proceeds from questionable real estate deals using federal funds, than to set up a holding company posing as a charitable organization?

Until the Office of the Inspector General investigates all the golden parachutes and other payoffs to the people who mismanaged New College’s money, we won’t know if felonies were committed. For now, none of the trustees — including Molina, Swan, and Knowlton — have provided any of the crucial information demanded by the alumni association last July. The fact the trustees continue to operate in secret suggests an ongoing cover-up.

San Francisco Weekly