New College Independent Alumni/ae Association

A class-action lawsuit by New College alumni against Peter Gabel, et al would undoubtedly be a real circus. But should the alumni determine that it might be worth the effort and expense to sue the trustees for damages, there are some tangible remedies to consider. One of those — based on alumni input — would be the establishment of a community service center that would provide guest instructors, motivational speakers, and mentors from the alumni association as a resource to other schools and colleges. In this way, alumni could receive stipends or fees and simultaneously support ongoing community service consistent with the stated mission of their alma mater. My recommendation would be to use a court settlement to establish this facility in the Mission District of San Francisco. My suggestion for a name is the Ani Mander Service Center.

As the many comments on the February 13 San Francisco Chronicle article about New College’s collapse observe, the story is mostly one of malign neglect of faculty and alumni by a group of self-selected trustees who found a common interest in self-promotion. Part of that self-promotion included marketing degrees in such areas as activism and social change, rather than using more traditional connotations like political science. The coursework and emphasis of study could be the same, but the deliberate naming of programs in recent years to either reflect the ideology of trustees or to support the intentional marketing of a defiant image only contributed to the marginalization of the school.

Were the trustees truly devoted to nurturing agents of social change, they would have offered such academic freedom within recognized fields that would have enabled graduates to pursue these interests unhampered by social conventions. Other state and private universities in the Bay Area do this, and their alumni are able to enter academia and other realms seamlessly while achieving noble goals. For some reason, New College trustees thought they had to present an eccentric image to succeed. They were obviously wrong.

The school’s failure to provide academic conferences, a thesis catalogue, mentoring, and other alumni services, shows that the trustees sole interest was in milking students for federal funds and then abandoning them. This unconscionable malfeasance deserves redress.

With a decision on accreditation due any day, the New College trustees have sent a “new” eleventh hour plan to the accrediting agency–the dog ate our homework, so please give us more time. We kid you not.

Of course the whining includes lots of smoke blowing about what the trustees might do if given another chance, but as usual there is no explanation of why they neglected to do anything they promised eight months ago, or five years ago, or twelve years ago. Also in line with their long tradition of not accepting personal responsibility for the mess they’ve created, the trustees blamed the Department of Education in their latest list of excuses. Anything to avoid accountability.

The sooner this nonsense ends the better.