New College Independent Alumni/ae Association

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.

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