URGENT--HELP NEEDED ONCE MORE
The board of trustees filed their 20 day notice to the Vermont AG on June 26, and the AG’s office has given us no real indication that they are taking our complaints about the BoT’s malfeasance seriously.
We need to once more flood their offices. Make them feel pressured to investigate these criminals.
You can find out more at remakegoddard.org as well as donate to help them pursue actions against the board of trustees.
The main Vermont AG office:
Other AG relevant numbers and emails at the bottom of the post
Complaints (you can pick one to focus on or pick multiple, but these are the primary concerns right now):
Goddard College’s Board of Trustees have flagrantly violated their fiduciary duties, the established bylaws of Goddard College, and the nonprofit standards of Vermont through the following actions:
1. The Board of Trustees has been operating well below its minimum quorum, in secret, often excluding all but the executive members and the president. On the rare occasions when it has held an open (Zoom) meeting it has not allowed meeting attendees to enter into conversation or even see and communicate with each other.
2. In 2023 the administration contracted with CORE Education Services, a Public Benefit Corporation out of Virginia that specializes in “college transformation.” At this point, the people named as Goddard College’s CFO, Comptroller, head of HR, head of admissions, and head of marketing all work for CORE, not for Goddard. Outsourcing of these essential leadership positions is highly irregular for an institution of higher education and not in alignment with Goddard's mission and guiding principles.
3. Rejecting, damaging and/or ignoring options to increase financial sustainability of the college. A few examples:
A) Staff member Alisha Raby and alumnx George Darling worked together to create and donate apparel and other merchandise for sale by Goddard, to be provided for zero upfront cost, yet the administration refused this gift that could have raised tens of thousands of dollars.
B) A parent of a current student offered a donation of $50,000 to help keep the school running, and provost Noah Coborn refused it on behalf of the administration.
C) Staff members created a plan via which the college could raise funds hosting events and engaging in community partnerships that make use of often vacant property.
D) The administration cut off access to the college by alumni, the most likely donors as well as those most likely to write bequests, by making an enemy out of the Goddard Alumni association. Dan Hocoy, soon after his hiring as president despite community objections, canceled the alumni reunion on campus even as people had already signed up for it, paid, and made their travel plans. He then subsequently threatened to sue the elected board members of the alumni association (which was started by and given official status by the college) for using the college name.
E) The National Labor Relations Board ruled on August 24, 2022 that the College violated labor laws when dissolving the Development Office and laying off all of the employees of that Office.
All of these actions combined with the antilabor practices delineated below and the abandonment of any recruitment or donor cultivation efforts ensured that the college would have streams of revenue except tuition.
5. A complete lack of transparency including:
A few days before announcing the closure of Goddard’s campus the board sent out an email asking for ideas on how to keep Goddard sustainable. Considering that they would have had no time to properly consider contributed ideas, it’s clear that this request was never genuine.
The faculty and staff found out about the closure of the campus at the same time as the students, in what I have been told is a clear breach of contract. The same happened with the announcement of the closure of the school.
Students, faculty and staff alike were told that going online-only was simply an “experiment” to see whether it would improve Goddard’s financial situation, and the administration also said (in writing) that in-person residencies would be reconsidered in the following year. As such, new students were actively being accepted to Goddard that very semester. Yet mere months later the board announced it would be closing the school at the end of the semester. So the notion that it was simply an experiment appears to have been a lie, or they would have waited to analyze the full data from said experiment. Unless there was serious negligence, there’s simply no way they could have miscalculated their financial sustainability so much that within mere months they would go from believing they could run the college for a few more years (even if it had to be online-only) to believing they had to close at the end of the current semester.
The “experimental” closure of the campus apparently resulted from a survey that had been conducted where a majority of students expressed preference for online-only. However, the results of the poll may have been skewed, considering that one of Goddard’s campuses had been closed and the remaining campus for those students was across the country, leaving questionable data as to whether online-only was genuinely “preferred”. Additionally, many students were unaware of this poll in the first place.
6. The board has misrepresented teach-out options to students, providing false information about available alternatives and obstructing their ability to make informed decisions about their academic futures. They falsely presented schools as teach-out options that, when contacted, informed students that no such agreements were in place. They did not facilitate financial aid reimbursement when they failed to fulfill their obligations. They did not provide teach-outs for all programs, not in degree type or subject. They attempted to send students to for-profit and non-accredited schools. They refused to assist students who offered to facilitate teach-out outreach, and provided no point of contact for students.
7. They have ignored serious purchase offers from potential buyers, such as Cooperation Vermont. CVT is an organization dedicated to using the campus as a center that would have benefited Vermont in myriad ways including working with former faculty, staff, and students to keep the Goddard spirit and programs alive. Yet CVT received months of radio silence from the administration, which delayed any meaningful progress on its ability to negotiate effectively.
8. Union-breaking behavior. Two semesters ago the staff went on strike for around thirty days. After the first week and a half or so, the board threatened that if the staff did not stop striking within a very small allotted window they would lose access to their health care benefits. This threat was followed through, and the staff only recovered their health care once a new contract was settled.
9. The Board has as of this moment not guaranteed severance for the faculty despite their legal obligation to provide it.
10. Here is an article about how the stakeholders of Goddard college are reacting to the current crisis: https://montpelierbridge.org/2024/06/rumored-goddard-sale-sparks-community-protest/
Spread this to everyone you can. The more people who call in asking for the same thing, the better chance we have of getting it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease as they say. We need to be LOUD and we need to be IRRITATING, and we need to call and email EVERY DAY until we succeed.
Other Vermont AG numbers and emails:
