MARLBORO — After years of institutional mismanagement and months of fostering confusion, misdirection, and outright fabrications, the Marlboro College Board of Trustees and its president are set to close down the 70-year old institution and transfer its $35 million remaining endowment to Emerson College in Boston, along with a handful of tenured Marlboro faculty. Meanwhile, Emerson will sell the $10 million campus to the highest bidder.
Everyone else will lose their jobs, Windham County will lose a remarkable asset, Vermont will see the further diminution of its longstanding tradition of small, independent colleges, and higher education in America will see a small increase in its homogenization.
None of that has to happen. There are alternatives.
Now, inspired by the more than 1,100 friends and alumni of Marlboro who have signed the online petition questioning this “merger,” we have launched the movement “I Believe in Marlboro College.”
You can join the 40 friends and alumni of Marlboro who have pledged over $57,000 in a new campaign to support a fiscally responsible, reorganized, and rejuvenated college right where it is today, where it belongs.
Visit ibelieveinmarlborocollege.org to see who has joined the campaign, what has happened, and how we can oppose it.
But time is short: as the president of Emerson said, “By July 1, Marlboro College will cease to exist.” Unfortunately, the Marlboro president and trustees claim, over and over, “There is no other choice.”
Let's prove them wrong.
Make a pledge. Send this announcement to other friends and alumni. Join the movement to oppose Marlboro's disappearance and to build and support its regeneration.