Shaw Israel Izikson

A revisionist history for Marlboro College

In a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education ("When Your College Is Staring Death in the Face"), former Marlboro College Trustee Dena S. Davis wrote: "We decided to merge with Emerson [College]. The [Marlboro] Music Festival bought the campus."

This is not true.

The campus was purchased by Democracy Builders.

The sale of the campus to Democracy Builders, along with the turmoil that went along with the trustees' decision to approve the sale, are all fully detailed in articles published in The Commons, the Brattleboro Reformer, The Berkeley Beacon, and other news outlets.

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Eulogy for the college on the hill

With the proposed merger with the University of Bridgeport, Marlboro College is, in effect, going out of business. It will no longer be the independent and quirky college that we all once revered. And as alumni, we were kept in the dark.

When I was a student there from 1994 to 1998, Marlboro College described itself as a “learning community unlike any other in the country,” one “distinguished by its philosophy of self-governance, its tradition of academic vigor and excitement, and by its curriculum, self-designed, tailored to the individual, and taught...

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