Marlboro College, a Memoir Tom Ragle, President Emeritus
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Marlboro College, A Memoir Tom Ragle, President Emeritus Document PDF TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Page FOREWARD TO THE PROPOSED 2020 REPRINTS i 2 / 257 PROLOGUE 1 8 / 257 CHAPTER ONE – WALTER HENDRICKS AND THE EARLY YEARS 3 10 / 257 CHAPTER TWO – SETTING THE COURSE: 1958-1960 7 14 / 257 CHAPTER THREE – THE PACE QUICKENS: 1960-65 25 32 / 257 CHAPTER FOUR – THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD: 1965-1969 75 82 / 257 CHAPTER FIVE – "THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION" OF 1969 101 108 / 257 CHAPTER SIX – INTERLUDE: 1969-1970 112 119 / 257 CHAPTER SEVEN – HIGH WATER MARK, 1969-1973 114 121 / 257 CHAPTER EIGHT – EBB TIDE, 1973-1977 142 149 / 257 CHAPTER NINE – STORMY WEATHER: 1977-1981 182 189 / 257 APPENDIX A 223 230 / 257 APPENDIX B 228 235 / 257 APPENDIX C 234 241 / 257 APPENDIX D 239 246 / 257 © 2020 by Tom Ragle. All rights reserved. FOREWARD TO THE PROPOSED 2020 REPRINTS* In the fall of 2019 I was invited by the College to write a forward for the second printing of Marlboro College, A Memoir, originally published in a very limited edition in 1999. This came as a surprise because the original document had been written simply as a typescript for the archives lest some fascinating bits about early years of the College be lost. Although it appeared in a strictly limited edition of sixty copies or so, it was never designed to be printed in the first place. This invitation came at an opportune time, however, for even as I wrote there were negotiations underway to merge Marlboro with Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, and move its operations to the city. Now this has indeed come to pass, the old Marlboro as we knew it is no more, for both its rural location and its independent governance structure, essential to the College we knew, can be no more. I wish any new avatar well but I mourn the loss of the old. The old was a Camelot (without a king, unless Roland be he), but we all know Camelots do not last in this world. Yet the invitation was indeed opportune. It was thirty-eight years since I stepped down and twenty years since the first printing of the Memoir. These passing years have given me a new and different perspective with which to view and evaluate a past of which I was a part, so much a part that this had to be a memoir and not a history. What, I now ask myself, made Marlboro Marlboro? Let me first make one point clear. I am sometimes given credit for the turn around in the fortunes of the College in the late 1950s. That is not true. In 1958 I was part of the turn around. The gifting of the Howland Farm in Dummerston, Vermont, in 1957 allowed the College to pay off past debts, provided the equity to borrow for its first new building (appropriately Howland House) and to add three new members to the faculty (myself included). I took it to be my job to preserve and nurture the strengths I found there, strengths present or in prospect which attracted me in the first place. Looking back, what strengths do I consider central? Let me begin with the absolute personal and professional integrity which I found in the core faculty, the five “Giants in the Earth,” as I came to call them: Roland Boyden, Audrey Gorton, Dick Judd, John MacArthur, and Blanche Moyse, master teachers every one of them who suffered through the 1950s, often either unpaid or not paid on time, and who stayed through to retirement years later. They were all idealists seeking a special kind of personal and professional life, though they might deny the idealism; Roland especially would bridle at the designation: he thought of himself as a pragmatist, but pragmatist to what vision? They were also primarily teachers rather than researchers (though some also did significant research) and loved living close to nature: outdoor intellectuals. Marlboro was not simply a job; it was a lifestyle. The work was not work so much as a form of fulfillment. Although I perceived the integrity (and the quality) of the five, one of the elements that attracted me in the first place, I did not at first perceive the importance of the unique social and political culture they and the founding students had created. One at first seemingly insignificant factor was that everyone called everyone else by his or her first name. This had come about because the majority of the founding students were veterans who were not about to address anyone again as “Sir” or “Mr.” or “Mrs.” They found other ways of showing respect. There were only two exceptions: the appellation Mrs. for Katherine Paton, an elderly lady professor, much loved and much respected, because everyone recognized she was of another generation, and the appellation “Mr.” as a subtle sign of disrespect for a kindly refugee agricultural chemist from the Hungarian revolution of 1956 who unfortunately, though a competent chemist, was an inept teacher. I don't believe he noticed the disrespect. Marlboro was an i intentional community, as close to collegial democracy as one finds in this world. Everyone, teacher, staff member, student, belonged to and had one equal vote in the College town meeting, which had final power over everything except academic and medical matters. More than once as president I was outvoted on issues, once by over a hundred votes. The atmosphere was collegial, important decisions made collectively, with no adversarial faculty union, as was becoming common in large universities, because in one sense the whole college was the union. The elected first selectperson, inevitably a student though not required to be by any regulation, was thereby considered a member of the senior staff and met with us in the weekly staff meeting every Monday morning. They took the responsibility seriously. Major policy decisions were made openly. The draft budget for the next academic year, for instance, was published and discussed in a winter community meeting open to all before it was submitted to the board of trustees for action in the spring. My proudest moment came one year when the faculty proposed that instead of eliminating a position or two as I had suggested during a year when the budget for the coming year needed to be cut, we all, professionals only (not secretaries, not maintenance workers), take a 5% cut across the board. That we did. It was an honor to be among such colleagues (see 1975-76, pp. 166-67). The foundation of a sound academic culture was also present. Indeed, it was recognized that the faculty was the college. The board of trustees (the legal entity) and the administration existed to provide the elements necessary for the faculty to teach. This was made manifest when occasionally during the impoverished '50s the board met monthly with the faculty to make sure there was enough money to open for another month. Often the professors were not paid their full stipends, sometimes not at all. Everything depended on their loyalty. As I recall now, over $10,000 was still owed in back salaries when I arrived. By 1957-58 there were only a total of twenty-seven students and thirteen professors left, and that year both Roland Boyden and Dick Judd donated back their entire salaries! As I mention in the text, we paid salaries in those days by asking each employee how much he or she needed to survive the next year. Central to the faculty were the curriculum and academic standards. At first these were virtually the entire focus of my attention. I had told Roland I might consider his offer to come if I could interfere more with the academic program than presidents were supposed to. In my mind that included chairing the faculty. I was so naïve I did not even know that in higher education presidents did not routinely chair their faculties! The model I had in mind was the faculty of over ninety at the Phillips Exeter Academy chaired by the principal as the principal teacher, primus inter pares. I shall never forget the look on Roland's face when I made my intention explicit. After a moment of shock, quickly recovering, he said, “Well, maybe we should chair the first year together.” (Typical of him.) We did, and that year by example I was given a fast course in how to chair! Years later Roland developed ulcers. I often wonder whether my first years at the College contributed. For all that, I always considered myself first of all a member of the faculty and only secondarily an administrator. As a result it was never “we/they” but always “we”. Alas, the tradition was dropped after my departure. There were no other academic presidents. The purpose of the College, in a form first expressed in the 1959-60 catalogue, was to teach students to think. Marlboro thereby proclaimed itself a serious academic institution. Many objected to such a short statement (what did thinking mean?), but our serious intellectual purpose was either thus stated briefly or in a too lengthy explanation. For some we were considered an experimental college; we never thought of ourselves as one. Rather we were a radical college in the root meaning of the word (no pun intended): back to the roots of a liberal education in ancient Athens as adapted to modern ii circumstances. In Athens it had meant the education suitable for the “free man” (eleutheros) as contrasted to the slave (doulos). In contemporary terms it means the education suitable for the free citizen (male or female)1.