[The following statement written by Ann Stokes, former trustee and alum (1954), was read at the Goddard rally (4/25). Concerns about the college's current direction have forced Ann, a long time contributor to Goddard, to reassess her willingness to continue her support.]

Dick Greene cannot understand Goddard College. If he knew this, he might resign. What is harder and more exciting to work on is the restructuring of the college. Perhaps there should be no president and board as we know it. The future board could be largely staff, faculty, and students. A governance plan was written and adopted by the campus and board in 1993. The meat of it concerned the clarification of responsibilities so essential to getting away from adhoc confusion. It was a labor intensive work. Its committee was made

Perhaps there should be no president and board as we know it.

up from the board, faculty, students, and staff. It was never conceived as a finished product. It is the ground from which to explore. I believe that if Goddard is working as an ever expanding conglomeration of all involved with morale brimming from endeavors just now beginning there is no limit to the meaning it would have for everyone there as well as its important to the educational world. Gather together in deed and in spirit but just make sure your wings are attached.

Various board members are seeking to call an emergency meeting of the board for the purpose of resolving the current crisis of confidence and to consider the request for Greene's

Food For Thought

"One further failing which we shall hope our more social education will help to remedy is the all too common tendency among administrators to disparage democracy. Success in managing easily selects those who like to control and may strengthen the tendency. The current business model is of course antidemocratic, as is perhaps bound to happen wherever the output is not conceived in terms of resulting personalities. In fact, the whole of our management tradition, including in spite of lip-service our political democracy, has never yet given serious trial to the principle of sharing decisions." - William Kilpatrick, 1933

"The conflict as it concerns the democracy to which our history commits us is within our own institutions and attitudes. It can be won only by extending the application of democratic methods... in the task of making our own politics, industry, education, our culture generally, a servant and an evolving manifestation of democratic ideas .... If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization." - John Dewey, 1939