2/15/1981, Burlington Free Press
GODDARD FLAVOR SPICES SLICE OF LIFE IN VERMONT
By NEIL DAVIS
Woe to central Vermont if Goddard College shrivels to nothing.
Although less of a cultural center than Bennington, Middlebury, Darmouth or the University of Vermont, Goddard has added its own unique flavor to the region.
The 'je ne sais quoi' has something to do with free-thinking, with ecological living, with radical politics and with eccentricity.
To stroll across the Plainfield campus and spy a cricle of young learners surrounding herbalist Adele Dawson as she recounts a long lifetime's worth of lore is to sense what the college is about.
Neither college administration nor student care a whit that she is more of a colorful local personality than a formally educated botany professor.
To drive along the back roads of Plainfield and Marshfield and see windmills and greenhouses and yurts and sod roofs is to gather how Goddard has influenced its environs.
Students and teachers have put their ideas about "appropriate technology" into practice in them thar hills.
When the Planning Commission is asked to grant a zoning variance to allow an old-style outhouse or a composting toilet to be used at a home site instead of a septic system "for ecological reasons," chances are the applicant has a Goddard tie.
And the house might be underground, with solar heat and power from a makeshift hydroelectric setup on the brook out back.
Or the house might not be a house at all but a tepee or a dome.
The owners no doubt will grow their own food, all vegetables, and bake their own sourdough bread.
Plainfield has a food cooperative, a community center and a health clinic which owe their existence in large part to the attitudes the college brought.
Those attitudes are felt as far away as Montpelier, where there is a Goddard set.
The vegetarian Horn of the Moon Cafe, gathering place for "activists" in the anti-nuclear, anti-draft and other movements, was started by former Goddard students.
The movements themselves are sprinkled liberally with members with Goddard connections.
Farther down Langdon Street from the cafe is a record store run by a former Goddard student, now a voice in the community against big suburban shopping malls.
Throughout the region ther are dozens of small businesses with a Goddard flair.
As for politics, internationally prominent anarchist author Murray Bookchin, until last year the head of Goddard's social ecology program, is a leading light.
His brand of small-is-beautiful, power-to-the-community, anti-big-government philosophy is a natural at the college.
Goddard also has hosted other luminaries such as former U.S. Sen. Fred Harris, D-Okla., who touched base there during his abortive 1976 presidential campaign.
The college contributes to the arts in a wide variety of ways, from film series to folk music concerts to dance recitals to its sculpture barn.
Last August when Plainfield hosted a folksy arts festival, which drew hundreds, former Goddard students were prominent among the organizers and participants.
Without the college, the town is not much more than a huddle of mom-and-pop grocery stores and some houses.
Once a resort town, Plainfield would be not much more than a bedroom community for Barre and Montpelier if it were not for Goddard.
The great bulk of the college's million to 5 million budget this year is spent in Vermont, and that includes a $2.4 million payroll which is a significant factor in the Washington County economy.
With resident undergraduate enrollment at a sixth of its 1960s peak and down more than 10 percent from a year ago, the college is clearly wasting away.
Its continued accreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges after this semester is in doubt, and Norwich University in Northfield has been invited to buy whole Goddard programs.
As the college's income has fallen off, the faculty and administration have shrunk.
In short, Goddard is slowly but surely disappearing.
President Victor Leofflath-Ehly said recently he believes the decline may have bottomed out.
If he is wrong: So long Goddard! Without it, the region would be the poorer. Even old-timers who once saw Goddard as an invasion by the hippies might regret the loss.
[Neil Davis is chief of the Free Press Capitol Bureau]
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