THIS BLOWS FOR REAL
Even if President Greene decided to resign today, he wouldn't leave until August 13th. He needs to give at least 120 days written notice of resignation to the chair of the Board of Trustees. During that time he has to continue to perform all of his duties "unless the parties mutually agreed to the contrary." Don't hold your breath.
Greene's base salary is $90,000 per year. This year, assuming that the Executive Committee of the Board has given him a satisfactory Presidential Review, he's awarded an additional $10,000 over the base amount. Next year, if he passes his Presidential Review again, he gets an additional $20,000 over the base $90,000. Greene has some nice benefits, too. Four weeks of paid vacation per year, a monthly $350 allowance for his car, a monthly (presumably) allowance of $1000 to maintain his house, insurance coverage and pension complete the package of benefits in his contract. He could walk away from this kind of pay and benefits; a package that is rather steep for Goddard College but is not extremely disproportionate to the typical CEO compensation of small companies.
But this is only his second Presidency. He won't walk away from that.
Nor, it seems, would the Board of Trustees be willing to let him. The current Chair of The Board is Jane O'Mara Sanders, wife of Rep. Bernie Sanders, highly vocal opponent of Jackson Kytle (President previous to Greene), Chair of the Presidential Search Committee of Richard Greene, and a recent campus visitor. With her support and endorsement of the Executive Committee of the Board, Greene will hardly be considered for termination.
The Executive Committee is the most powerful of the four committees of Board members that make up the Board of Trustees. The trustees are Jane Sanders, Paul Joseph, Peter Houghton, Lynn Heglund, LucyAnn Geiselmann, Paul DuBois, and Richard Greene (in ex-officio). Unlike other committees of the Board, they may meet at any time without notification of the rest of the Board of Trustees, they are only required to disclose their actions, and may retain all other information about their sessions in confidentiality. This is a group within a group that already has the governing mandate to "enact or amend bylaws which govern their own conduct," as stated in Governance at Goddard College (a.k.a. "the Governance Documents").
The only balance that the Board seems to have is an obscure committee called a Trusteeship Committee that the Board has established. Ironically, it's intended to resolve conflicts of interest. Assuming that this committee actually exist (it's mentioned nowhere else in the Governance Documents), it would seem to be a conflict of interest for the Board to have a committee of its own design to check conflicts of interest on the Board. The Board and its committees and task forces are supposed "to ensure that their work is fiscally responsible, legal, consistent with Goddard's Mission and Priorities Plan, procedurally correct, and environmentally sound." There is no other language nor body to enforce or check such assurances at Goddard. The Board, for all intents and purposes, is autonomous to Goddard College. For a school that alleges to be such a staunch advocate of democracy, it has a very functional oligarchy.
Consider the following guide the College Executive Committee works along: "decisions are reached by consent. It is the President's responsibility to lead the group towards consent." Is Greene enforcing consent or leading the group to consent when he is advancing his own agenda? The prevailing attitude of Ralph Garcia, Director of Facilities, was that the Facilities Committee was an advisory committee, only. There does not seem to the any kind of independent group at Goddard that can balance the power of the Board of Trustees or Administration if they choose not to share their authority as the model for collaborative governance as outlined in the Governance Documents.
These are dry assertions that everybody "knows." Everybody "knows" that the President and the Board run this school with minimal regard for anything but fiscal solvency. Everybody "knows" that Goddard is not a democracy, despite all the documents, language, meetings, and committees. Everybody "knows" that the only way to get things done at Goddard is through force. Everybody "knows" that there's no (or little) communication between people. Everybody "knows" what a democracy is, why it belongs at Goddard, and how to establish it.
Know it for real or its business as usual.
Scenic St. Thomas College, President Greene's last employer.
