Your editorial, "Anarchy 101," about the current unrest at Goddard College represents precisely the kind of one-sided hearsay, sweeping generalizations and inconsistent thinking that I, as a Goddard faculty member, try to help my students recognize, avoid and oppose.

Yes, Goddard has a history of challenging authority, and, yes, sometimes it may have been ill considered. But dissent, free discussion and an unwillingness to accept injustice are essential to the progressive tradition that Goddard seeks to foster, as they are to democracy itself. Moreover, as any Journalism 101 student knows, each event is specific: five false alarms do not mean that the sixth is not real.

You say that the "new president.... Tries to get something done" and that we, the faculty, resist change. Perhaps you could inform your readers, through real investigation, of what President Richard Greene has accomplished: Bricking the paths but preventing the library from buying books? Terminating long-time and faithful employees without seeking other positions in the college for them? Precipitating the resignation of other employees by telling people who question or speak against them that they are acting inappropriately? Yelling at faculty in the cafeteria? Changing the terms of staff employment so that they are required to work 12 hour days and report to out-of-town consultants hired without the support of the community or even the knowledge of all board members? Increasing the size in compensation of the administration while threatening layoffs in other areas? Talking downsizing out of one-sided his mouth while reassuring everyone that there's no financial crisis out of the other? Telling students that he's not interested in petitions supporting the faculty or even whether students leave Goddard protest? Refusing to make critical financial information available to justify his threatened layoffs? Failing to reasonably notify (so that they may seek other jobs) those people whose positions may be eliminated? These, in fact, are Richard Greene's "crimes" (your word), not, as in your sophomoric attempt at sarcasm, his wearing a tie on occasion.

Nor are you content simply to smear the "aggrieved faculty" with a broad brush, dipped in the spilled paint of McCarthyism, as "academic anarchists." You also insult the students. These are thinking people, capable of exercising judgment.

They come to Goddard, at least in part, because they believe it offers a community in which everyone's voice matters, a learning environment that fosters independent and responsible thinking. Believe me -- students at Goddard are rarely reluctant to disagree with their teachers. As a parent, I'd be happy and proud to see my "offspring" taking principled stand for or against anything she believes with conviction. What I'd hate would be paying $20,140 for her to attend an institution that values subservient educators over those who practice the principles they profess. Remember Socrates -- the guy who drank the hemlock rather than renounce his practice of questioning the status quo and encourage youth to do the same?

As for higher education having "become a business" -- when wasn't it? And wasn't offering an alternative to the learning-as-commodity model one of the reasons that Tim Pitkin founded Goddard College? Now that college is, indeed, being telemarketed, with substantial tuition reduction incentives that are unavailable to current students. College educations, credit cards, phone companies, aluminum siding -- what's the difference? (By the way, speaking of past Goddard presidents, there has never been a Victor LaFoulette or Richard Gramm. Perhaps you might get a spell-checker along with that fact-checker).

But here, too, as a businessman, Greene strikes out. What substantial funds has he raised? Why is the college in worse financial shape and when he took over. As for increased enrollment, credit for that must go to the hard-working folks in the admissions office, starting with its director, Peter Burns, whose resignation because of Greene's bullying precipitated the current protests.

In contrast to your smug characteristics of my colleagues and me as "grizzled Jacobins," the Goddard faculty is hardly monolithic or given to precipitous judgments. Nothing is done lightly or quickly, certainly nothing as serious as a call for a president's resignation. That such a group of individuals could reach this decision, thereby further endangering their jobs, only attest to the situation's urgency as well as the faculty's dedication to Goddard. I have heard no one called Greene "the devil incarnate." Name calling and character assassination are your weapons, not ours. Even go so far as to suggest that some faculty members may be expendable (whose classes have you attended, which meetings?) and that people struggling for their jobs in education are engaged in some mere right of spring. Perhaps The Times Argus should be the one making personnel changes.

Your vicious editorial was an embarrassment to responsible journalism everywhere and to the community you purport to serve. Shame on you.

Mark Greenberg,
who lives in Montpelier,
teaches at Goddard College.

It was with great dismay that I read your editorial regarding recent events at Goddard College (" Anarchy 101," April 23rd). As a Goddard graduate, a former member of the Goddard Board of Trustees, and a member of the Goddard faculty for the past 22 years, I was appalled at your misrepresentation of the faculty vote of no confidence in president Richard Greene, and your characterization of recent college protests.

The faculty vote was not taken on a whim, or as a "right of spring," as your vicious editorial asserted, but rather as a result of long and thoughtful deliberations on the part of a group of educators who have devoted their lives to progressive education and the democratic practices it embodies. The faculty had tried to collaborate with Greene for the past 20 months, we have tried to have a dialogue, we have even appealed to the Board of Trustees to help mediate our disputes with Greene, and we have been rebuffed at every turn.

Goddard College, based in the philosophy of John Dewey, author of "Democracy and Education," has stood as a beacon of progressivism in the educational wilderness for almost 60 years. Greene is in the process of unraveling that tradition. Democratic decisionmaking is not an adjunct at Goddard; it is at the core of the institution. Goddard governance is modeled, in part, on the tradition of democracy embodied in the Vermont town meeting system of government. Greene has displayed contempt for our democratic traditions.

We have watched for 20 months while Greene has wreak havoc on the institution which we have helped to sustain. His bullying has led to the recent resignations of our academic dean and our director of admissions. He has "re-organized" out of their jobs four of our colleagues without any evaluation or due process; they were all long-term employees who have served the college well for many years. Under his "leadership" employees have been summarily fired, given less than six hours to clean out their desks and threatened with legal action if they set foot on the campus. He has tried to unilaterally redefined out criteria for faculty. He has brought in a high-priced consulting team to run the admissions office; the team gave staff two days notice that they will now be required to work until 9 PM.

He has consistently misrepresented information to the Goddard community and Board of Trustees, and on several well-documented occasions lied in public. This may be the kind of autocratic leadership The Times Argus advocates, but it is not the way we do things at Goddard College, or in Vermont.

I suppose that my 22 years of service on the Goddard faculty qualifies me as one of the "grizzled Jacobins" on the Goddard staff The Times Argus would like to see guillotined. I have known every president at Goddard College, from founder Tim Pitkin on (though I never worked with the Victor Lafoulette or Richard Gramm referred to in your editorial; I would suggest a little fact checking would be in order). I have supported most of them and been critical of several of them, but I had never before felt compelled to participate in a public demonstration you referred to in your editorial and I can assure you that there was no "faculty member brandishing a baseball bat." This is a truly libelous assertion on your part. The demonstration was an expression of the justifiable danger which the Goddard community feels toward Greene. Once again, I would argue you should check your facts.

It is true that Goddard College is not just a community, but also a business, and as the manager of that business, Greene has been a disaster. In fact, the faculty vote of no confidence was in part prompted by his failures as a fundraiser (givings down 50 percent from last year) and a budget manager (under his "leadership" the college has moved from a strong surplus to a situation where he is now advocating staff and faculty layoffs to balance the budget). The corporate downsizing, the disregard for workers' rights, his seeming contempt for the college's traditions of progressive education and democracy are all compelling reasons for demanding Greene's resignation.

The Times Argus' vicious attack on the Goddard faculty and the Goddard community marks a new low in the use of your editorial page, and should be ashamed.

Daniel Chodorkoff, Ph.D.,
is a member of the core faculty at Goddard College.

Editor's note: Goddard College newspaper mentions Jack Lindquist, Richard Gramm and Victor LaFoulelle (our error was LaFoulette) as part of the institution's parade of past presidents (See John Sexton's interview with long-time Goddard employee Lucille Cerutti in a recent issue of "The Nudepaper"). As for the bat: At least someone at Goddard is willing to admit to its existence (See Chris Riddell's April 29 letter). Perhaps Dr. Chodorkoff can explain how a baseball bat became part of a non-violent demonstration.