Right now, the college we all love is facing an existential crisis. Much of this crisis is shared by
our peer institutions: shrinking numbers of students studying the humanities; the ballooning cost
of campus operations and debt service; demographic changes and cultural shifts that will see a
smaller number of students enrolling in four-year liberal arts schools; increasing discount rates
and other forms of financial aid to do the necessary work of making college more accessible to
low-income, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and first-generation students.
Unfortunately, a significant part of the current crisis at Bennington is self-inflicted. Scores of our
valued colleagues on the staff–at every level–have opted to leave their jobs rather than continue
to see their work unrewarded and their essential rights denied. Many open staff positions have
gone unfilled, either deliberately or through negligence. Faculty workload keeps increasing, and
uncompensated forms of labor in the name of “service”–committees, working groups, retreats,
strategic planning initiatives–have multiplied. Just in the spring of 2023 alone, we have lost the
college CFO, the VP for Facilities Management and Planning, and the Dean of the College. All
of these departures have led to greater uncertainty and more instability for the community.
Increasingly, students are being asked to step in and fill important operational roles in offices
such as Campus Safety–putting their education under stress and potentially putting them at risk.
Student House Chairs are being asked to handle allegations of sexual assault, issues of
substance abuse, and suicide attempts without sufficient support or compensation. Bennington
is becoming an empty self-service college while consultants with no understanding of the school
and its values extract large sums for inferior, absentee work.
Worst of all, the college leadership, with the approval of the board, has been steadily divesting
resources from the most essential function of school: instruction. Spending on instruction as a
percentage of total budget has fallen from 48% in 2011-2012 to a low of 34% in 2022-2023. For
our peer institutions, the standard percentage of budget devoted to instruction costs is 50%.
The current course the highest leadership of Bennington has chosen is a roadmap for how an
institution dies.