By Michael Bielawski
As Vermont endures a sharp housing crisis, the student housing on a college campus in a quiet central Vermont town appears virtually unused.
On Tuesday Goddard College in Plainfield, the liberal arts school which has struggled financially, formally shut down on-campus programs in favor of an online-only model which is anticipated to last at least a year.
Numerous media outlets reported the change.
“Declining enrollment and rising operational costs are driving the move, which will be accompanied by an estimated dozen job cuts, the newspaper [Seven Days] reported. The shift online is expected to be temporary,” reported InsideHigherEd.com.
President Dan Hocoy wrote a letter to the campus indicating that it was under-utilized: “In recent semesters, we have observed a continual enrollment decline, particularly with students not choosing to attend residencies in person.”
The official Goddard College website still reflects their model of using a hybrid online/in-person program.
“Goddard College is a liberal arts college in Vermont with Bachelors and Masters degrees. Explore our full program offerings and learn how Goddard College is different as we blend remote learning and real life experiences,” it states.
According to another article by InsideHigherEd.com, the campus has seen better days.
“Goddard has produced several generations of artists, musicians and activists — in its heyday, it educated the playwright David Mamet and the jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp,” the report states.
The public is responding to the news on X. George Jefferson wrote, “Cut out half your staff, lower the quality of education by teaching online, lower your standards. Then charge the same amount of tuition if not more with accumulative inflation. I’m not surprised, that sounds just like the department of education.”
What will happen to the campus?
Back in 2020, the college and state were in the initial stages of utilizing the campus for housing those considered vulnerable to COVID-19. Pushback from the community ultimately derailed the project.
VDC reached out to Goddard with questions about their future plans for the campus but it has not yet heard back.
Meanwhile the state urgently needs new housing. In January of 2023, The Vermont Housing Financing Agency put the scope of the supply shortage into perspective.
They wrote, “Vermont will need 30,000-40,000 more year-round homes by 2030. This means adding 5,000 to 6,700 more homes to Vermont’s primary home market each year, well above the 2,100 homes that the state has been generating.”
College embedded in far-left politics
The school’s culture and curriculum have long been known as far-left progressive. This includes in September of last year they hosted a panel discussion on what public safety might look like without police or incarceration.
A description states, “Goddard College hosted a dynamic panel on reimagining community safety and justice without police and prisons.”
The school also hosted a speaker on climate issues. The message according to the description blames capitalism for climate issues.
“At the root of the climate crisis, Noor argued, are global capitalism and corporations that prioritize profits over people and planet. Fossil fuel companies exert enormous influence over policymaking, blocking meaningful climate action and perpetuating our reliance on dirty energy,” it reads.
There are numerous political essays posted on the school’s website. One of them is titled “America Isn’t (and Wasn’t) Great. What Now?” by Jan Clausen, a faculty member for the school’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program.
Undated but apparently written in response to the 2016 election, she wrote how her mother was “horrified by the outcome of the presidential election.” She adds that she was “disheartened by the prevalence of nationalist rhetoric within a number of U.S. writing networks.”
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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Categories: Education
“Housing crisis” – as hordes of indigent illegal aliens, “migrants” pulled out of their nations of origin in order to forcibly “diversify”, and primarily out-of-state homeless individuals struggling with serious mental health disorders and drug addictions have nowhere to flop in the Green MT State. There’s your housing crisis created largely by the DNC & deep-state associates along with VT legislators adopting & pushing a globalist agenda despite constituents’ objections.
How about they take up residence in their host’s homes? That would be the Bidens, the Romneys, Governor Scott, LT Governor Ponytail, our illustrious US Senators, the DNC globalists & DAVOS fans, every single democrat “progressive” & socialist in the VT legislature, et al.
Ask for a room with a view! And three squares. All organic preferably. After all, this IS Vermont.
how about taking up residence on the state house lawn/// go inside with all your friends use the bath rooms, wash up in the sinks, go up stairs to the cafeteria use your food card and set down and have a good meal with your friends/// i am sure they will enjoy your company///
Goddard always has been off-campus study.
Wouldn’t this be the time the State of Vermont and Legislature declare eminent domain and take over Goddard College to solve the emergency housing crisis? They know it’s empty and unutilized. Why are they not simply seizing control of it? The liberal school, controlled by liberals, in a liberal community…why not put their property and community where their mouths consistently run – it would fit their coexist community activism, community building mantra afterall.
Great place for a juvy detention center, or a mental health patient center.
The largest mental health patient center is under the golden dome. Apparently though, any treatments rendered there are completely ineffective – the patients (they prefer being termed “legislators”) remain very obviously clinically insane & wreaking havoc upon society.
The closing of this school is about 60 years too late as far as I’m concerned. Imagine if it had not been here when a young Bernie Sanders was looking for young, fertile, impressionable, liberal minds to plant his demented seed in. Maybe they’d have found a place in upstate New York to grow their brand of socialism. How different might Vermont’s political destiny have been ?
I went to Goddard once, it was In 22014. They had chosen Mumia Abu Jamal to give the Commencement speech in a recording.
I stood alone on my crutches by the Hall because they would not admit me. Some others were at the entrance on Route 2. I held a sign that condemned them for their hate by choosing a Cop killer. Daniel Faulkner was shot from behind by Abu Jamal and then shot multiple times at point blank range.
Good riddance Goddard.
I went to a summer program in 1975 at Goddard, the BS program I was enrolled in saturated us with Mao’s little red book, Post Scarcity Anarchism, etc.
I was curious why the regular academic year residency was so low with many unoccupied dorms. Eventually I realized it had hit its high enrollment period in 1974, the end of the draft for Vietnam. With student deferments for the draft, virtually no enrollment requirements (except ability to pay), no grades, I began to realize it was a place for those who could afford it to send their kids to avoid the draft.
What they need is the reinstatement of the military draft with student deferments again.
(: Okay, While we are observing, and possibly lamenting (?) the death throes of this institution I have a confession of my own to make. Just for gits and shiggles, a couple of friends of mine andI went to the”Hay Barn Theater” for a showing of The Wizard of Oz on the big screen. As we suspected the movie itself was less of a show than the audience. To this day I still wonder what was so funny about the line “and To To Too” that the audience was literally psycing itself (there was a pungent odor in the theater) up before it’s utterance, and then literally rolling in the isles, and practically wetting themselves ? (some may have actually wet themselves, I did not really care to look that closely) That was my experience with that den of liberal, progressive, indoctrination. It was to say the least a strange place. (IMO)