by Don Keelan
There seems to be a rash of closings of Vermont’s long-time institutions. The latest is in Plainfield, Vermont, announcing that the nearly 90-year-old Goddard College will close at the end of the semester.
It includes colleges and other institutions, such as churches, stores, fire/rescue facilities, schools, and companies. What will soon happen are the closings of organizations operating at or close to the margin of being unable to exist. This includes health care, nonprofit, and business/retail organizations.
At one time serving over 1,900 students, Goddard College’s closure joins the others: Green Mountain College, St. Joseph’s College, Southern Vermont College, Marlboro College, and Burlington College.
Vermont continues to have vital centers of higher learning, with institutions such as Bennington College, Norwich University, Middlebury College, the University of Vermont, and several more. Nevertheless, other institutions find sustainability to be highly challenging.
In addition to colleges, scores of Catholic churches have closed in Vermont since 1990; an internet search notes over 20 between 1990 and 2019. The reasons given were the inability of the Catholic Diocese of Burlington to provide priests, the lack of parishioners, and the fallout from the pedophilia crisis that brought financial and negative public opinion upon the Church.
The closing of churches has not only been associated with the Catholic Church but also many of Vermont’s Protestant houses of worship. As reported by the Guardian, this follows a national trend: in 2019, over 4,500 churches closed their doors due to declining membership.
This is the case with the closing of a 100-year-old Catholic Church, once a reservoir of joyful and sorrowful emotions emanating from the thousands of baptisms, weddings, and funerals.
In addition, there are the service, fraternal, and veteran establishments that once were in almost every Vermont town. Due to a lack of members, they, too, are in financial instability and cease to provide the many community services they once were noted for.
The closing of schools will be on the table. Institutions are the heart and soul of a community. Schools with low student-to-teacher ratios, such as Woodford, with 21 students; Sunderland, with 53; and Roxbury Village, with 47, have to feel threatened that their institutions could disappear.
The regionalization of fire-houses and rescue services, institutions with enrollment constituting generations of family members, will see closings in the future. Towns can ill afford their cost, and volunteer members have declined for years.
Today, the former Orvis Co. headquarters in Sunderland and the 92-year-old Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters establishment in Brattleboro are unoccupied. While these companies continue to operate, they are not where they once were.
The intangible loss resulting from the closing of institutions is not a vacant building(s) but the loss of a place. In some instances, a sacred place where so much emotion was once expressed.
The six colleges noted above have provided generations of emotional experiences for many students, staff, faculty, and their families, especially at first-semester drop-off and commencement ceremonies.
I am no expert on the matter, but social media is filling the vacuum of what once was a more physically connected society. There is less person-to-person interaction now, even in this small State of Vermont.
If additional evidence is needed, one only needs to calculate the audience at the annual Town Meeting. This two-hundred-year-old institution is slowly losing its significance.
Of course, we can put our smartphones and computers aside for one or two nights a week, re-engage with our neighbors, and realize that we can’t afford to stand by and watch our long-existing institutions close because no one cares.
The author is a U.S. Marine (retired), CPA, and columnist living in Arlington, VT.