(Editor’s note: This story was updated March 2, 2016, at 5 p.m. to add the college’s response.)
[B]URLINGTON — Five former Burlington College students are seeking to join a lawsuit brought by the estate of a former professor alleging a scholarship fund created in his name was used for other purposes.
The fund was created with $70,000 from the estate of G. Jason Conway, who died in 2010. He and his wife, Marcia Vance, were longtime faculty at Burlington College.
VTDigger reported in 2014 that financial statements and interviews with former staff indicated that Burlington College used at least $50,000 from the fund to cover operating expenses in 2012 when the college was in dire financial straits.
The former students say they potentially could have benefited from Conway Vance scholarships if the fund had been managed properly. All five students qualified for other scholarships but still paid tuition and other fees to attend Burlington College.
Many took out student loans. None was aware of the Conway Vance scholarships, they say.
A suit brought by the Conway estate in Vermont Superior Court last month alleges that no scholarships were awarded from the fund between 2012 and 2015, and the attorney representing the estate said he believes, at this point, the full $70,000 has been removed from the fund.
The former students filed a motion with the court Wednesday for intervenor status in the suit. They are seeking unspecified damages as compensation for what they allege was fraud and violations of the state’s Consumer Protection Act.
The former students are being represented by Jared Carter, of the nonprofit Vermont Community Law Center, who is a former professor at Burlington College and now also works for the Vermont Law School.
“The Vermont Community Law Center is dedicated to protecting vulnerable populations. Clearly, students who are forced to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars of debt fall into that category,” Carter said in a statement. The failure to issue scholarships with money from the Conway Vance fund “represents an injury to each and every Burlington College student,” he added.
“While the college and its board of trustees were bending over backwards to sell itself off to developers so they could build condos on the waterfront, the college violated the trust of its students by allegedly using scholarship funds for purposes other than those for which they were legally obligated to,” Carter said.
Last year Burlington College sold much of its North Avenue property to the developer Eric Farrell, who plans to build more than 600 units of housing there. The college needed to sell the land to avoid bankruptcy after it borrowed $10 million to buy a 33-acre lakefront campus it ultimately couldn’t afford.
In an interview Wednesday, Carter said he would not rule out having additional students seek to join the suit and that it could become a class action. Carter said he is meeting with other former Burlington College students Friday to discuss the situation.
A Burlington College spokeswoman, Coralee Holm, said Wednesday that officials there were caught off guard by the new legal filing. She later issued a statement saying the college needs more time to review the filing before commenting on it.
“The college has had a cordial meeting with the executrix of the Conway estate and we have discussed a probable resolution. We are hoping that the misunderstanding will be resolved,” Holm said in an email.
When the estate’s suit was first reported last week, current school officials said they had no knowledge of money being borrowed from the fund and used for other purposes. The college’s top administrator was hired in December 2014.
College President Carol Moore said scholarships were awarded in the Conway Vance name each year since 2012, with the exception of 2015. That year the scholarships were awarded, but the fund’s name was not attached to those awards, she said.
Those assertions are disputed in the suit filed by the Conway estate and the former students’ legal filings.
The estate’s lawsuit cites a 2012 email from then-President Christine Plunkett in which she writes, “The decision to borrow funds from the endowment was not taken lightly and was agreed to only with the understanding that the loan was temporary due to extreme financial circumstances and would be repaid in as timely a manner as possible.”
Carter, the students’ attorney, said he filed for intervenor status to the estate’s suit because of the overlap in the allegations presented by students and the estate.
“This is the flipside of the coin, really,” he said. If the court denies his motion for intervenor status, he said, he likely will bring a separate suit on the students’ behalf.
Carter said his clients are struggling to pay back student loan debt and that several were unable to get their transcripts from Burlington College, making it difficult to apply for jobs or graduate school.
One of the former students, Lauren Bishop, said in a statement: “When I found out that there were scholarship funds that were to have been disbursed to qualified students during our time at BC, I was floored. Burlington College tuition isn’t cheap — it’s a private school — and the scholarship money would have helped a lot of deserving people.”
Sandra Bess, another of the plaintiffs, said: “As someone who worked two jobs while taking a full course load, I really struggled, and any financial assistance would have eased the stress and burden of juggling my personal, professional and academic life.”
