Editor’s note: This commentary is by Keith LaFountaine, a lifelong Vermonter currently residing in Williston. He attended Lyndon State College, now NVU – Lyndon, from 2013 to 2016 and graduated with a degree in cinema production.
Over the weekend, I was overcome with a flurry of emotions. On Saturday night, after sending a polite, but pointed, email to Jeb Spaulding my girlfriend turned to me and asked if I was OK. “You seem sad,” she said. And I was. Sad, frustrated, angry. And these emotions filled me with a kind of cynical rage: I want to show Spaulding the error of his decision; I want to convince him that closing these colleges is a rash and hurtful decision. Yet I also know folks like him – businessmen who pride themselves on being good with numbers, on having the practicality needed to give some tough love.
He is convinced he is doing the right thing. I am convinced that my pointed email, no matter how persuasive I may feel it to be, will fall on deaf ears. If he even decides to send a canned, corporate response – akin to the statement he made about closing the colleges – I am sure he will say something along the lines of “there is no other path forward.”
You can tell a lot about a person by the language they use. When a corporate boss says “this is a painful decision” when deciding to lay off employees, you know there likely isn’t much pain behind the decision for them. After all, those bosses tend to send emails and make phone calls when they make these decisions. Rarely do they walk up to a person, have a conversation with them, and see the devastation they are causing. Doing such would be harder. It may strike them with a sudden sense of remorse.
Perhaps that is why I find Spaulding’s timing a bit convenient. While everyone is hunkered down during the Covid-19 pandemic (and staying safe, I hope), he decided to close three campuses and lay off hundreds of employees. Not only that, he decided it needed to be done with such urgency that if it weren’t for VTDigger breaking the story, the public would not have known about it until Monday morning, after the vote. He would have squelched any possible resistance. He would have avoided any public dissension.
During the meeting Monday, his visible disinterest (and that of some other members) speaks to how little he wants to listen to the people of the Northeast Kingdom and rural Vermont. He has made up his mind. He is set on closing these campuses. He just didn’t expect such a furious opposition. And yet, in his statement on Friday and in the meeting on Monday, he has continued to use the same, corporate-style language, all while safely sitting behind the comfort of a computer. Without meeting the people he would be hurting, or visiting the communities he would be effectively killing.
In my view, Spaulding is not a public servant. After all, he’s not serving the public, is he? The public has made itself clear. They want to find a path forward – one where the state of Vermont supports rural communities as much as it supports Chittenden County. They want to keep these colleges open. I’ve even seen staff float the idea of taking pay cuts in order to keep the colleges alive (an idea that Spaulding has not adopted, despite his bloated six-figure salary). And in my view, if he is not interested in serving the public, he should abdicate his role.
I do not pretend to know the exact answers to this situation. I understand the VSCS has had money problems in the past. I am aware that finding a solution will probably still involve a fair amount of pain. It may involve pay cuts, it may involve compromises. But if Spaulding does not wish to come to the table to discuss alternative solutions, then he should leave it.
I am sure the folks who do wish to find a solution will fill his vacancy.
