The Goddard College Alumni Association has voted “no confidence” in the president and the board of trustees of the small liberal arts school, citing “an alarming departure from the College’s values and mission.”
The alumni association has opposed Dan Hocoy’s assumption of the president’s office at the Plainfield school since he was appointed in June, it said in a Tuesday press release.
The group’s grievances extend beyond Hocoy himself to the board of trustees. Members contend the board inadequately addressed stakeholders’ concerns about Hocoy during the presidential search.
“[The board members] have demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the unique pedagogy of the college, a disregard for the college’s mission and values, and a failure to uphold their duties as trustees,” members of the association wrote in the release.
In response, the administration said the group has no formal working relationship with college leadership, casting it as illegitimate, and disputed the group’s public assertions about executive leadership.
Hocoy said in a Wednesday interview with VTDigger that the association in its unofficial capacity is “very Goddard-ly,” referring to the school’s reputation for progressivism and dissent.
“At Goddard, we do invite discourse and dissent and activism, and this [group] represents all of the above,” Hocoy said. “I’m not surprised by it, and generally we’re very proud of our alumni. Even this small group, it does show a lot of initiative, and we welcome their comments and their opposition to some of the positions of the school.”
But overall, Hocoy said he does not believe the group is representative of the college’s entire body of alumni. And he said he believes the association’s recent statements have been “filled with many inaccuracies and falsehoods.”
Joshua Auerbach, Goddard’s director of marketing, said the alumni association is not recognized by the school as an official organization. There has been no memorandum of understanding agreed upon between the association and school leadership, he said.
Elle Oille-Stanforth, a member of the alumni association, said Wednesday that the association has attempted to reach a memorandum of understanding with the college in the past to no avail.
Kailina Mills, a cofounder of the Goddard Alumni Council, which governs the Alumni Association, said the association was formed in 2016 at the direction of the college’s associate director of development at the time. Mills said the association has “volunteered in many different partnerships” in recent years, including organizing fundraising campaigns, alumni weekends and more.
Mills did not respond to emailed questions about the number of alumni represented by the association and the size of the council.
In an 11-page letter to the administration issued with the press release Tuesday, the alumni association listed ways in which it said alumni, students and other stakeholders were discouraged from participating in the presidential appointment process — even after Hocoy’s credentials and his experiences at other higher education institutions were called into question. Throughout the search and appointment process, the association said, the board failed to abide by the college’s stated values of “integrity, authenticity and compassion.”
Mills said Tuesday that the college’s leadership “has shown disdain for alumni, faculty, student and staff perspectives, input and experiences.”
“They’ve chosen to stifle campus community participation in decision-making processes — a stark departure from Goddard’s traditional practices,” Mills said.
Auerbach, though, disagreed, calling the association’s characterization “just completely off-base, absolutely wrong,” and saying the association has issued a number of public statements “in bad faith.”
“Goddard is literally the most transparent organization I have ever seen — to a fault,” he told VTDigger in a Wednesday interview.
Auerbach said students and alumni were given the opportunity to interview presidential candidates during the board’s search. With Hocoy assuming his role only a few months ago, Auerbach questioned the alumni: “Who are you yelling at? What administration?”
“How is a new president at fault for everything that’s happened? He just started. So that should tell you their misguided logic,” Auerbach said, referring to the alumni association.
The association in its letter recommended four major changes to the college’s leadership structure to address what it called “an alarming departure from the college’s values and mission” by executive leadership, including a recommended requirement that at least two-thirds of trustees to be either alumni of the college, or past or present school faculty.
Additionally, it demanded that all future board chairs be alumni or faculty of the college, and that all existing vacancies on the board be filled by alumni or faculty.
The association demanded that future trustees be publicly nominated and elected by students, alumni, and current and former staff and faculty in order to increase “transparency, collaboration and community participation in Goddard’s democratic governance structure.”
Hocoy is Goddard’s fourth president in 10 years, and the progressive school was placed on probation by its accreditor, the New England Commission of Higher Education, between 2018 and 2020.
In September, the college’s union filed an unfair labor practice claim with the National Labor Relations Board after brawling with Hocoy for weeks over Covid-19 mitigation measures for on-campus staff.
Goddard allowed staff members to work from home throughout the pandemic, but upon becoming president this summer, Hocoy summoned workers back to campus and said they had five weeks to get inoculated. The union pushed back, asking instead for a mask mandate and more time for staffers to get vaccinated or an option to opt out in favor of weekly Covid-19 tests.
The union filed the labor dispute after the administration cut off negotiations.
