Selling Hope and College by Alex Posecznick

Author:Alex Posecznick [Posecznick, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Education, Higher, Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Social Classes & Economic Disparity
ISBN: 9781501708398
Google: -2jJDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2017-04-25T05:28:06+00:00

The chief antagonist, nearly universally disliked in the college in 2009, was former president Hartwick, who served until 2007. He was either directly credited with all of the decisions above or with hiring the inept or iniquitous staff who made those decisions. Hartwick himself openly embraced goals of institutional change and was more flexible in his interpretation of the activist history and mission as laid out by the founders. For many years, the college operated with a single vice president and two deans, but in the period under Hartwick’s tenure, many layers of administration were added, with as many as six or seven vice presidents and an equal number of deans, as well as a provost who was determined, according to Professor Richardson (a longtime faculty member holding the faculty seat on the Board of Trustees when I interviewed him), to turn the college into “a Little Harvard.” Professor Richardson suggested that faculty in particular were virulently dismissive of Hartwick as a lawyer and supposedly foresaw many of the bad decisions described above before they were made.

The college itself did not systematically record its history; there was only an oral history that shifted with both the storytellers and the audience at hand, and much of this constituted gossip—a considerable amount of which was about the staff persons that Hartwick brought in but who were no longer around. For example, some participants reported that former vice president Nate Smythe had had an affair with the then director of admissions; both were married, and illicit photographs were allegedly passed around among the staff members. After that director resigned, the vice president hired a director who apparently had never worked in a college before taking the position. Vice President Smythe then allegedly continued a campaign of sexual harassment against multiple young Latina women working in the college, all of whom resigned. One professor waited until after we had walked off of the campus one day to describe to me how many faculty of color felt targeted by the administration and likewise resigned. Stories likes these circulated about this period of Ravenwood’s history and were difficult to substantiate because few of those individuals remained—and those who did remain painted themselves in a particular light.

Perhaps such gossip was only that, but this gossip also corresponded and was co-narrated with important stories about numbers. Although stories of sexual harassment and racism were told in whispers by water coolers or in back offices, the closing of Extension Campus I was openly brought up in nearly every conversation I heard about the decline in enrollment, the layoffs, and the Hartwick administration. Ravenwood had once maintained these extension campuses across the region, offering a number of courses for students unwilling to travel to the main campus. Although the closing of Extension Campuses II and III was met with little surprise (they had been very low in enrollment), Extension Campus I had maintained a full enrollment that nearly rivaled the main campus, including nearly every course offering and degree program.

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