Conn’s president must resign

It’s pretty telling that Connecticut College President Katherine Bergeron has chosen to remain locked down in a bunker since the college community erupted in outrage over her decision to hold a fundraiser at a Florida club with a well-known history of discrimination.

The president has refused to answer questions from the media, as the college crisis has mushroomed into a significant state news event, and is only selectively meeting privately in her office with people whom she chooses to see.

How embarrassing for the college to have a television news report show big crowds of students protesting the way the college treats its minority community and then explaining that the president refuses to come on camera or respond.

I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see the president shaking off her arrogance inside that bunker any time soon and deciding on her own it’s time to give her resignation to the hundreds of students who have demanded it.

The school’s Board of Trustees needs to intervene soon and show her the door.

This is all going to quickly become a lot more embarrassing for the school.

As the story unfolds, it has already become clear that the spectacularly bad decision to hold a college event at the notorious Palm Beach club is just the tip of a big iceberg.

The campus newspaper, the College Voice, has noted that the resignation of Rodmon King, dean of equity and inclusion, who reportedly left in part over the club fundraiser, was just the latest defection from the college’s diversity programs.

The college’s Division of Institutional Equity and Inclusion has been plagued by turnover. In the past four years nearly every division employee has left, the college newspaper says.

“Bergeron’s actions and King’s resignation are not isolated incidents but rather the latest resulting from an institution with systemic issues surrounding the support of DIEI and their leadership,” the newspaper wrote.

I have heard similar reports from members of the college community who report great dissatisfaction with the way the school has treated minorities, students, staff and faculty.

Two faculty members have issued a public statement lambasting the college for failing to live up to its stated goals of equity and inclusion.

The college trustees have their work cut out for them and need to get to the core of these problems. The good thing is that students and faculty seem up to the task and

ready to begin.

It can’t happen with President Bergeron, who clearly bears so much of the responsibility for the failures, staying in charge.

Probably the most damning part of the Florida fundraising fiasco was reporting in a student flyer on campus that said Dean King told students he was asked by President Bergeron to justify the college’s fundraiser at the club after he advised against it.

Bergeron, from her bunker, tried to deflect that accusation, with John Cramer, college vice president of marketing and communications, quoted in the college newspaper saying it wasn’t true.

“President Bergeron did not tell or ask Dean King to write a statement defending the College’s initial decision about the event’s location,” the newspaper quoted Cramer as saying. “Consistent with her discussions with Dean King and other senior administrators, she asked him and others to offer their input on the College’s statement should we receive any inquiries about the location of the event.”

Wow. Talk about academic parsing.

She knew precisely how fraught the decision was, but insisted on it and ordered her staff to justify it.

And that’s her own telling of it, through a spokesman, from her bunker.

The trustees can’t move fast enough.

And I say that as an embarrassed white alumnus of the school.