Bennington College is suspending plans to rehouse some faculty members off campus after the school faculty asked their representatives to stop engaging with the administration, saying they’d been excluded from the housing discussions.
Because of an expected enrollment increase this fall, the college had planned to convert three campus buildings — which house 10 faculty members in total — into student residences. Displaced faculty members were to be provided with alternative housing in the town of Bennington and the village of North Bennington, said college spokesperson Alex Dery Snider.
But on Tuesday afternoon, Dery Snider told VTDigger that the college paused the plans “to reevaluate aspects of the proposed strategy with greater faculty, student and staff input.”
Bennington College had 134 faculty members as of last fall, including 60 full-time undergraduate faculty members. The college said 26 faculty members are currently housed in various facilities on campus. Five more live in shared housing off campus that is owned by the college.
Unless they receive housing support, Dery Snider said, most faculty members pay rent for their homes, whether on or off campus.
Last fall, Bennington College student enrollment stood at 893, including 777 undergraduates.
Over the weekend, faculty members sent a letter to the college steering committee, saying they were “shocked” to learn in an April 20 meeting about ongoing plans to relocate some faculty members and their families from homes on campus.
The faculty members said they learned that the plans have been underway since the fall, and believe they were purposely left out of the discussions.
“Beyond showing a complete disregard for the principles of shared governance, this action was a betrayal of the communal principles upon which Bennington College was founded,” they wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by VTDigger.
It was signed “Faculty Forum,” referring to a regular meeting of college faculty members, the latest of which was convened last Wednesday to approve a resolution detailed in the letter.
The Bennington Banner reported Thursday that the college said it had already secured replacement housing for the 10 faculty members who were to lose their campus residences.
The faculty described the relocation plans as a “shortsighted and ill-considered solution” to the challenge of increasing the college’s student enrollment. The letter noted that Bennington is “the least faculty-friendly housing and rental market” in southwestern Vermont in a century.
The faculty members said few rentals are available in the area, and those that are available are overpriced and come with off-academic-term leases.
They also said the relocations would hurt the college’s efforts to attract new faculty members, including those from diverse backgrounds and communities of color.
Faculty members asked their representatives within the college steering committee “to strike in protest” until the administration involves them in decision-making about housing. That would mean not engaging with the administration on shared governance work.
The 10-person college steering committee, composed of the college president, provost and faculty members, regularly has discussions on topics such as the college’s administrative policies and procedures, admissions, financial position, health/safety and diversity/inclusion.
If faculty members don’t see adequate improvements in the administration’s attitude on the housing issue in the coming month, they asked the committee to raise the issue with Bennington College’s board of trustees in late May and to also inform the New England Commission of Higher Education of this “failure in shared governance.”
The faculty said Bennington College is scheduled for reaccreditation with the higher education commission this fall. Shared governance is among the commission’s standards for accreditation.
Hugh Crowl, a faculty member and co-chair of the college steering committee, said in an interview Tuesday morning that faculty members on the committee are going to continue meeting on their own. He said they are “not fully striking” because conversations with the administration in the past couple of days have been encouraging.
“Part of the question here is how fast that commitment can be met,” Crowl said, “and I think we’re all hopeful that we’ll be able to move past this.”
Crowl said he believes faculty members were not involved in the housing relocation discussions because of a breakdown in communication between the parties.
“I don’t think there’s anything malicious going on at all,” he said. “We’re an institution of learning and so it’s a learning experience.”
The faculty’s letter also said that if the faculty relocation plan wasn’t rescinded and updated in 30 days, and faculty involved in short-term student housing discussions, they’d also ask faculty members in two other college committees to stop their work. These are the academic policies committee and curriculum planning committee.
Dery Snider, the college spokesperson, said Bennington College is committed to designing a process — working with the college steering committee and shared governance structures — to discuss faculty housing issues in the future, as well as the college’s comprehensive master facilities plan.
She said administration representatives are planning to meet with the college steering committee on Wednesday to further discuss the issue.