Comments on: Raise the Barn/Autopsy the Corpse

By: Bill Benzon

Bill Benzon — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 20:12:15 +0000

The cause has made the ‘front page’ of the online NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/education/sweet-briars-imminent-closing-stirs-small-uprising-in-a-college-idyll.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 11:56:19 +0000

Thanks for the update, Daniel. I agree that any such summit won’t help unless the outsiders have a fairly transparent or forthcoming access to the real financial picture. So on some level this will require at least the acquiescence of SBC’s current administrative leadership, which seems to have gone into a defensive stupor.

By: Daniel Gottlieb

Daniel Gottlieb — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 04:46:20 +0000

Sweet Briar faculty member here…
We’re still processing what’s going on, helping students, determining a course of action on the fly. I think we would welcome all help, but we are stretched to our limits, and organizing events is difficult at this time.
I’m busy poring over numbers, and it makes less and less sense the more I learn. It certainly does not seem like the narrative we’ve been told makes much sense at all. Very odd. Seemis to me a summit would be good once we figure out the problem and the scale of it. But I don’t think the problem is what we think it is. Back to the numbers…

By: Brad Weiss

Brad Weiss — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 17:54:37 +0000

One thing to add: SBC has not had a director of admissions in two years, I believe. That points to both a pre-ordained determination to shut the place down a while back; but, more optimistically, it also suggests that enrollment COULD improve if there is some leadership in recruiting. Maybe not enough to save all the faculty/staff, but to at least buy time to make judicious cuts.

By: Nord

Nord — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 12:42:03 +0000

Since you probably don’t drive by power line too much:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/03/in-the-matter-of-sweet-briar-college.php

I think they agree with you!

“But there is an amazing failure of imagination here—rooted in the institutional liberalism pervasive in higher ed—and a terrific opportunity for an educational entrepreneur.

So what if Sweet Briar had decided that instead of trying to compete head-to-head with Smith and Wellesley, they self-consciously set out to be the anti-Smith and anti-Wellesley? I have little doubt that a women’s college that advertised its deliberate rejection of the gender politics of “mainstream” womens’ educational institutions would have no shortage of applicants for admission.”

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 02:03:52 +0000

There’s a great story for the Sweet Briar faculty to hear.

By: Daniel Shiner

Daniel Shiner — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 01:20:20 +0000

I am a member of the Board of Trustees of Shimer College, a small liberal arts college in Illinois. In 1973, the Board of Trustees voted to close the college. Faculty and students refused to accept that decision. They took over operating the college, raised needed funds, wrested control from the bankruptcy trustee whom the Board had hired…and 42 years later, Shimer College is still providing students with a first rate education, as they have since opening as a rural women’s college in 1853. Don’t give up! Sweet Briar has a storied past, and deserves to have a great future!