Raleigh Town Hall Meeting
11-30-06
Report by Anne Wentworth Brill, '68

In case anyone is interested in reading about the Raleigh meeting with R-MWC staff, here is a brief summary of the meeting last evening with Ginger Hill Worden, Skip Kughn and Heather Garnett held in the home of trustee Mary Laurie Johnson Cece, attended by approximately 75 people representing a fair distribution across all age groups, including a few husbands.  I think it can best be summarized by referring you to the prior reports from the Dallas, Chicago and San Francisco meetings as I think the substance was very similar.  It was emotional at times with lots of probing questions about recruitment of students, fundraising, efforts to pursue potential major donors, refusal to release more complete information from the A and S consulting report including assumptions used, management issues under President Bowman, health of Sweet Briar College, and treatment of alumnae throughout this process.  Many alums of all ages spoke very eloquently and thoughtfully.  My husband later described the meeting as two groups talking past each other all evening.  Ginger Worden was shedding tears at one point and she appeared incredulous that the BOT does not have the complete trust of the alumnae.  She insists that the only errors in this whole mess are in the realm of insufficient communication with alums, and she apologized several times for the lack of communication.  At the conclusion of the meeting Betsy McCrodden asked for a show of hands for support of going co-ed, which I took to mean going co-ed under the current plan.  The vote was 2 in support and approximately 73 not in support.  Apparently Ginger stated after the meeting that the Raleigh meeting was the second worst she has encountered, citing the Dallas meeting as the worst.

My husband (who has 30 years experience in higher education, 16 as an administrator of an engineering department larger than R-MWC) and I spoke with both Ginger and Skip after the meeting.  My husband pointed out that in all his years in higher education, he has never seen anything handled so inappropriately, and he gave them many specific examples of how departments in his experience reach out to alums in advance of change so they are not blindsided.  They both just smiled and nodded, and said, yes, they understood. My husband also questioned Skip closely about whether he was very candid with potential donors about the need for immediate increase in the endowment in order to ensure the college's survival.  Skip danced around stating that you can't lay things on the line in too much detail about the precarious state of the college.  We did not have any assurance that potential donors were approached with a sense of urgency.  I also pointed out to Ginger that contrary to her statements in the San Francisco meeting and in the Raleigh meeting that a college cannot possibly reach out to 13,000 alums in advance on issues facing the college, the University of Illinois, my law school alma mater, did in fact do just that with a web-site when faced with the issue of continuing the Native American mascot, the Chief.  Alums were informed in advance of the issue coming before the BOT, given the opportunity to communicate with the BOT, and had their e-mails compiled, summarized in a report and presented to the BOT BEFORE the BOT met, debated and voted.  Again, the smiles and nods with no apparent understanding of the relevance.

At the conclusion of the meeting, I asked what rigorous analysis has been done of the financial struggles facing small co-ed liberal arts colleges in small towns and how the co-ed "R-M" will meet these challenges to insure that we are not embarking on a course that will simply trade one set of problems for an equally or more challenging set of problems, sacrificing R-MWC's uniqueness in the process.  Ginger assured us that they had looked at that issue, referring to the consulting report.  No specifics given, no references to any documentation independent of the A & S consulting report, no summaries of how they will face the difference set of challenges.  This was a pretty typical answer which we received throughout the evening:  we have looked at these issues; trust us.