![]() ![]() “It does not value places like Marlboro against places like the Ivy Leagues.”įumio Sugihara, the former dean of admissions at Marlboro, said one of the other problems is the cost of higher education for the institution, rather than for the student. ![]() ![]() “I don’t know if there can be a viable place like Marlboro in the future, because of the economic system that we live in,” they said. Hickman said the decline of Marlboro speaks to an ideological shift in America. In the last three years of Marlboro’s existence, federal data showed that 100 percent of undergraduate students received some form of monetary help. Thirty-eight students came.Īs Marlboro’s admissions dwindled, the average financial aid awarded to students increased every year, as did the number of students receiving financial aid. They admitted 92 of 156 applicants, a 10-year low acceptance rate at 58 percent. The next year, the admissions team was much more selective, with the hopes that admitting the right people would boost enrollment. In 2017, Marlboro admitted 117 out of 121 applicants. Since 2010, the college saw a 49 percent decline in total enrollment, according to data from the Department of Education. Like most small liberal arts colleges, Marlboro’s peak is in the rearview mirror. I don’t know when that stopped…But I think it was a mistake.” “There was more of that kind of DIY, we’re in this together feeling. “When I was there as a student….everyone had to work a certain number of hours a week,” said Dena Davis, one of 22 Marlboro Board of Trustee members. Instead, it was a part of their commitment to the campus. In the 1960s, students were required to work in the dining hall or for facilities. Hendricks wanted a place where students could have autonomy over the classes they took, instead of selecting one-size-fits-all style majors. Walter Hendricks-a student of American poet Robert Frost-founded Marlboro College in 1946 after the end of the second World War. History of the hill The sun shone through the evergreens that are sprinkled atop Potash Hill. In this story, I’m revisiting the logistics behind the Emerson-Marlboro merger and the people involved a full year after the initial announcement. Still, it pained me to watch this community that was so full of love, life, and a sincere emphasis on the liberal arts be stripped of everything it held dear. Nothing I experience will ever come close to the love Marlboro students felt for the place. Covering this merger has been like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded. But in the end, Marlboro, a school I had fallen in love with, was inevitably closing. In total, I wrote nearly 40 stories on the beat. That was after the community suffered through an early campus closure because of a global pandemic, a fight from alumni to stop the deal, and a controversial sale of the Potash Hill campus.Īs The Beacon’s senior Marlboro reporter, I was tasked with covering the ins and outs of the merger. When the dust settled, 57 students, 18 faculty members, and roughly $20 million in assets transferred from Marlboro to Emerson. “There were people behind me sobbing,” Hickman said. Emerson’s crowd erupted with applause as Pelton announced the figures.Īt Marlboro, there was one glaring detail in the Emerson deal that left students stunned: the college would be losing its beloved campus. The “alliance” intended to flood an indebted Emerson with an influx of cash. In exchange, the Boston college would accept Marlboro students at the tuition rate they already paid and offer faculty contracts to teach in the city. Not with nervous anticipation, but with curious wonder.Įmerson would be acquiring Marlboro, its $30 million endowment, and funds from the sale of the campus, free of charge, at the end of the 2019-2020 school year. In the Cutler Majestic Theatre, the Emerson community also awaited an announcement from President M. Hundreds of miles away that same day, Boston smelled of burnt rubber and gasoline. “I felt like I was sitting in that room, like a stone statue.” “Throughout the whole meeting, I was really relaying the information the whole time,” Hickman said. 6, awaiting an announcement from the college President Kevin Quigley.Ĭharlie Hickman, a junior at the time, was there. Around 150 students gathered in the only auditorium on Nov. But the air at Marlboro was thick with anticipation. The place is not Marlboro, at least not anymore.Ī year ago, the apples and brush were still there, paired with the smell of fresh peach cobbler cooking in the dining hall-a renovated cattle barn. At the former site of Marlboro College, a serene and remote school often caked in snow at the top of a Southern Vermont mountain, there was usually a sense of peace. The smell of dying trees, turning leaves, and rotten apples on the forest floor wafts through the air. ![]()
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