Last time I checked, my dorm room walls were not coated with gold but rather with peeling paint, off-white and revealing a sickly shade of yellow underneath. But according to columnist David Collins, I must be mistaken, because apparently the College I attend, Connecticut College, is a “gilded enclave of arrogance.”
The quote comes from Collins’ article entitled “Shame on Connecticut College,” published last week in the New London newspaper The Day. What follows the strongly worded headline is an ineffectual and uninformed attempt to lampoon President Bergeron (who had yet to be inaugurated at the time of the article’s publication) through a knee-jerk reaction to an interview she gave at the beginning of the month. The contention is about how much money Conn donates to New London each year.
Here’s the situation: because Connecticut College is an academic institution that provides social and economic benefits to the surrounding community, it is not required to pay property taxes to the city of New London. In lieu of these taxes, the school pays $12,500 per year directly to the city. Bergeron met with the Mayor of New London early this year, and on the topic of increasing this payment she said, “the College is not looking to revisit it.” Or so Collins writes in his article.
In reality, the quote that Collins directly attributes to Bergeron comes from an article published in The Day one day prior to his own. He might have taken notice of an actual quote of Bergeron’s directly following that sentence, in which she states that discussion of the $12,500 payment “will be an ongoing conversation.” But erroneous quotations aside, the point remains. New London wants Conn to increase its donation to the city, and President Bergeron isn’t prepared to fulfill the request. This made David Collins mad, and thus he has called shame upon our entire school, the school from which he graduated.
His anger is not entirely unfounded. If Connecticut College’s tax-exempt status were removed, the school would be required to pay New London $5.8 million per year. This sum would no doubt be a massive help to New London’s struggling economy and when compared to a yearly donation of $12,500, Conn comes out looking a bit thrifty. But only if that comparison is made in a vacuum. There are reasons that the state has laws in place to protect academic institutions from property taxes, reasons which Collins avoids in his narrow consideration of the issue.
Conn is one of New London’s largest employers, with a payroll that re-invests $65 million into the city’s economy annually. The College also spends $30 million per year on goods and services, the majority of which is spent on local vendors. Local contractors are also often utilized in the building and renovation of campus facilities, which the school has spent $70 million on over the last five years. On top of all this, the College draws nearly 8,000 visitors per year who are likely to stay in local hotels, eat in local restaurants and spend money in local shops. There’s also the money that we Conn students frequently spent in New London. And, although admittedly more intangible, Conn does provide many social and cultural benefits for the surrounding community, such as concerts, plays, lectures, events and access to facilities such as the Arboretum, library and Athletic Center.
But according to Collins we are “a social predator on a poor city.” I’m not exactly sure how. I’m not even sure what Collins thinks he means when invoking that phrase “social predator”. He doesn’t really explain, except to mention two isolated incidents through which he suggests that Conn wasted tax dollars when calling upon New London police officers—incidents such as “when a cafeteria worker [was] accused of sexual assault”. Yes, I suppose in that example he is correct. We cost the city money in order to investigate a potential sexual assault. How dare we prey on a poor city like that. Shame on us.
Perhaps if Conn were more similar to the super-rich institutions to which Collins compares us, we wouldn’t be such a disgrace. These schools are Brown and Yale, which Collins upholds as shining examples of universities that put Connecticut College to shame in their support of their host cities. “Clearly, the stewards of [these] more enlightened institutions understand 21st century economics and the challenges faced by the small impoverished cities that have hosted them all these years,” he writes.
I would guess that it is not a better grasp of economics that allows Brown and Yale to lend such strong fiscal support to their host cities, but more likely their immense endowments, which are, respectively, 10 times and 100 times larger than our own. You would think that as a Conn alumnus himself, Collins would realize how ridiculous it is to compare the financial stability of a small liberal arts school with that of two Ivy League megaliths, but he couldn’t help sneeringly remarking upon what he found to be the grand irony of a president emerita of Brown delivering a key-note speech at Bergeron’s inauguration.
What’s actually ironic is Collins praising former Conn President Claire Gaudiani and criticizing President Bergeron in the same breath. “Gaudiani was roundly criticized for her interference in New London politics and investment of college money in the city,” he writes. “But who can’t respect her often-repeated goal of social justice and improving life in an impoverished city.” Apparently Collins can’t, for these goals of Gaudiani (whose actions resulted in her resignation at the hands of a faculty petition and left the school with a sizable debt) are those of Bergeron, who has time and time again declared commitment to improving relations between Connecticut College and New London.
“The connections between Connecticut College and the city of New London go back a century…I look forward to nurturing this historic relationship, and deepening our educational involvements, to the mutual benefit of both our students and our community partners,” said Bergeron in an open letter to the community. It’s true that, for now, these are just words, but it is also true that Bergeron has been president for a grand total of twelve weeks. She will most certainly be judged on the actions she takes to achieve these goals, but the judgment should probably come after she has had time to act.
Although Collins’ criticism of both Bergeron and the College as a whole is preemptive, unnecessarily aggressive and myopic, there’s something important to be gleaned from his article. The relationship between our campus and New London is far from perfect. The perception of Connecticut College as “a gilded enclave” is not an original one and is in fact present throughout our surrounding community. And even if this perception comes from a place of misinformation, it’s our responsibility to show New London that our walls are not covered in gold, and our gates are not sealed shut. There will need to be a lot of change to bring Conn and New London to a place of fully productive and positive coexistence. But with a new President dedicated to the cause and a massive reinvention of the college underway, I believe we might be on the precipice of that change.•
yikes. so misguided and defensive. the idea that conn college’s parasitic relationship to the city of new london is predicated on misinformation is so weird and elitist and classist i don’t even know where to begin.
the college exists to educate and invest millions of dollars into kids who are guaranteed NOT to root up in new london. the great majority of kids hardly ever venture out into the city at all; the student body’s contribution to newlo’s economy is paltry at best. the failure on part conn’s student body to recognize that it is, in fact, part of a broader community–and one that is rather notably in economic despair–is staggering.
but cool, continue being a corporate apologist and self-justifying shill. keep championing your crooked administration loaded with corporate profits that won’t even give the city that bears its existence enough money to cop a used car, and regularly spends lavish amounts of money on hip cafes and dances for its wealthy student body–a student body whose family’s median income, I remind you, is three to four times higher than a new london citizen’s median income and 6 to 7 times higher than that sad disgrace of a bounty the college pays its municipal host.
“One anonymous reader commented on the story about Bergeron’s holding firm at $12,500 that the taxes on the reader’s house in New London, on half an acre, are more than that amount.”
suggestion: in order that conn might avoid accusations of classism and arrogance in the future, start by not posting uninformed, defensive, classist opinions like this one. then proceed to recognize the problem (the college isn’t doing enough to help its embattled city) and suggest ways in which the college can help. or don’t, whatever. however…
**do not write diatribes suggesting that notions of conn college’s classism are predicated on misinformation**
people are mad for a reason and it’s not because their poor, poverty-stricken brains can’t process all the good you’re doing from the hill. get a clue.
Please explain why this article is classist. It not only provides an analysis of Connecticut College’s contribution to New London, but also advocates for improved relations between the school and the city. Furthermore, both articles are about administrative contributions to the city (however appropriate or inappropriate that may be), not the level of interaction Conn’s student body has with New London. Still, both President Bergeron and the author of the above article seem to desire increased interaction between the two communities, which last I checked is quite the opposite of classist.
It looks like what “j” specifically found to be classist was the idea that New London’s perception of Connecticut College is based on “misinformation”, although it seems to me that when the author says “even if this perception comes from a place of misinformation”, in context, he is specifically referring to the misinformation in Collins’s article, which is misinformed in that it only takes into account the $12,500 that the college gives to the city directly, and not the millions that it reinvests through jobs and such. Either way I think the article is trying to specifically respond to Collins’s article, and not make any broad, “classist” commentary on the overall relationship between the college and the city
I’m with the above commenter…
There’s a massive income disparity between the college, its students and the surrounding area. The tax exempt status is one of the many structural reasons for that, and it doesn’t mean nothing. What a far more intellectually interesting article it would be to imagine the structural changes necessary far making sure Conn is not the ivory tower on the hill, where the privileged shore up their privilege and nothing changes regarding the high levels of poverty in the area. That students go to brunch with their moms is not sufficient change, and pointing to the massively larger endowments around is just a lazy rhetorical cop out. What change is needed to address the real needs of the community and the very real income disparity and how can Conn contribute to that? What would that look like? This letter is just a “don’t rock the boat” plea which is more than a little disappointing.
This article, although well written and engaging, presents the issue between New London and the college through a narrow lens. The two comments above do well to sum up my thoughts on this article, however I think it is the thoughts being advanced here that are wrong and not the person behind them. Also regardless of what institutions we are compared to, respectively we have not done enough for our city and the college has continually struggled to figure out to what extent it will engage with the greater New London area. My hopes are that the 50 or so people who have liked this article have not read it thoroughly or else the issue of classist rhetoric is a bigger one than I imagined. Preemptive or not the issue at hand had to be introduced and unfortunately this has taken a polarizing stance just as the one in the Day has. Equal blame can go to equally polarizing articles that solve absolutely nothing.