In May of 2000, 78 of the 105 tenured professors (approximately 75%) at Connecticut College voted no confidence in President Claire Gaudiani. Gaudiani had been embroiled in a scandal that feels uncannily familiar today as the student body and faculty deal with the fallout over Dean Rodmon King’s resignation in protest of President Katherine Bergeron’s plans to fundraise at a notoriously racist and anti-semitic club, the Everglades Club. As the campus community contemplates what happens next, it’s worth remembering that we’ve been here before.
Gaudiani (‘66), the first alumna president of Conn, began her tenure in 1988 with high hopes from students and faculty alike, and indeed did bring forth many positive initiatives that are still active today. The allure began to fade in 1997, however, when Gaudiani became the president of the New London Development Corporation (NLDC), a position which would plunge her headfirst into the controversy that would lead to her eventual resignation. The NLDC spearheaded a project, first announced in 1998, to “redevelop” (read: gentrify) the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London (Today In Connecticut History). Conn College was promised a new vision of increased investment in New London, even a “Connecticut College Downtown.” The New London community was promised opportunities; one of them being to work at Pfizer, a new business alongside pricey upscale housing. Gaudiani’s husband, David Bennett, worked as an executive, leading to accusations of an unethical conflict of interests (Reconnecting to the Mission).
Over the course of the next seven years, the neighborhood would be completely destroyed and Conn, through its own president, was complicit in the process. As the image above demonstrates, the promised jobs never appeared; twenty years later, only an empty field remains. In 2008, Pfizer decided their interests were better suited in Groton. As such, the people of New London were twice betrayed: a story that sadly matches that of many other redevelopment plans across the country since the 1950s.
Meanwhile, questions began to arise on campus over the ethical implications of Gaudiani’s interest in the deal–her husband, after all, worked for Pfizer–and over the question of whether the College really should be using its resources to invest in downtown land deals.This is not dissimilar to the Manwaring Building in downtown New London that the college is currently occupying due to over-admission, but I digress. While the College erupted in concern over whether Conn was going to become a commuter campus, the racial and class dimensions of the project were also immediately apparent. The displaced neighborhood included a significant population of people of color and low income families and their businesses. The case would even be escalated to the Supreme Court, leading to the infamous Kelo v. New London decision in 2005, which strengthened the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment by expanding the meaning of the “public good” for purposes of eminent domain.
This brings us back to current President Katherine Bergeron. While President Bergeron has not literally redefined the Constitution through ill-advised taking of land, her “Defy Boundaries” campaign likewise has roped Connecticut College into yet another racist entanglement through her poor choice to fundraise at the Everglades Club. For many students and faculty, this is, no pun intended, the straw that broke the camel’s back in light of longstanding problems over the anemic support given to DIEI, Hillel, and to students and faculty of color in general.
The saga of Claire Gaudiani offers us a lesson. In the Fall of 2000, after fighting for months against a vote of no confidence from the faculty and a student body that derisively referred to the NLDC as the “New London Destruction Corporation,” Gaudiani resigned. She left the college with a 15-year lease on an empty downtown building and a hole in the budget that required a $10 million dollar donation to fill; all a relative pittance compared to the damage done to New London.
We are now faced with a similar choice. Just as students and faculty acted twenty years ago to protect the reputation, finances and fundamental mission of Conn, we have the chance now to say NO to a president who goes against this College and its community. •
