Do Middlebury Trustees practice what they preach?

Author: WILLIAM ESTES

The Vermont Teddy Bear Company is a company traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange whose CEO and President Elisabeth B. Robert '78 is a Trustee of Middlebury College. Rick Fritz '68, a director of the company, is the Chair of Middlebury's Board of Trustees.

The corporate mission of the Vermont Teddy Bear Company is "To make the world a better place one Bear at a time." Apparently, this includes selling a "Crazy for You" Teddy Bear for Valentine's Day which came in a straight-jacket and with "commitment papers."

Although advocates for the mentally ill requested that the company stop selling the bear, the company refused to do so until it sold out its inventory. "We're not in a position to be told what we can and cannot sell," the unrepentant Robert said.

Apparently, Robert may not have been thinking beyond the bottom line when she made that decision. But Middlebury College is in the business of making future leaders, not a quick buck, and one out of 18 students at Middlebury College has a disability. While they cannot tell Robert and Fritz what to sell, they can tell them to take a hike. The administration supports such classes as Assistant Professor of Biology David Parfitt's "Neural Disorder" class in which students work with individuals with clinical depression and Alzheimer's. It is hard to reconcile the business decisions of Robert and Fritz and Middlebury's campus environment which stresses tolerance.

The Alliance for Civic Engagement is just one example of how Middlebury students value volunteerism and service. A Middlebury student interested in doing good does not have to run a company with annual revenues of $55.8 million to realize that by portraying mental illness as a cute societal problem which leads to increased homelessness and jail populations are less likely to be addressed. There is nothing cute about mental illness and sadly, under the leadership of Robert and Fritz, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company seems to lack any sense of corporate social responsibility when it comes to the mentally ill, a population that is extremely underserved and least able to advocate for themselves.

Talk is cheap and so is the Vermont Teddy Bear Company's apology, which was a statement in which the company said it hoped to continue to learn about mental illness. How about some sensitivity training for the executive suite or endowing a neurology chair at Middlebury College or hiring mentally ill employees at their headquarters?

Middlebury College needs leaders that exemplify the ideals it teaches. President Liebowitz and the Board of Trustees should discuss whether they still have confidence in the leadership abilities of Robert and Fritz.