With this semester’s end, spring flowers and warm days comes the 20th anniversary of the infamous Middlebury College staff firings of 1991.
A decade ago, when we noted the 10th anniversary of this shameful chapter in the College’s history, some asked why we were dredging up these unpleasant memories. Probably they will ask again. The answer then and now is that many people have forgotten and many more, who arrived after the firings, have never heard of them. Out of respect to the innocent victims who suffered and are still suffering and in hopes that nothing similar will happen again, we believe that the community should keep this event in its collective memory.
On a beautiful May morning 20 years ago, College supervisors and administrators forced 17 loyal and unsuspecting employees out of their offices, preventing some even from retrieving their sweaters and purses. On the advice of the notorious outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, the disoriented staff members were herded into waiting vans and driven to the Hadley Barn on the golf course. There they were told that their positions had been eliminated and that they would remain on the College payroll for some brief, unspecified time only if they complied minutely with the instructions of the outplacers.
The College justified the firings by claiming that the institution was in dire financial straits. It said that the jobs of the expelled employees were non-essential and had been cut with no consideration as to what individuals occupied them and no evaluation of the quality of their work. The College promised that the outplacement firm would help the terminated staff members find new jobs within a few months and explained that it had resorted to this corporate execution style of firing because it lacked experience and “didn’t know how” to dismiss 17 employees.
It soon became clear that every statement but the last was a lie. There was no financial emergency. Of the 17 fired employees, most were woman and over the age of 50. Some had been working at the college more than 30 years. Several of the “unnecessary” positions were immediately filled again and the outplacement firm had scant useful advice to offer anyone.
Ugly nation-wide coverage eventually forced the college to issue meager severance packages to the fired staff members. Over the years some have been hired into other college positions (without the benefit of their earned seniority) some found jobs with other area employers, some retired and some have died. Some of the psychological wounds have scabbed over, but it is unlikely they will ever heal completely. The frequently-invoked image of a “family” of Middlebury College faculty, staff, students and alumni became a bitter joke and the open, trusting, community spirit vanished forever.
The College’s ill-starred new president, Timothy Light, was forced to resign in the aftermath of the firings. But his subordinate accomplices rose to the top ranks of the administration and faculty, the chief among them being President Emeritus John McCardell. Not one publicly dissented at the time of the firings and not one has since apologized or acknowledged that the college gravely wronged innocent people. If John McCardell felt any twinge of remorse, he gave no sign of it at his accolade-laden departure for Tennessee last year.
Many terrible things have happened in the past 20 years: the nightmare of 9/11, the interminable wars the US is pursuing in Iraq and Afghanistan, natural and man-made environmental disasters and the national and world-wide economic crisis. With millions losing their jobs across the country, Middlebury’s layoffs may appear as a little, long-ago problem in a small town in a tiny state. But concern for others everywhere must begin with concern for our friends, neighbors and co-workers at home. As Vermont poet Martha Zweig says, “Who’ll say boo to get a penny’s worth of anybody’s little life back?” Fortunately, many people did at the time, and we must always be ready to do so again.
Written by MICHAEL and JUDY OLINICK
