This story is blowing up on the internet right now: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/what-happened-at-burlington-college/482973/?utm_source=atlfb
Apparently Jane Sanders, wife of Senator Bernie Sanders, was responsible for a $10 million land deal during her time as President of Burlington College that just effectively killed off the institution.
Burlington college will close its doors later this month, and the main stream media hard-pressed the college’s administration to blame Jane for the debacle, that is until Donald Trump named Ben Carson as his possible running mate.
“Jane Sanders’s plan to place a big bet on expansion in order to put the school on a more solid long-term footing was similar to decisions made by other college presidents, and sometimes those bets simply don’t work out.”
Though it is true that there are allegations of fraud concerning Jane Sanders improperly stating how much money the college was able to fund-raise, they are just that, allegations. The same is true of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, they don’t matter until either a decision is reached in a court of law, or some irrefutable piece of evidence comes forward proving the wrongdoing.
I can hardly blame her for shooting big. Burlington College was facing under-enrollment when she was president of the college, which is a serious issue a lot of institutions face. In fact, my college (MCLA) is facing this very same problem.
If you want students to enroll at your institution, you have to make your college a place people want to be. The only thing I would’ve done differently than Jane is I would have added the new academic programs first and waited on expanding the facilities until the impact of those new majors on the college was clear (some just don’t attract many people).
The only thing shady about this story on face value is how nobody wants to blame Jane for this debacle, and the allegations. This is normal for administrators to act, we get a lot of it at The Beacon. There are many reasons why they wouldn’t want to talk about it, particularly PR ones, and the fact that if an admin named names, they might burn bridges with that person.
A lot of media outlets like to attack the Sanders campaign for how much Jane made for her position as president, but I don’t really care. If he was elected, Bernie Sanders would be our poorest president to date, and of the current three candidates in the race, he best represents the interests of the American people.
Outlets have used this as an opportunity to attack the senator’s free college plan, but this boils down to mud slinging. He has released his plan, and while it might need some tweaks (it requires that the States subsidize part of it, which might not be realistic), it’s a good plan nonetheless.
Even if he lacks the ability to enact his free college plan, or indeed most of his plans, Senator Sanders still outshines the competition. I would rather have a man who tries to do the right thing but fails than someone who succeeds in doing the wrong.
This in no ways disqualifies Jane’s ability to be the first lady, nor does it discredit the Sanders campaign in general.
I find it unfortunate that the media is unwilling to give this level of scrutiny to the other candidates, you could easily get a story a day if they looked at Hillary Clinton in a critical light. Maybe this is a result of them practically living off of the Trump beat. If anything is for sure, it’ll be a long, uphill battle for the senator if he hopes to win, but it’s one that I know he has the ability and passion to accomplish.
Mitchell Chapman 