The chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges System has withdrawn a plan that would have resulted in the closure of the Northern Vermont University campus in Johnson, but town leaders worry the future of the institution could still be in jeopardy.
About 50 years ago, the Vermont Legislature transformed an old teaching college in Johnson into one of the flagship campuses for the Vermont State Colleges System. Ever since then, Northern Vermont University has played a defining role in the local economy.
On Friday, when the chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges System proposed shutting down the Johnson campus effective almost immediately, Eric Osgood, who chairs the town’s selectboard, said the news was almost too much to comprehend.
“The college is like the heart and soul of this community,” Osgood said this week. “When we heard that news of what the chancellor was proposing, I literally could feel the knife going in the heart of this community. It was very, very painful and shocking.”
"We've known as a society for a long time that part of advancement and creating a new economy in a changing world is having a knowledge center as an anchor institution, and yet we're letting them go." - Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, Vermont Studio Arts
The community sprang into action overnight, and within 24 hours of the announcement, students, residents and merchants organized a rally that someone later posted a video of on Facebook.
“We had over 200 people lined up on both sides of Main Street, from one end to the other, maintaining their social distancing grant you, but probably in violation of the governor’s order,” Osgood said.
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That rally was part of a massive outcry against proposed campus closures not only in Johnson, but Lyndon and Randolph as well.
And it worked, for now at least: Chancellor Jeb Spaulding withdrew the consolidation proposal on Tuesday.
COVID-19, however, has exacerbated longstanding solvency issues in the state colleges system. And the fates of Johnson, Lyndon and Randolph in many ways hinge on the future of the campuses they’ve grown around.
Paul Costello, executive director of the Vermont Council on Rural Development, said the campuses’ direct economic benefits to rural towns are only one part of the equation.
“So there’s the hard economic stuff of people buying and selling in the downtown, and then there’s the softer cultural effect of creativity and energy of youth that makes a town feel more vibrant,” Costello said.
Costello said colleges and universities in Vermont have made it a net importer of people between the ages of 18 and 22.
“And for some of them they end up staying and being creative entrepreneurs and leaders, and very much part of the fabric of the future of our community," he said.
Ellen McCulloch-Lovell is the executive director of Vermont Studio Center, an artist’s residency program and another major employer in Johnson.
Ever since Spaulding proposed the campus closures last week, McCulloch-Lovell said she’s been thinking a lot about what it would mean for the town.
“What’s going to happen to Ebenezer Books and the art store and Sterling Market and the Downtown Pub and other businesses?” McCulloch-Lovell said. “Unless there’s a thoughtful approach, and a way to keep something vital happening there, it will really, truly have a devastating effect.”
McCulloch-Lovell , who served as president of Marlboro College until 2015, said she’s also been thinking about higher education in Vermont more generally.
“Because if this plan had gone through, I counted and it would have been seven college closures in three years,” she said.
McCulloch-Lovell said aging demographics and rising costs pose an existential threat to the colleges that remain in the state. And she said it’s time for the governor, Legislature and higher education officials to rethink the college landscape in Vermont as a whole.
“We’ve known as a society for a long time that part of advancement and creating a new economy in a changing world is having a knowledge center as an anchor institution, and yet we’re letting them go,” she said.
Osgood said Johnson is ready to contribute whatever it can to that conversation, because no one there is under the illusion that the future of the campus is secure.
“The work is not over yet,” Osgood said. “Now we need to get moving, and anybody that just thinks they can sit back and relax now is sadly mistaken.”
Editors note: Ellen McCulloch-Lovell is a member of the VPR Board of Directors
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story had the wrong name for the Vermont Studio Center
