A Letter to the Community From President Walker

To all members of the Bennington Community,

I write to you today to tell you how deeply honored I am to be the 11th President of Bennington College. Thank you all for the warm welcome. My husband Bert, our daughter Claire and I just arrived in the beautiful Brick House overlooking the exquisite mountains of Vermont.

After meeting so many of you via Zoom, email and phone, I feel like a square in the book Flatland, leaving my two dimensional world to finally begin to see you in three dimensions. It also reminds me a bit of my first day of college-- meeting people whose photos I had viewed in the (paper) facebook. I still have my dog-eared copy, and when I look at it, I can feel the thrill of becoming part of a vibrant liberal arts community. That’s how I feel today.

I am excited and filled with hope. I look forward to forging a path together that builds on the qualities that make Bennington life-changing for students and deeply satisfying for faculty and staff. These progressive qualities—of self directed learning and critical inquiry, of ongoing experimentation and creativity, and of fighting for justice and equity—are the foundation for building a college that can thrive for years to come and have an ever more profound impact on the world.

As I have listened to you over the last two months, I have been struck over and over again by the depth of your passion for Bennington’s distinct pedagogy, for the extraordinary talents of the faculty, and the close relationships they share with students. I have heard from students who want a stronger voice in decisions and want to work collaboratively and in new ways with the administration. I do too.

I am grateful for and awed by the dedication of the faculty and staff who are working so diligently and creatively to prepare for this next semester in the face of enormous obstacles, and by the sacrifices they have made. Some in our community are facing particularly difficult challenges with COVID, including and especially many international students who face additional uncertainty and stress. As a community, we must work together in new ways to keep the pandemic at bay, caring for ourselves and assuring the well-being of the community.

From what I’ve seen so far, Bennington has already risen to these challenges with extraordinary dedication and grace. I think of the videos made by students who stayed in the dorms this spring sending love and thanks to the Dining Services and Housekeeping staff, of the virtual “Reflect, Rebuild, Rise” Conference, and of the long hours that Buildings & Grounds and so many other staff are dedicating to make the campus spaces safe and ready for students' return.

We are also today reckoning with a legacy of racism at the national, local, and institutional levels—and Bennington has an important role to play in this examination. Now is the time to turn messages of solidarity into action by treating equity and anti-racism not just as conceptual principles, but as concrete and intentional practices. Bennington is up to this task. It will require courageous and sometimes uncomfortable conversations that lay bare painful experiences. It will demand that we look at deeply rooted structures of power and privilege, that we listen to one another. I will not shy away from the uncomfortable conversations that will arise as we deal with these issues in a spirit of honesty and self-reflection. I bring learning from my experience and past mistakes and a redoubled commitment to listen deeply, to learn from you, and communicate with clarity, empathy, and transparency.

One of my first priorities in this role is to develop and implement strategies that will make meaningful, lasting change on our campus and in the world. Some of these actions will grow out of community conversations and engagement; others will come from my office, including establishing a Presidential Working Group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and board members. I look forward to sharing more details on these initiatives and how you can participate very soon.

Bennington has met the extraordinary and novel challenges of this year with characteristic creativity. We can extend that energy to all of our endeavors as we build a more just and sustainable future—and by that, I mean both financially sustainable as well as environmentally sustainable. I close with the words of the late John Lewis who said “what I try to tell young people is that if you come together with a mission, and it’s grounded with love and a sense of community, you can make the impossible possible.” I look forward to making the impossible possible at Bennington and hope to see you on campus, via Zoom, or as I ride my bike on the roads of Vermont.

Warmly,

Laura