Today, on this sunny Florida Sunday in April, after four years, I have finally been at a place where I can work on my writing, so I spent the day revisiting the work I had completed in the MFA programs I had attended in 2019 and 2020. I’m finally at a place after my Big move across the country where I can organize and revise this work. In looking through my computer files, I came across a letter I would like to share with you, about the heart-breaking and horrific experience I had at the Goddard College MFA residency in July 2020. I can share this now because enough time and space has elapsed so that I am no longer as traumatized as I had been that July of 2020. I think it’s important for me to tell my story. It’s important for others to see what is happening on college campuses, as a pernicious ideology that stands against all that a good liberal arts education is about is destroying education and the liberal arts across the great United States of America. What happened to me was ridiculous, as you will see; it may have shocked me then, but the good folks at Goddard College poked a fire-breathing dragon that day. Writers tell their stories. I attended Goddard College in the early half of 2020, after being accepted in late 2019. I was thrilled to be attending at the time, as I had been working toward that goal for more than ten years. Sadly, my excitement was dashed, as you can read below. As I was going through the work packets that I had completed and sent to my advisor, Bea, I was reminded how amazing the academic part of the program was. Bea made extensive remarks on all of my manuscripts that have been greatly helpful to me, and that will help me to revise the work and to carry the work forward. As Henry Cloud states in his book Necessary Endings, there is a time and a season for everything. We need to accept endings as being a normal part of life, and we need to mourn them so we can let go and move on. (Just this week, an article in Higher Ed stated Goddard College in Vermont recently announced that it is closing. Goddard’s website now has a pop up that says: “Goddard College will officially close at the end of this semester. New admissions will not be accepted for the 2024-2025 academic year.”  Read https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/financial-health/2024/04/10/goddard-college-announces-closure and here:  https://www.goddard.edu/important-announcement/ ) The emails below are unedited, in the form they were sent in 2020.

Dear Dr. Bret Weinstein, I am watching your conversation “ Black Intellectual Roundtable,” which was shared on Nextdoor by a brave black woman, and I am convinced that those of us who have been afraid to speak up, must do so. I was recently attacked in my graduate program for asking a question about “white privilege,” and the subsequent round of e-mails that were sent to me, which were vitriolic, helped me to make a decision to withdraw from the graduate program, just last week, when I would have been entering my third semester.  I think this is all for a good reason, despite that it has been very painful for me. I am a sensitive person, but I have also always been a free thinker, and someone who stands up for opinions that are often not the majority. To make a long story short, I want to become involved in what you are doing. I was attending Goddard College (based in Vermont), in their MFAW program. Many students who attend there come from Evergreen College. I chose Goddard for the manner in which it delivers its programs, but I was completely unprepared for the ideological-driven rhetoric that demanded adherence to one idea. I am reaching out first, to thank you for the work you are doing, (which my 21-year old son made me aware of), and to say that I want to be a part of the work going forward. Thank you for your time and work. Leita

My Opposition to Vicious Ideology at Goddard College, Vermont

MFAW program
Goddard College
Via e-mail

Date: 2020-07-22

Dear Elena, fellow MFAW students, faculty, and Goddard family,

Sometimes, we encounter someone who inspires us to abandon all else and to chart a new course in life. This is what happened to me on Sunday, the day after residency ended, when I met Bevelyn Beatty. Bevelyn is an amazing and vivacious young black woman, who lives in a borough of New York City. In a YouTube video I saw, Bevelyn can be seen pouring black paint from a bucket, onto a yellow Black Lives Matters mural on a street in New York City. That’s when everything changed for me.

Like everyone, I was excited about residency and I was looking forward to being with a community of my peers, diving in deep to writing craft. I hit the ground running on Saturday and delved into as many craft workshops as I could attend, engaged with fellow students on Discord and in advising and in workshops. I also endeavored to learn all I could about the current work in racism, soaking up a multitude of resources that my peers recommended and that many others in my community and within my personal and professional circles recommended. Despite these efforts, from the first day of residency, I noticed something different, something subtle that I had not encountered before, something that I couldn’t place. Rather than feeling inspired and welcomed, as the days wore on, I began to feel increasingly alienated, dismissed, and alone.

At first, I thought this couldn’t be. I noted with each class, that while others were often welcomed by name, I rarely heard my name; during the conversation and small talk that occurred, my comments mostly were ignored. As an adult who has lived through and survived many difficult circumstances, these slights were minor in comparison, but still hurtful. I chose to persevere, and to simply focus on the work, and to channel my empathy towards all. Perhaps I would have continued this way had it not been for the assignment given in our advising workshop, where we were asked to write a letter. As I contemplated what I would write about, I came upon the idea to enter into a conversation with a black woman, and to listen to and to learn her experiences of racism, from her point of view. This led me to the work of Rachel Ricketts and her blog post, “The Year I Gave Up White Comfort: An Ode to my White ‘Friends’ on Being Better to Black Womxn,” here: https://medium.com/@rayrayleigh/the-year-i-gave-up-white-comfort-an-ode-to-my-white-friends-on-being-better-to-black-womxn-25d8aef05f89

The letter I wrote, while not intended for public use, as it was a very rough draft, helped me to work towards discovery and ideas. I realize, today, now that I know what was truly going on in the residency, that my letter, although coming from my sincere heart, was met with contempt. What was troubling to me was that, while it was obvious something was driving the interactions during residency, whatever this was, it was not revealed to me. This was completely hurtful to me, as I entered an environment that was not explained or divulged to me, and yet, seemed to have rules of engagement that I was left to fumble and to find out on my own. As the days went on, the letter stayed with me, as did the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. This drove me to conduct more research, on top of the work I was already doing in residency, and I began to realize something disturbing. I want to stop here and state that I am not complaining nor am I criticizing any single person at Goddard. My issue is with an ideology, as I will explain. Quite the opposite of complaining, I want to thank Goddard for immersing me into something that I had not been aware of, that has led me to an exploration and towards my own activism. Coming into the residency, I was naïve. Through my research, it became obvious to me that what was happening to me, was that I was being decentered, simply because of my skin color, which does not even come close to revealing the complexity of my humanity, as is the case with anyone’s skin color. I might have accepted this as part of my “training” in racism, (had it been explained) but it had the effect of triggering my PTSD, and it ruined my residency. I came away feeling depressed and uncertain. Still, I decided to use coping methods learned from my therapy to deal with what was touted as my “white fragility.” I chose to attribute the feelings to the stress of the residency and to learning so many new things.

I would have continued along in that vein, had I not met Bevelyn. As I watched the YouTube video on Sunday, and then an interview with her on another program today, I realized that Bevelyn’s voice was counter to the narrative of the white savior Robin DiAngelo (and the dominant narrative of BLM), that I was being indoctrinated[1] to during residency. This narrative was driving everything. This is when I decided that my work must be to elevate the voice of Bevelyn and all the others like her, so that all black lives matter, not just those represented by BLM. As I contemplated what I had experienced and learned during residency, and through researching the BLM organization; and, as I listened to Bevelyn (and many other marginalized voices) it became abundantly clear to me that the Black Lives Matter organization does not fully represent the black population, although it attempts to manipulate people into thinking that it does. Instead, counter to its claims, it is an oppressor, dominating the narrative at the expense of the most vulnerable.

Oppression is entirely and fundamentally contradictory to everything I believe as a person, and as a writer. Furthermore, as a former journalist, who is compelled to follow a code of ethics, one that compels me to report on and to bring out voices, even those that do not adhere to a single narrative, I must take a stand. My discovery and my ensuing decisions are not about my feelings. Rather, what is important is the fact that what is going on right now in the MFAW program, on liberal campuses, and in the wider world, is that a single narrative is being advanced, one that is militantly and vehemently forced upon all, as if it is the one and only ideology and it must not be questioned. This strikes me as tyrannical and oppressive. This is leading to a host of abuses, including cancel culture, embarrassing incidents at college campuses like what happened to Bret Weinstein at Evergreen College a few years back, and in the violence perpetrated on innocent people, such as a young mother who was shot and killed simply for saying “all lives matter.” On principle, I cannot support a single all encompassing ideology, no matter what the ideology might be, even though I support every single person’s freedom to follow and to believe in the ideology they choose. It is important to state, that had there been transparency, such that I had been informed about the ideology; and, importantly, that it was clear that other ideologies could be accepted and discussed, my entire experience would have been different, and, I could have continued. But then, I met Bevelyn and her work is more important.

Thanks to the exposure I had to these ideologies during residency, I have now become a conscientious objector of identity politics and critical race theory. The bias and alienation I experienced during residency as part of the undisclosed-to-me social experiment that was perpetrated upon me; one that labeled me a racist white woman, engaged in white supremacy, a label that caused others to avoid me and to decenter me, caused me to see firsthand the errors of these ideologies. Not one single person ever asked me anything about who I was, or about anything I might have done in my life, and yet, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I was given a scarlet letter. Due to this, it seems there is no place for me in the MFAW program at Goddard College, not because I didn’t want to be there and not because I was rejecting and labeling others, but because I was unwelcome. While this is heartbreaking, I am going to follow Bevelyn’s courageous example. I am going to put my energies and time towards activism, like so many others at Goddard, pouring my efforts into becoming part of Bevelyn’s cause. This means that I must withdraw from the program and from Goddard College. Bevelyn and those like her need me, and this work is so urgent I cannot wait one day or two years, to fully support it. I must work harder than ever to stand for freedom of expression, freedom of speech, academic freedom, and ultimately true freedom.

I want to thank the faculty, advisors, and students, and especially Elena, for being my entry point into the powerful and amazing MFAW low residency writing program at Goddard. Thank you for inspiring me towards activism, towards justice. I also want to thank you all for clarifying the currently dominant narrative. Thank you for all that I learned at residency, that I am still “unpacking.” Thank you, Bea for your poetic ways and care of students. (Your poetry book, “Desire Lines,” arrived today!!) It was an amazing experience to be able to work amongst so many talented, creative writers with different voices, and with so many gifted teachers. I love everyone at Goddard College who is involved with the MFAW program on both campuses, even though I disagree with the ideology being used to inform the work, one that lacks full disclosure and transparency. The students, faculty, and administration I have met are all good people, whom I believe sincerely have good intentions, despite being ignorant of the many pitfalls and abuses that are occurring when the dominant ideology is played out to its full extent.

In life, we must make difficult choices. We must choose our own path, even if it means being in the minority, or being unpopular, or being the only one on campus, or even if people want to cancel us. We are at a historic and unprecedented time in history. There is no time to lose. It is of utmost importance that I encourage, support, and center the voices of women like Bevelyn and those courageous women like her. Bevelyn just announced that she is in the process of setting up a legal fund; I would like my money and time to go towards helping her. It is what is necessary at this crucial moment in history. The MFA can wait. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words inspire me to rethink my education. He said, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” When I see a single ideology implanted above all others, I realize that critical and intensive thinking is being stifled.

I am thankful that the MFA program, in part, has helped me to return to my roots in journalism, where I have been elevating the voices of others (and not my own) since serving as a writer and then editor in chief of my high school newspaper, during my teenage days in high school, and through all of the volunteer work I have engaged in for decades, for arts, community, children’s cancer, domestic violence, veterans groups and more. I am inspired by the words of Martin Luther King Jr. who said: “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” I do not see compassion and love in an ideology that requires me to experience alienation, that decenters me, while saying that it is working towards inclusion. I am reminded about what Martin Luther King Jr. said: “The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win, and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.”

I expect that what I am saying might be met with denial, dismissal, and even hostility. I accept that and I also accept your right to disagree and to have your own opinions.

I wish everyone all the best as you pursue your writing. I will miss you.

As Don Lemon of CNN says, “Silence is Not an Option.” Yes, Bevelyn needs to be heard.

It is with sadness that I request to withdraw from Goddard College effective immediately and request a refund of unused tuition for the remainder of the semester. This is not an easy decision for me to make and not one I have made lightly. Instead, it is a huge sacrifice. I have dedicated more than a decade (every year since 2009) as I completed two bachelor’s degrees, working towards my dream of earning an MFA at Goddard College, which had been my top choice. This is not a time for me to be the lone person of my “whatever” you may call it, on campus. This is for Bevelyn.

With love, gratitude, and sincere regards,

Leita

[1] https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/cult-dynamics-wokeness/