17. White Supremacy Reigns in Mills College and Northeastern Boards

Martin Luther King, Jr with Mills College students, 1958.
Source: Mills College Olin Library

Hope For Mills Is A Big Deal In The Bay

The story of the Alumna Trustees fighting back against Mills College that we broke last weekend is just hitting mainstream media now:

Insider Higher Ed Trustees File Suit Against Mills College Officials
FOX KTVU2 Mills College's alumnae files suit against the school to save it
SF Chronicle Mills College grads sue to block leaders from transforming historic women's school
Higher Ed Dive Mills College alumnae sue to halt possible merger

The mainstream media, in particular the Chronicle, misrepresented key details of the Complaint. AAMC Vice President Dawn Cunningham clarified:

The story also made the 6 o'clock news in the San Francisco Bay Area.

They were careful to display President Hillman's spin front and center, while not sharing any of the details of the actual complaint - which you can read at the Internet Archive.

Isn't it considered a bad idea for defendants in a lawsuit to be critiquing the suit on TV news? Trying to taint the Alameda County jury pool, perhaps?

President Hillman thinks this lawsuit undermines confidence in the leadership? What about the vote of no confidence of the faculty or the thousands of academics all around the world who formally protested (parts One, Two, Three), or the fact that Mills has been under a "financial emergency" for the entire term of her reign - which has now resulted in the need to give the College up to an East-coast suitor, when just a month ago that was going to be UC Berkeley, 9 miles away.

Kudos to AAMC Vice President Alexa Pagonas for speaking out on behalf of the AAMC, and also to AAMC Board member Cherlene Wright who spoke to the journalist for the Chronicle. It is indeed amazing that these people could decide to end 170 years of history without debate, sliding it through as just another item on the consent agenda.

Despite the idea of negotiations just beginning, and staff from Northeastern and Mills just starting to explore how they might collaborate...President Hillman is giving everyone pay rises in the midst of a financial crisis. Is this the sort of negotiating tactics they teach at Yale Law School? Prostrate yourself before your suitor at the beginning of the first date.

President Hillman has responded to all the legal and media attention by pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor. We'll either fly off the cliff and the magical carpet that Northeastern promised us will be there waiting to carry our bus to utopia...or we will crash and burn.

Judas Goats

The shills of a certain age continue to be out in force on social media. Here's the Dean of the Mills College Business School for 9 years...

TL;DR "it's worth going co-ed as someone else's university for us to get a couple of percent payrise and the promise of maybe reinstating some similarly miniscule percentage of employer matching to our retirement plans". She can't see that these are privileges President Hillman withheld from them through deliberate decisions, poor leadership and a failure to engage stakeholders in solving systematic problems.

You would think that someone who is:

a) in a very senior position within the College
b) representing the business acumen attached to the College's brand, given the percentage of overall graduate and undergrad revenues that come from her school
c) presumably competent and skilled in her field to have such a position; and
d) coming to the Resistance social media to publicly advocate for this acquisition

...would conduct basic due diligence on the transaction she is promoting (not to mention contribute ideas and expertise to fixing these problems during her 9-year presence on campus).

The most basic research proves the logical fallacies inherent in Dean Karniouchina's ideas. Northeastern University is predominantly white, charges around the same as Wellesley, and has an even lower acceptance rate. When Mills was a highly prestigious school, with corresponding academic standards and tuition rates, it did well - as do other schools that it competes with. After President Hillman re-adjusted the tuition and academic standards to be more of a community college, the numbers no longer add up and Mills is allegedly losing money, despite posting a $6.4 million profit last year, and requires a larger-than-desirable annual drawdown from its massive endowment which went up $20 million last year.

Wellesley has a 22% acceptance rate and charges $55k per year tuition. Northeastern has an 18% acceptance rate and charges $552k per year tuition. And Mills used to be like that too - back when the model was working, before Hillman started tweaking with it in her misguided belief that Libby Schaaf and Mia Bonta's "Oakland Promise" would salvage her failed Financial (De)Stabiization Plan.

Source: DataUSA

"4% is Not Discrimination", White Man Speak With Forked Tongue

When former President Janet Holmgren took the helm in 1992, after Hellman's previous failed attempt to turn the College co-ed, the student mix was 30% minority. Today it is majority minority, with a third of the students from the LatinX/Hispanic community. There is only 1 LatinX on the Board of Trustees, Ophelia Basgal - named specifically as one of the defendants in the lawsuit. The Alumnae of Color Association has a Board entirely made up of African-Americans. There is only one Asian/Indian on the Board of Mills College (the AAMC President) and no American Indians. The Ohlone people, traditional owners of the land, have no representation in the Board Room, and the only faculty representative professor emeritus John Brabson lives in Missouri.

All the Alumna Trustee plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit are people of color. Leaving aside those name, you are left with a sea of white people in the boardroom stretching as far as the eye can see - most of them elderly.

In our last post we showed you the Northeastern Board, but here they are again ICYMI. A lot of people from the financial services world, mergers and acquisitions. The President is Lebanese, as are two other trustees. One Asian, a couple of Indians, one African-American. Zero LatinX.

Let's Compare the Student Populations

Northeastern: 6% LatinX, 4% African-American; Board Zero LatinX,1 African-American
Mills College: 34% LatinX, 18% African-American; Board Zero people of color (outside of the names in the original legal complaint).

Source: Mills College

Northeastern ranks #912 in the country for racial-ethnic diversity. Mills ranks #112.

What Was Once An Institute Can Now Be A Center

After our [last post](https://ecency.com/politics/@millsforever/16-fuck-your-independence-hillman) pointing out Northeastern's multiple existing Institutes for Racial and Social Justice, President Hillman has now updated her plan to be a Center. Is this how Northeastern University's Mills Center for Racial and Social Justice and Women's Leadership plans to carry Mills College's 17 decade legacy into the future? At the direction of a bunch of bankers and lawyers operating in secret, with zero diversity and stakeholder inclusion that is just window dressing.

The promoters of this tragic plan are committing the ultimate injustice of giving our independence up, and what Mills means to all of our communities...so that a handful of rich, white, predators can extract maximum value from the assets. "Come to us, we can teach you how to sell out your heritage". Perhaps there is a lot of money in the world for such a Center.

Tell us again who is asking for this deal. The students? The alumnae? The faculty? The staff? We know now it's not every member on the Board - just enough (presumaby) to get the votes through. If some Trustees are claiming under oath in Court that they do not have the information they require to fulfil their fiduciary duties...then what does that say about the other trustees? Are they privy to different information from the Alumna Trustees? How can the same Board make the same decision without the same information? Is their fiduciary duty to the College (allegedly going broke), or to the Endowment (flourishing)?

Northeastern has high academic standards, low admission rates, and high tuition They sell a lot of graduate programs to foreigners. And they are rich. So why can't Mills College do that? It's a proven model that is working for all Mills' competitors, and worked for Mills in the past too.

Why can't Mills College keep its existing owner - itself - and just get a new manager who can do the job? Why does it have to keep the same incompetent manager and get a new owner? It's obvious to everyone that the managers are causing this situation. I mean who in their right mind would announce pay rises during a time of financial emergency when negotiations with a potential partner are only at the beginning of the beginning?

President Hillman email July 6 2021:

"we will begin discussions...in the weeks ahead"
"given our progress toward an alliance with Northeastern University and our Board of Trustees' support for further development of the alliance, we now feel confident in implementing soon a staff and faculty compensation plan that will be retroactive to July 1, 2021".

There is no possible way for both of these statements to be true at the same time. How could you feel so confident about #2 before #1 has even begun?

Was the faculty's vote of No Confidence a factor in this seemingly reckless maneuver? Hillman felt a statement of confidence was required? Or is this a con job?

Source: Investopedia

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