Letter to the editor: Vermont College of Fine Arts plan is baffling

Letter to the Editor • VT Digger on February 17, 2023 • Original Source

I write to express my intense sadness and utter bafflement at Vermont College of Fine Arts’ current plan to relocate its graduate residencies to Colorado.

What does that even mean, for Vermomnt College of Fine Arts to move to Colorado? I’m intensely sad and utterly baffled. 

I write as a stakeholder in the future of Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, where I earned my master of fine arts degree in film in 2019. I am not writing on anyone else’s behalf, but I know there are countless members of the VCFA community who share my feelings. We’re not hard to find. 

I don’t describe myself as a “stakeholder” very often. It sounds so formal, so corporate. I suppose I am a stakeholder in my family: my partner, our two children, our dog, and our home. I’m a stakeholder in my place of employment — I’m an associate teaching professor and current program director of screen studies at Clark University. I guess I reserve the label “stakeholder” for entities of massive, life-altering, atom-smashing personal importance to my life. So, I take my status as a stakeholder very seriously.  

Thinking about VCFA’s plan — made without input from alumnx, faculty, staff, or the residents of Montpelier — I can’t help but wonder what sort of prospective student will ever, in a million years, apply to a low-residency graduate school that is likely to adopt a different name, relocate to a different region, or close its doors altogether in the next two years. 

I can’t imagine ever recommending VCFA, in its current configuration, to any current students or recent graduates of Clark University. 

Hilariously titled “Residencies Reimagined,'' the plan begs the question: “From whose imagination did this spring?” None of the progressive film faculty and students I met and got to know at VCFA would ever conjure a scheme to relocate VCFA’s residencies to a conservative enclave in a Midwestern state. None of them expressed a desire for our residencies to be held simultaneously with VCFA’s other programs.

I have nothing against Colorado. I’ve never even been there. I hear it’s quite lovely. I also have nothing against the other wonderful programs at Vermont College of Fine Arts. However, I attended VCFA because it’s in Vermont. I wouldn’t have attended if it was in Colorado. 

I have two small children. I work in Worcester, Massachusetts. There are plenty of other schools in New England. Maybe you’ve heard of them. 

Similarly, I attended VCFA because I knew I’d be surrounded by film students and faculty, and not bombarded by incessant chattering about synergy, networking, multi-this, and post-that. I loved VCFA as it was. Everyone did. 

I hope President Leslie Ward and the board of trustees will reconsider this destructive plan and reverse course. 

​Soren Sorensen

Associate teaching professor and program director of screen studies
Department of Visual and Performing Arts
Clark University
Worcester, Massachusetts