Bennington College Essay

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Bennington College is a private, nonsectarian liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont. It is known for being “avant-garde” and having many scandals yet fosters an environment where the purest form of creativity is developed and cultivated. Staff and professors achieved this reputation by allowing students to “reinvent themselves,” there were no exams or quizzes and “from the first day on campus, students were considered novice scholars and artists, then pushed to improve” (Edmundson, 1994). Professors acted as examples showing his or her own works in progress, and were not afraid to fail alongside their students (Edmundson, 1994). However, as the tenured professors grew older and became less inclined to let creativity blossom, this …show more content…

She already possessed position power from being the president, but she took the academic aspects of the college into her realm of power as well. By controlling who was hired and fired, she automatically controlled the atmosphere of the college because professors make up the entire dynamic of an institution. Pfeffer states that when someone can control the resources they have effective power over everyone else (2009). When jobs became a scarce resource, professors had to think about their loyalty to Coleman and to Bennington. Pfeffer believes that loyalty can be more important than qualifications; Coleman might have used this mindset when choosing who to hire and fire (2009). By firing professors that did not follow Coleman’s ideology and hiring new professors that would uphold the Bennington spirit, along with be loyal to Coleman, she was able to control almost all aspects of the school. These loyal professors now became allies to Coleman and would help her implement her ideas about changing the current state of the school. She became the central person that everyone had to communicate with to get tasks done. Although this can cause inefficiencies, it was a way for her to make sure that the beginning stages were executed according to

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