Bennington College Ghosts

 

Bennington College
Ghosts, Crimes & Cover Ups

How does a small liberal arts college in one of the smallest and safest states in the U.S with less then 800 students lose 7 students in suspicious deaths in less the 10 years? Far above the statistical norm even for universities with ten times the student body as Bennington.

Why did Shirley Jackson base The Haunting of Hill House off the Jennings Mansion and then her subsequent novel Hangsaman on the disappearance at Bennington College of student  Paula Jean Welden? Why in this day of sophisticated forensic science when we are pulling up dinosaur bones and ancient cities in the Amazon jungle with satellite imagery is her body still unfound?
Her disappearance was so controversial it led to the formation of the Vermont State Police. Even in 1946, there was legitimate concerns the college may have had undue influence on the local Sheriff's department. It's not good for enrollment if a young girl can't walk safely on your campus.

Well dear reader, this author was able to speak with former high level officials in Student Life, Campus Safety (since passed from cancer), and Communications at Bennington College. We also spoke with past alumni, retired members of the local police department and EMS. People who did not know each other or work together but in whom all stories shared similarities.
The one similarity is the desire to remain anonymous. Why would someone dying from cancer care about remaining anonymous? Why would someone retired, now living on the west coast far from the reach of the college care about remaining anonymous? Why would a retired police officer want to talk to us about things that happened years ago that are over and done with? Why are former students so protective of the college unless they themselves were victims?

It's because they are all haunted by what they observed, did or didn't do or were unable to do. And because they all fear the litigious nature of Bennington College.

So where do we begin? Well let us start off with some math. Currently Bennington College has 785 students. They have 17 senior staff members all making six figure incomes and most of whom have a entire network of staff. In comparison, the University of Vermont has 11,400 students with 15 senior staff members. 15 times the amount of students with less senior executive level staff. Why does Bennington College charge  $84,959 a year? A whole five thousand dollars more then Harvard and a thousand more then Yale? How is it that a college that doesn't even provide grades charges more then the two most preeminent universities in the world. Universities that have produced some of the greatest minds who have enabled humanity to walk on the moon and so many other things costs less then some tiny liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere Vermont who doesn't even give their students grades. Why is that? Do they have particle accelerators at Bennington College? No. Do the greatest writers of our time teach there? No.  Any Pulitzer prize winning scientists or even poets teach there? Nope. 

How does a white collar crime work? Well, in order to be successful you must incentivise those who benefit from your crime and deter those who may regulate your activities or hold you to account. Bernie Madoff fabricated obscene benefits for his powerful investors and bought off the SEC regulators.

What in gods name does this have to do with Bennington College? It's simple when the local fire department has their annual ball allow them to use your facility free of charge, give free lunches to local disadvantaged children and make sure it's heavily covered by the local newspaper showing how magnanimous and charitable you are. They don't need to know the details that your tax deduction compared to the cost will actually net you profit. It's called gaining leverage. It's difficult to write negative articles about a institution you are on record praising, especially if you attend cocktail parties at their expense. A freedom of information act request showed that there were over 40 overdose medical calls at Bennington College in one year alone with no arrests made . Pretty staggering for 785 students.

And that gets us to why alumni are so protective of the college. It's a playground for the children of the wealthy, they can deal drugs, consume drugs, rape and assault with absolute impunity. There are no checks and balances on their behavior especially if the college has reason to believe their family may donate money at some point. Well what about the disciplinary process? Well the college says it's not about the rule of law and security, it's about harm reduction. We don't want to traumatize the students by having active shooter drills or putting access control and CCTV systems in and make the college look like a prison. So if you drive up College Drive on a late fall evening you can drive right past the Campus Safety office without checking in to anything, drive down 1st or 2nd Street and you'll find plenty of dorm doors or windows propped open you can just walk right into. There is no surveillance of any kind to mark your passing. This atmosphere makes the campus a easy target for drug dealers, it makes extreme hazing easy to conceal. Alumni report hazing that has included acid burns and other even darker things involving involuntary sexual favors. It makes investigating facts very difficult when all of your evidence is based off of he said she said allegations. The college administrators want this. They don't want to kick out the serial rapist who's father is a famous billionaire. If they did that then no donation from the family. Especially if say the victim is a poor international student on a scholarship. They won't fight back because they are desperate to stay in the country. And by the way how is it that a school more expensive then Harvard and Yale forces students to pay out of pocket to see a mental health counselor even though they are required to purchase the colleges insurance? Insurance that does not cover counseling. So if you're the victim of sexual assault you must pay out of pocket to talk to a professional on campus about it. But I degress, by all accounts those who remember their time at Bennington with such fondness and are so protective of it were the ones conducting the assaults, dealing the drugs, receiving the sexual favors and organizing the hazing.

And how to you deter those who may be charged with regulating you? Well simple, 1st you don't give them the tools to do their job. A insurance underwriter for Bennington College reported that they were the only college left in the United States with zero CCTV systems. 2nd you hire people not exactly qualified for the position they are in. Do this in Security and they will be compelled to be complicit in your crime or they chance losing a good paying job they were never qualified to have in the first place. The current Director of Campus Safety is a woodworker and former school principal with absolutely no credentials in investigations, crime prevention, victim advocacy, layered security or emergency response. The prior Director of Campus Safety was much the same but had a nasty habit of openly cheating on his wife with students who would exchange sexual favors for making simple write ups disapear. He was also the point man in the cover up of three student deaths. Our sources supplied documentation that he delayed emergency response in order to remove incriminating evidence at crime scenes. He stepped down after 11 years because he failed in doing his due diligence and hired a racist on his staff. The college called for his resignation after the information became public. The Campus Safety staff is currently made up of kids with college degrees in creative writing. Only a few have a small amount of experience doing security at hotels and things like that. They are coached during calls for medical treatment not to tell 911 the age of the victim so the police do not respond as the police are mandated to respond for anyone under 21. There is no training program because there is no one on staff with the credentials to train them.

But enough about them, earlier I mentioned Student Life and Communications so how do they fit into our white collar crime? Easy, when a victim of a crime comes forward Student Life is their point of contact and they do everything in their considerable power to get the victim not to report anything to the police, everything from telling them lies like the police have a higher burden of proof and you have a higher probability of receiving justice if you allow the college to handle things administratively to just straight out saying the police are a bunch of mean white racists. Communications comes into play if you can no longer manipulate the situation say if a young girl hangs herself with two belts in the closet of her dorm room, which happened in the summer of 2019. When this happens Communications calls their contacts at the local newspaper and makes it clear if they want access to college officials, events, donations they will not write anything about the incident and will also deter others from doing so.

So why do all of this? Why would a bunch of individuals who seem so kind, who expound on inclusivity, diversity and acceptance do such things. Tax records show that last year over $6,000,000 went to executive compensation. Six million dollars for a college with 785 students! And that doesn't include the money for retaining the law firm famous for representing former presidents on standby just in case. That's not faculty and staff costs, that's just executive compensation for 17 people. The stories we have been told, the supporting documentation, the ghosts of the children that haunt the men and women who were so happy to get a job at Bennington College not knowing what they'd be asked to do or not do all boil down to that. These people who took these jobs to a person are all haunted by their experiences, you can see it in their eyes, they speak of that place as if they were lucky enough to escape Dracula's Castle. Even the former law enforcement people who have seen all kinds of terrible things talk as if Bennington College is no different then the Sinaloa Drug Cartel or the Mafia but the thing they say makes it worse is it's petina of virtue. Like a spider web glittering with light in the rain it attracts it's victims with it's beauty only to eat many of them alive.

Why write this article?
Sierra Johnson
Unknown named student death
Mira Hambardzumyan
Hadil Marzouq
Emily Kassier
Kelly Muzzi

So that perspective students do not end up like the dead kids listed above who died at Bennington College and received no justice.