The Futures Committee report was a twenty-thousand-word document, ninety percent of it written by Gail Parker, the rest by Welter. When I went to Bennington this year, I talked to Welter and Gail Parker and they were almost ingenuous about their relationship. Darman believed there was nothing wrong with democracy; the mistake was to think of democracy as a naïve, idealized process that did not include political maneuvering. I was still with a bunch of twenty-one-year-olds who’d just graduated from Bennington. See, I thought Bret would get viewed not as a writer, but as a commentator on the sorry state of things today. Really, is a straight man ever going to write a book that revolves around male prostitution? DONNA TARTT, Letter to the Editor, New York Times, 11/13/94: Though Elizabeth Coleman seems to feel that Bennington had been plunged into some sort of intellectual dark age before it was graced with her arrival, it was an electric and magical place during my years there… As a novelist, I learned my craft in large part from the literary academics (Richard Tristman, Maura Spiegel, Claude Fredericks) whom she has seen fit to dismiss… [I]t is tragic to witness how Coleman’s ignorant tinkering has destroyed this rare and delicate environment. Lola Duffort is VTDigger's education reporter. BRET EASTON ELLIS: The book was perfectly formed. Eventually, at the urging of Jessie Emmet, the dignified chairman of the board of trustees, Gail Parker asked him to come see her. But Vermont was engaged in low fertility much sooner,” Grawe said. She’d name some town in Mississippi, as if we all knew where it was—like, “I’m from East Bumfuck, and it’s just outside What’s-Your-Face”—and we’d all nod, just to be polite, to not engage in deeper conversation. JONATHAN LETHEM: Madi had a zine called Madi’s Mail Club. And lo and behold, Donna calls me in my little slum apartment. But this was not exactly the case. She camped out at Woodstock and protested the Vietnam War. BRIXTON SMITH START: I left school in December. BRET EASTON ELLIS, CLASS OF ’86; WRITER: The shock of arriving on campus in the fall of 1982 was enormous. But it was time for the college to take a good look at itself. Like everyone else at Bennington, he first read about the Futures report in the Bennington Banner, the town paper. It abandoned a promising effort she had undertaken to sell some of its new land to improve its finances, interviews show. (I was wearing a baggy sweater and trousers, no makeup, and my customary shapeless gray tweed coat. You should stop right now.” Bret convinced her to show it to Joe. “I was overcome,” she recalls. MATT JACOBSEN: I called my mother and said, “I’ve been caricatured in a book, and my character gets killed.” And she said, “No, no. The tradition of sexual freedom at Bennington has extended to faculty-student relationships as well. The committee was composed of three students, three faculty members, one alumna and three trustees—including painter Helen Frankenthaler and Time Inc. board chairman Andrew Heiskell. BRET EASTON ELLIS: I was more often in Jay’s crowd than he was in mine. . In a funny sense, it was graduation day for me. AMY HERSKOVITZ: Bret would get a room at the Carlyle. In interviews and emails, Ms. Sanders expressed frustration at her dismissal and the college’s failure to continue her rescue plan. The cy pres agreement would be part of a court ordered settlement and the distribution could be decided by a cy pres committee or designated court appointed official. Tom Parker negotiated a settlement in the neighborhood of $110,000, including the use of their house at Bennington until July, 1976. AMY HERSKOVITZ: It was Jay, of course, and Gary [Fisketjon, editor at Knopf] and Morgan. “It’s a small and rather isolated spot,” says trustee Andrew Heiskell, “where a small number of people live continually and close together. In many ways, what ails Vermont’s colleges is what ails the rest of the state – too few young people. Only then do three guys in their daddies’ rumpled sport coats appear to be Oxonians. Years later, he went back, and said, “Okay, now I’d like to publish them,” and Bob said, “The moment’s passed. And when Simon & Schuster offered me $5,000 for the book [From Rockaway], he said, “Don’t agree to anything until you get an agent.” Later, Joe’s agent, Mort Janklow, got Knopf to pay $20,000. DONNA TARTT, LETTER TO JONATHAN LETHEM, DATED FEBRUARY 25, 1983: Paul & I were almost kicked out of our lodgings last Tuesday. Part of it had to do with not having run anything before. JAY McINERNEY: Jim [a lawyer, not out professionally] was around for a long time before he was acknowledged as the boyfriend. On November 18, as she rode the train to New York for the trustees’ meeting that afternoon, Gail Parker drafted a resolution for the board to issue. This girl who had a crush on Bret somehow got a pair of Trey’s underwear and gave them to Bret as a gift. JONATHAN LETHEM: Before she died, my mother gave me a typewriter. My strongest memories are of my first two or three days. (The student played down the argument in a letter to the board that was reviewed by The Times.). I thought she was sweet. That’s a lesson learned from Burlington College, which closed so abruptly in 2016 that the Agency of Education had to step in and spend thousands in taxpayer funds to organize and take custody of the records.