by Robert Muldoon
When Bates College did not release its admissions applications figures this March or April — as it does annually, like clockwork — I grew concerned. Did I have some small role in this omission?
When I wrote “Can a White Alum Write About a Black Alum at a Liberal Arts College?” in the American Spectator (Dec 2023), I mostly hoped Bates would allow me to tell the story of Thomas Seth Bruce, Class of 1898, an all-time athlete and civil rights leader.
But I also wanted to hold Bates accountable. To me, Bates’ steadfast refusal telegraphed how empty was their lofty rhetoric about the value of their vaunted liberal arts education ($89,930 single fee, or annual tuition)
Bates relentlessly champions its grads as “sustained by a love of learning and a commitment to responsible stewardship of the wider world.” The mission statement trumpets the “emancipating potential of the liberal arts” and “the transformative power of our differences.” Bates forever emphasizes that its grads are lifetime learners who adapt to changing times.
But Bates’ stubborn refusal to allow me to profile a black grad, after profiling four white grads of that same era, put the lie to all the highfalutin blather. Bates insisted that the subject was “deceptively complex.” When I protested that I had often written about blacks in national magazines and newspapers, they doubled down.
“Who else you got?” Bates countered, before unceremoniously severing all communications.
If Bates didn’t trust one of its degree-holders to adapt, what was the value of the ballyhooed Bates degree? Bates didn’t care a whit that I had been published in Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, and The Boston Globe. My story expressed the bitter irony that the college devalues its own degree.
Two months before all this, a mass shooting occurred in Lewiston, ME where Bates is located. In October 2023, 18 were killed and 13 wounded at a bowling alley near campus. Lewiston and Bates were in lockdown for days.
Bates has not addressed the impact of that horrific event. But in March or April annually, they mostly always trumpet “record” applications. In March 2024, “the largest applicant pool in college’s history, totaling 10,029, marking the third straight year of record-high applications,” Bates gushed.
But this year—by late-May—there is silence. Is Bates suddenly hiding its lamp under a bushel?
Meanwhile rival Maine schools Colby and Bowdoin continue their streaks. Colby announced in mid-April: “A record-breaking 20,144 students have applied to Colby, the largest applicant pool in the history of the College.”
In February, Bowdoin announced: “over 14,000 applications for the Class of 2029—the highest number in the College’s history.” Both schools, like Bates before, are building on years of record applications.
Weeks after my story, another alum Roy Matthews wrote a piece in The Federalist: “Bates College Faculty Subjected to ‘Toxic’ DEI Struggle Sessions by Administrators.” It reported that “Keith Taylor, a lecturer in Bates’ geology department…was fired earlier this year for asking a student to provide examples defending their assertion that Bates was a bastion of white supremacy.”
The story also cited professor Loring Danforth, who was reprimanded by Dean of Faculty Malcolm Hill and the DEI Office for asking Socratic questions about a student’s claim that “Bates was on stolen Penobscot land.”
After Bates hired a new Communications VP this year, I renewed my efforts to profile T.S. Bruce, complaining that Jay Burns, the Magazine’s editor, insisted it was “deceptively complex,” before ghosting me, an established freelancer and alum. Kristen Lainsbury, the new spokeswoman, refused to break the impasse.
But, John Murray, the editor of The Waterbury Observer, has entrusted me to write a dozen articles on black subjects and interviewing their families. Murray values my “Bates smarts”—even as Bates doesn’t. Our series on cold case murders was nominated by Connecticut State Police for the Mitchell W. Pearlman Freedom of Information Award. Oh, Murray went to UCONN.
Alas, few at Bates now will ever know about T.S. Bruce, who once scored more points in track than the rest of the team combined; publicly confronted racism in Kennebunkport and Cambridge while a student; lectured internationally; and whose 1913 obituary reads: “His work among colored people was recognized as being second only to Booker T. Washington.”
Bates faces structural disadvantages that its New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) peers don’t. It is land-locked so growth is difficult and expensive; the endowment is less than 12.5% of Williams and Amherst; the athletic facilities are inadequate; and Lewiston is often perceived as a down-at-the-heels mill town. These are severe headwinds.
Yes, Bates is in fast company, and so the self-inflicted wounds pile on the difficulties. With college age students dwindling, many schools are in an existential fight—a fight lost already lost at Wells College in New York, and scores of others.
All the while, Bates’ Office of Communications rests on its laurels—offering a steady diet of features like one that vividly describes objects in the library’s “Lost and Found.” The alumni magazine, chock-a-block full of random facts, reads like David Wallechinsky’s “Book of Lists.”
Two falls ago, President Garry Jenkins arrived, and became an Instagram star at campus events. While decrying the shabby athletic facilities, he has yet to launch a major initiative or address the culture outlined in national magazines. Bates is too busy congratulating itself—and avoiding bad news.
Harvard renamed its DEI Office to “Community and Campus Life.” Michigan closed its office. At Bates, the “Equity and Inclusion” Office is safe and secure—bloating budgets as tuitions rise. Who knows if Bates will keep desperately needed National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation grants?
If whites can’t write about blacks, professors can’t use Socratic dialogue, and applications are spiked in tough times, then is Bates offering a worthy liberal arts education? If transparency eventually prevails, then maybe the application figures will be published before the Class of 2029 arrives in August.
Better late than never.
Robert Muldoon is a 1981 Bates alumnus and career journalist.
