23. Failed Leadership Fakes Support With Fake Forum

The first legal match in the battle for Mills College has taken place. The result?

A resounding victory for the Plaintiffs. They get everything they were asking for except a 30 day pause instead of 60 days. The judge imposed a bond of $2500, rather than the $25 million the Hillman team fought for.

Judge Puts Another Pause on Mills College Merger, Allows Financial Document Review

The judge expressed disbelief that the College wouldn't just show the documents to the Trustees who requested to see them.

Now the judge, Attorney General, media, and pretty much the entire world are questioning why President Hillman and the Executive Committee have fought so hard to keep Trustees from seeing the financial justification for their decision to close or ~~sell~~ give away the college.

The Spin Continues

The destruction, blame, and deflection of blame continues. The name of the game is gaslighting, and President Hillman sure is a player.

The Boston news headline "Northeastern to Absorb California Women's College" is now being spun into an "alliance". If Mills College and Northeastern can form an alliance, why can't Mills stay true to its heritage as a women's college? What sort of "ally" asks you to give up the very core of your identity?

If the President and Executive Committee had nothing to hide, there would be no need for the lawsuit in the first place. Now they lost, and in the final seconds on the clock of this 169-year old heritage as a women's college the judge has forced them to hand over the documents they tried so hard not to show for months - in electronic (searchable) form, where copies can be made, and where they can be reviewed by counsel and the specialists hired for the case such as forensic accountants.

If everything was kosher then that should be the end of it. Nothing to worry about, right? The Defendants can be confident that there is nothing important in those documents, indeed some of the Trustees have so much confidence in President Hillman and Trustee Roberts [where is the CFO?] that they have no need to even look at this information! Because there is nothing in there that anyone could possibly find that would be of any significance to Mills College remaining independent and forming "alliances" with whomever it chooses, using a sensible process that ensures only decisions that are in the best interests of the College are being made. Such a process is unnecessary and the suggestion of it is so hurtful to the College that staff pay rises must be held up as punishment.

Instead...the psychological operations continue. What does that tell you?

Professors From Competitors Say "Mills Must Go!"

The latest tactic The Cabal are trying is a double down on last week's desperate attempt to show that there is actually support somewhere for these hastily developed and irreversible plans.

We looked into the Devil's Dozen of Traitorous Trustees who spoke out against the lawsuit seeking transparency in Desperate Defendants Finally Speak.

When you eliminate names of people from that letter who are either in the lawsuit, or actively and illegally interfering in it, there are only two Trustees on the list who can make any claim of independence. This seems like a carefully crafted narrative, designed to deceive and divide. The pattern of manipulation through disinformation is becoming sadly familiar.

The letter from these Trustees was followed up by supplemental declarations of 2 members of the Alumnae of Color Committee of the AAMC who chose to entangle themselves in the legal action - Yvonne Daniel '75, and Estrellita Redus '65.

Source: Defendant's Court Filing

That sure was nice timing for them to become concerned about this a few days before the Defendants are due to show up in Court, conveniently giving them an email that perfectly matches their artificial narrative just in time to be added in with the filing. And nice of Yvonne to keep the President in the loop about the "distribution" too. If this movement was real, why are there only 2 "Different voices" on August 10, if they have been mailing everyone they know about it since July 16?

Yvonne Daniel's love for Mills is so great that she omits large amount of her time there in her various bios, while promoting Smith College and UC Berkeley front and center on her LinkedIn.

Defendant Marilyn Schuster is listed on the Smith College web site as faculty and so is Yvonne Daniel. Schuster and Daniel were both professors at Smith when UCB Chancellor Carol Christ was President there. Isn't that neat! Beth found another Professor Emerita of Smith College to make a statement supporting her plans to stop Mills being a women's college - and therefore removing Mills as a competitor to Smith. Conflict of interest, much?

Imagine our surprise (!) to see this lady Yvonne Daniel popping up driving this latest Hillman info-op - as well as a handful of ladies of similar vintage. They can't get all the alumnae on the Board to sign their letter, they can't even get a majority of the Defendants to make a statement. They can't even find cheerleaders to LARP as "acting for the good of Mills" who support Mills College on their social media profiles.

Nowhere has this been more obvious recently than the Mills College official Facebook page. Some bright spark in the Hillman team thought it would be a good idea to gaslight that the judge's Order in the lawsuit was actually positive for them. It has been quickly ripped apart in the comments, where you will find many, many people specifically expressing their support for the lawsuit. Why are none of these ~~End Mills Coalition~~ "Different Voices" commenting there to argue their case in an open public forum (where criticism of the President gets you removed)?

Read the comments for yourself, there are MANY people saying "I support the lawsuit" and almost nobody who likes the Hillman plan - even if there are a few here and there who seem to have been baffled by bullshit (or seduced by silver).

Source: Mills College official Facebook page

They also took their #FakeNews narrative to LinkedIn, with a similar result of overwhelming support for the lawsuit and transparency. Please go add your comment of support at both LinkedIn and Facebook.

Sure, there are a couple of very prominent cheerleaders on the private Facebook groups, prepared to argue breathlessly for positions that actual members of the Board would probably not be able to articulate when asked. These days their lame attempts to justify increasingly atrocious and deceptive behavior from President Hillman are met with scorn and ridicule. Nobody's buying it.

Forms Are Not Forums

Yvonne's operation was introduced on Facebook as a "forum for alums". It is a "form" not a "forum". It is curated statements, not discussion. There is no requirement to be an alum. The form specifically states that its purpose is to gather support for Northeastern - ie. propaganda for the regime.

Source: Mills College

It is more accurate to say it is all the testimonials they were able to get of people supporting what they are doing to Mills College. It is a stark contrast to the hundreds of letters, postcards and emails Trustees have been receiving from The Resistance.

For every message that does get through, there are surely many expressing the true feelings of the Mills Community that are being censored via this form. Let's hope the Plaintiffs' attorneys can get a hold of all of those.

Is all this faux outrage a blatant attempt to manipulate the Court, influence the Attorney General's investigation and pervert the course of Justice?

Setting aside the anonymous comments, which were in all likelihood made by Defendants and that's why they can't be named, here are the names of the New Betrayers:

Mira Mason-Reader '15 (any relation to Trustee Konda Mason?)
Deidre Visser '94
Cynthia Facer Clark '64
AR Nicholas '79
Gayle Rothrock '68
Susan McKenna '68
Patti Abelov Demoff '68
Savitri Bess '61

Three from the same class. Collusion?

These people support a deal without knowing the terms of it or the reason for it in the first place. They are showing blind faith in the President and Board of Trustees...or are they seeing dollar signs? What is in it for these people? Did they get a free trip to Boston? Were they promised some sort of role in the upcoming "Institute" - perhaps hosting a summer camp? Did their grandchildren get a scholarship, or a guaranteed admission to Northeastern? Any paintings gone missing from the art collection?

Add up the Defendants, people named in the anti-transparency letter who are not involved in the lawsuit, people on this "forum" who are not anonymous, a couple of cheerleaders on Facebook. Do the math, let us know in the comments what you get to. It's not even 30 people. Most of them are from a different demographic of age and race compared to today's Mills College student population, which is a possible explanation for this last minute drive to add some color to the Defendant's arguments.

Mills College has to close forever because of this tiny number of people? What about the wishes of tens of thousands of us that it remain open and try again with #NewLeadership?

And another thing...how can all these people be so convinced that the deal with Northeastern is a good one when they haven't even seen the term sheet, let alone the fine print? This issue undermines the credibility of their statements. They are mouthpieces promoting a transaction and propping up a failed regime. What is in it for them?

CONCLUSION

Every aspect of a deal with the devil sounds great, there's just one little thing...he's the devil. After signing the contract, he will reneg on the terms and it will be too late to do anything to stop him.

Mills College needs to use its endowment to preserve the College, not just preserve the endowment. That's the bottom line here. Ultimately it is better for the endowment too that Mills survive and flourish #ForGenerationsStill.

This Board and this President have failed the College. It is rich in assets and only needs a few hundred more students and a second "Tuition Reset" to fix the Hillman one that turned out to be a disaster. A reset that has sustainability in mind, not someone's political agenda. If that fails, OK, maybe in ten or twenty years the endowment will be exhausted, the treasury will be empty and the only choice left will be to give away the keys to the campus to someone from far away who will reap all the future benefits. At least every stakeholder that has been fighting so hard for the College we love would feel that we were listened to and given a chance to try a better solution. This deal done in darkness, with the weird lurching between UC Berkeley and Northeastern, Smith College voodoo witches cackling behind the scenes as they cook up new schemes to damage the Mills brand...this is not the way the legacy of Susan and Cyrus Mills should finish.

Mills College deserves a chance to thrive like it always has. Before this Board and President set it on its perceived path to destruction, Mills College was on a pathway to glory, it always has been. Mills College's many historic contributions to Oakland, the Bay Area, the Hispanic, Black and LGBTQ communities have earned it the right to continue for 17 decades more.

BONUS - They're Laughing At Us

Richard Vedder, the author of the Forbes article "Being Woke Means Going Broke For Mills College", has just released a podcast talking about Mills:

The host, The Optimistic Curmudgeon, is incredulous that "Colleges like Mills that must charge $50,000 - $70,000 tuition like all these other schools" could be losing money. Mills used to charge that, before President Hillman "reset" the Tuition to a level where revenues would no longer exceed expenses. Northeastern charges that.

UPDATE

Some more names have added themselves to the list of Betrayers of Mills College. If you've been in any of the social media groups you'll notice some of the familiar shills.

Mills alums 4 - Lisa Taylor, Andrea Sc
People who work for them or used to

Former President Janet Holmgren came out against the merger; now former President Alecia DeCoudreaux has come out in support of it. When Alecia was confronted with the prospect of a vote of No Confidence amidst "simmering tensions" from faculty, she did the noble thing and resigned. When Beth Hillman actually received a vote of No Confidence, she shrugged her shoulders and said "fine, I will give the College away to Northeastern and y'all can have 3% payrises as long as no Alumna Trustees ask questions".

**AAMC Betrayers:
**Dawn Cunningham (Board of Governors betrayer)
N.T. Lucy Do (Alumna Trustee betrayer)

**Faculty and Staff:
**Alecia A. DeCoudreaux (former President, resigned facing vote of No Confidence)
Ajuan Mance (Mills Institute designer with Marilyn Schuster)
Wendi Williams
Darcelle Lahr
Joyce Hilton
Alana Guth
Carolyn Sherwood Call
Ellen Spertus
Camille Kaslan
Kate Karniouchina
Ashley Adams

Alums:
Lisa Taylor '84
Andrea Scott '98
Melissa Stevenson Diaz '91
Cheryl Reid-Simons '87

If I had a group called "Save Mills" and I saw one of these people trying to Kill Mills in it posting, I would kick them out immediately. Just sayin'. It is quite obvious that these people are enemies of Mills College. Either useful idiots, in on the scam, or both.

Of course, none of these people know what the terms of the deal with Northeastern are, or what the information the Plaintiffs had that necessitated a lawsuit is. They just know that they are right, and everyone who loves Mills are actually the ones trying to destroy Mills by wanting it to stay independendent. The only way to preserve Mills College's independence is to give the College away to strangers from the East. It sounds logical, if you are completely ignorant of logic. Or if you're familiar with gaslighting, it sounds just like that.

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