2008 Woodie Awards
Speaker does not reflect College values
Issue date: 3/30/06 Section: Opinions
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Given the College's commitments to international studies and civic engagement, as well as its location in rural Vermont, the choice of Ann Veneman ["Veneman To Address Grads," March 16] as commencement speaker would seem an inspired one: she was raised on a "family farm in a small rural community" and became the first woman to serve as Secretary of Agriculture, from 2001 to 2005, before her most recent appointment as Executive Director of UNICEF. (It should be said, however, that the "small rural community" was outside Modesto, Calif., an agribusiness hub whose current population exceeds 200,000, and that the patriarch of the "family farm" represented Stanislaus in the California Assembly and later served as an undersecretary in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare under President Nixon.)
After some reflection, however, we are concerned that the choice is inconsistent with the values of the College and with the values of most Vermonters. Those who applaud the College's efforts to support local farms, for example, will find her long association with agribusiness and genetically modified foods troubling, to say the least. Between her tenure as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture in the first President Bush administration and her appointment as Secretary of the California Food and Agriculture Department in the mid 1990s, for example, she served on the board of directors at Calgene, and represented the interests of Dole Foods in Washington. Later, as Secretary of Agriculture, she would receive a joint letter from the members of Vermont's Congressional delegation, who cited the treatment of dairy farmers as an example of the administration's "farmer unfriendly" policies.
Environmentalists will likewise be troubled that, in her role as overseer of the United States Forest Service, she led the administration's efforts to reverse the Clinton administration's protection of 60 million acres of public lands from road construction, logging and other development. As an editorial in the Washington Post (July 16, 2004) noted, the new policies, intended to ease land use restrictions, "would … eviscerate protections for some of the country's last unspoiled wilderness."
After some reflection, however, we are concerned that the choice is inconsistent with the values of the College and with the values of most Vermonters. Those who applaud the College's efforts to support local farms, for example, will find her long association with agribusiness and genetically modified foods troubling, to say the least. Between her tenure as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture in the first President Bush administration and her appointment as Secretary of the California Food and Agriculture Department in the mid 1990s, for example, she served on the board of directors at Calgene, and represented the interests of Dole Foods in Washington. Later, as Secretary of Agriculture, she would receive a joint letter from the members of Vermont's Congressional delegation, who cited the treatment of dairy farmers as an example of the administration's "farmer unfriendly" policies.
Environmentalists will likewise be troubled that, in her role as overseer of the United States Forest Service, she led the administration's efforts to reverse the Clinton administration's protection of 60 million acres of public lands from road construction, logging and other development. As an editorial in the Washington Post (July 16, 2004) noted, the new policies, intended to ease land use restrictions, "would … eviscerate protections for some of the country's last unspoiled wilderness."