Board Puts Hamilton on Immediate Leave of Absence
On August 3, 2007, the New College Board of Trustees announced in a letter posted on a bulletin board outside the Cultural Center that it had unanimously voted to:
- Accept Martin Hamilton’s resignation as President effective September 15.
- Appoint Board member Luis G. Molina as Acting President.
- Direct the Acting President to form a search committee for an Interim President.
That same day, Martin Hamilton wrote a letter of resignation on the official New College blog.
Board Letter
Hamilton’s Resignation Letter
We broke the story. An SSOS member photographed the Board letter on bulletin board at New College. We turned it into a PDF and made it available for download here. We posted a link to Hamilton’s letter of resignation. Overnight, the story became national news. As we obtained more documents, the whole world learned the embarrassing story behind Hamilton’s forced resignation, how he was duped with a variation of the Nigerian scam called “advance fee fraud” by a student pretending to be Nepalese nobility. There were more stories in the press. (For articles, see “Martin Hamilton” Category in right sidebar.)
Then we were hacked.
While disappointed, we were not surprised by yet another dirty trick. So far, New College reads people’s email, censors its blog, and blocks all email ending in @riseup.net in revenge for riseup.net hosting the TNCB list. New College fires people for talking to WASC (at WASC’s request). People at New College harassed and intimated incest survivors after the Healing Forum. Someone from New College trolled the Take New College Back list and sent threatening email to people on the list. SSOS members received harassing email from New College staff. Someone even hacked into my Yahoo! account and changed the password and security question. To me, it was only a question of when, not if, this site would be hacked.
We upgraded to a more secure version of Word Press and a slightly different look. The Secret History of New College and The Leary Scandal are streamlined into single pages, as the sidebar was getting difficult to navigate as the site grew. I apologize to anyone who tried to use the site while it was down, or who linked to a file, only to find that the link no longer works. While we appreciate a link back, feel free to download your own copy of any PDF here. They are all public domain unless otherwise noted.
