Jane Sanders and Burlington College Create a Liability for Bernie

Bernie Sanders may be popular on college campuses, but a small private school in Vermont that his wife Jane ran for seven years recently announced that it will close because of "the crushing weight" of debt incurred under the candidate's wife's time as its president.

Burlington College, which is located in the same town where Mr. Sanders once served as Mayor, from 1981-89, said its fiscal problems are related to a 2010 purchase of 32 acres of lakefront property from a Roman Catholic church diocese, which was to aid an expansion proposed by Mrs. Sanders.

The $10 million price tag was financed by loans and bonds. CNN reported that a bank loan application Mrs. Sanders signed grossly overstated the amount of pledged donations to Burlington College when financing the land. Mrs. Sanders also raised tuition to help finance the failed expansion.

According to the Washington Post, the school was put on academic probation in 2014 by its accrediting agency (which it needs to receive federal funds), while it faced cash flow problems owed to the imminent loss of a credit line from its bank. Attempts to sell off the land in order to remain solvent were unsuccessful, leading to its closure.

Jane Sanders served as the school's president from 2004 until 2011, when she stepped down during a reported clash with the school’s board. She was awarded a $200,000 severance package on her exit.

The story is problematic for Sanders' narrative on several levels, the most obvious being that the story of a college raising tuition in order to attempt an ill-conceived expansion and then paying out a six-figure golden parachute to the exiting president is just the sort of thing the candidate regularly rails against, when decrying a rigged economy that works for a few at the expense of the many.

It also lends weight to his critics' arguments that many of the ideas for social welfare programs that he has proposed with little detail, may be attractive on the surface but are doomed to be overly-expensive and would ultimately fail. Attacks like Bernie's plan for free college tuition would end just like Burlington College, would practically write themselves, were he the nominee.