Back to School

or Fanatics on Parade

The first building on the campus of what’s now the University of Vermont.

If you were around, as I was, in October of 1963, you likely remember the adoption of the system of two-letter abbreviations for each of the 50 states by the United States Postal Service (USPS), the system that’s still in use today. As a result, there’s consternation in some corners over the fact that the University of Vermont goes by the designation UVM, even though the abbreviation for the state of Vermont is VT. This is more than mere intellectual snubbery, which is not to suggest the folks at UVM are above that.

snubbery (noun): the act or practice of snubbing—ignoring, dismissing, or treating someone with deliberate rudeness or contempt

The University of Vermont has been called UVM since the early 1800s. But its history dates back well before that.

It was founded in 1791, the same year Vermont became the 14th state. While it wasn’t as dedicated to political ideology as it is today, the first name of the institution was simply SCHOOL (State College of Herpetology, Ornithology, Or Liberalism). Its first president, Daniel C. Sanders, was hired in 1800. Since the student body consisted of just three people at that time, two of whom commuted from Plattsburgh, New York, across Lake Champlain on a raft, Sanders was the sole faculty member for seven years. No one knows what happened there between 1791 and 1800.

During his tenure, Sanders decided the school could attract less attention to its curriculum’s concentration on snakes if it eliminated herpetology from its name. So, he changed it to the University of Venom and abbreviated the name as UVM. That worked until student enrollment grew to the point at which the school had to build a cafeteria. The trash from the cafeteria attracted rats, which were eaten by the snakes. And Sanders recognized another opportunity: Since the school was now infested with rats, he could do way with all allusions or references to snakes by adopting the name the University of Vermin while retaining UVM as its abbreviation.

For his brilliance and ingenuity, a statue of Sanders was erected on campus.

“A snake in the hand is worth a rat in the other hand.”

The Father of Innovation

The University of Vermont's second president was Samuel Austin. He was elected by a committee of exterminators on March 18, 1815, when UVM reopened after student protests shut it down during the War of 1812. Born in 1760, Austin was a native of New Haven, Connecticut, graduated from Yale University, and was an ordained minister. Given his level of refinement, he realized the rarefied sensibilities of UVM couldn’t possibly be upheld if faculty members and students were consigned to writing on paper. So, he changed the name of the institution to the University of Vellum and retained UVM as its abbreviation.

Vellum had originally been made from calfskin. But since the snakes at UVM hadn’t eradicated the institution’s rat problem — and since Sam Austin was nothing if not innovative — he determined vellum could be made from rat skin, and no one would be the wiser. He then founded UVM’s Biology Department, in which rats were dissected for anatomical studies. He followed that by founding the College of Art (later becoming the College of Arts and Sciences, which includes Biology) and introduced vellum-making as its first program of study, using the skins from the dissected rats.

As a result, Sam was named The Father of Innovation by VEST (Vermont Exterminators Sacred Trust), which had a statue of him erected on campus.

“There’s more than one way to skin a rat.”

Political Controversy

The first time Political Science was formally offered in the UVM course catalogue was in the 1954–1955 school year. Political Science as a field of study was added as a department in the College of Arts and Sciences. Specific offerings included Introduction to Liberalism, Liberalism 101, Libs ‘R’ Us, Advanced Liberalism, Adventures in Liberalism, Liberalism or Bust, The Liberal Utopia, and Last Train to Liberalism.

Despite — or perhaps because of — the liberal leanings of UVM and the state of Vermont, one incident in the history of UVM’s Political Science Department stands out: In the fall of 1970, an avowed Marxist, leftist activist, operatic counter tenor, and convicted anti-Vietnam-war activist was appointed to the Political Science Department at UVM. His name was Michael Parenti.

Prior to his appointment at UVM, Parenti had been on the faculty at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. While there, he’d participated in a student-led anti-war protest linked to reactions over the shootings at Kent State University. He was arrested. Shortly after being released on bond, he got the appointment at UVM. But the following month, he was convicted on three counts of assaulting a state trooper with a tire iron at the Kent State protest and released on two years’ parole; although, in a statement, Parenti contended he’d worn the wrong glasses on the day of the protest and the trooper “bore a striking resemblance to a lug nut.” He never confirmed or denied whether he’d intended striking to be a pun in that statement.

That December (1971), UVM’s Political Science Department voted unanimously to renew his teaching contract. But the UVM board of trustees and Felix Plotkin, the one conservative who managed to sneak into the state legislature in the People’s Republic of Vermont, intervened and insisted on letting Parenti’s contract expire, citing Parenti's unprofessional conduct in holding the tire iron cross-handed.

Parenti passed away on January 24th of this year. But a statue was erected in his honor on the UVM campus by SAPS (Students Against Peaceful Subversion).

“The best teachers teach by example, even if it’s criminally irrational.”

Coherence is Overrated

Aside from bucking the USPS and celebrating Michael Parenti’s mishandling of a tire iron, UVM has a long history of campus controversies, rooted in student activism, liberalism, Utopian fantasies, jerking knees, incorrigible naïveté, and whining — a lot of whining. The last several years alone have seen incidents such as:

1. The 2018 Waterman Building takeover

2. The investigation of allegations of antisemitism on the part of then-president Suresh Garimella in 2022

3. The 2024 Students for Justice in Palestine encampment that saw neither irony nor incongruity relative to #2

4. The 2025 hiring of UVM’s new leadership team from Boise State University, in which UVM’s students, who don’t support law enforcement, protested against the new leadership team for allegedly violating the First Amendment rights of a coffee shop owner who supported law enforcement, once again seeing neither irony nor incongruity in their actions.

Reality … is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays. (Aldous Huxley)

Regardless of that happens at UVM, the ability to deny reality doesn’t equate to the ability to defy it.

Nor does it justify fanaticism.