For those acting like this was a knee-jerk reaction by the college based on some tenuous connection between a dude who thought vasectomies sounded neat and forced sterilization programs, I encourage you to read the variety of historical sources that the college considered in depth when arriving at the decision (discussed in the campus newspaper article). I’ve excerpted a relevant section discussing Mead below, from an article published by the Vermont Historical Society titled “Segregation or Sterilization”: Eugenics in the 1912 Vermont State Legislative Session:
By the end of the 1910s, Vermont’s government was sufficiently well versed in the issues of “degeneracy” to officially consider a eugenical solution. Governor Mead went above and beyond in crafting his official call to action, having “endeavored during the last two years to inform [himself] thoroughly” by gathering information from the “most progressive states” and Vermont’s own institutions. Prior to becoming governor, Mead worked as a doctor and served as the state’s surgeon general under Governor Redfield Proctor (1878–1880). This background gave him a solid academic grounding to under- stand eugenics, if not an introduction to the field itself.
Mead confidently informed the joint assembly of the legislature that state research confirmed that the degenerate class was “increasing out of all proportion to the normal class of the population.” He presented the growth as the result of tainted intermarriage: It was a “fact that if a defective marry a defective, as is very often the case, the offspring will inherit the taints of both parents.” Indeed, “many of the confirmed inebriates, prostitutes, tramps, and criminals that [filled Vermont’s] penitentiaries, jails, asylums, and poor farms are the results of these defective parents,” with “little or no hope of permanent recovery.” The only question that now remained was “how best to restrain this defective class and how best to restrict the propagation of defective children.”
The governor proposed three eugenical solutions for the legislature that drew from existing public policies and institutional practices. In addressing the assembly, he said:
Let us consider this matter upon these facts:
The fact of the great number of public charges recruited from the defective classes.
The fact that defects, physical and mental, are transmitted to the offspring.
The fact that if a defective marry a defective, as is very often the case, the offspring will inherit the taints of both parents. That this class is prolific, knowing no law of self-restraint, and consequently defectives are increasing in numbers and are of a more pronounced type. What can be done to protect society from these unfortunates and what to protect them from themselves?
jafarinajar t1_jdxz3gh wrote
Reply to Former governor Jim Douglas sues Middlebury College over chapel name removal by flounder19
For those acting like this was a knee-jerk reaction by the college based on some tenuous connection between a dude who thought vasectomies sounded neat and forced sterilization programs, I encourage you to read the variety of historical sources that the college considered in depth when arriving at the decision (discussed in the campus newspaper article). I’ve excerpted a relevant section discussing Mead below, from an article published by the Vermont Historical Society titled “Segregation or Sterilization”: Eugenics in the 1912 Vermont State Legislative Session:
By the end of the 1910s, Vermont’s government was sufficiently well versed in the issues of “degeneracy” to officially consider a eugenical solution. Governor Mead went above and beyond in crafting his official call to action, having “endeavored during the last two years to inform [himself] thoroughly” by gathering information from the “most progressive states” and Vermont’s own institutions. Prior to becoming governor, Mead worked as a doctor and served as the state’s surgeon general under Governor Redfield Proctor (1878–1880). This background gave him a solid academic grounding to under- stand eugenics, if not an introduction to the field itself.
Mead confidently informed the joint assembly of the legislature that state research confirmed that the degenerate class was “increasing out of all proportion to the normal class of the population.” He presented the growth as the result of tainted intermarriage: It was a “fact that if a defective marry a defective, as is very often the case, the offspring will inherit the taints of both parents.” Indeed, “many of the confirmed inebriates, prostitutes, tramps, and criminals that [filled Vermont’s] penitentiaries, jails, asylums, and poor farms are the results of these defective parents,” with “little or no hope of permanent recovery.” The only question that now remained was “how best to restrain this defective class and how best to restrict the propagation of defective children.”
The governor proposed three eugenical solutions for the legislature that drew from existing public policies and institutional practices. In addressing the assembly, he said:
Let us consider this matter upon these facts: