Jane Sanders and the Messy Demise of a Vermont College

If Jane O’Meara Sanders had had her way, a stretch of prime real estate here along Lake Champlain would have become a college campus. Instead, it became a cloud lingering over her reputation and her husband’s presidential campaign.  In 2010, as president and would-be savior of Burlington College (VT) — a tiny alternative school in this small offbeat city — Ms. Sanders championed a deal to buy a waterfront spread from the local Roman Catholic diocese. Within a year, she was fired, and the college limped toward obsolescence, buried under debt. Then the story of the failing college turned into a political storm.