From Boise to Burlington: UVM’s New Leadership Team and the Controversies That Followed Them
A federal lawsuit, a First Amendment violation, and sworn allegations of evading public records laws defined the tenure of UVM’s new president and her top aides at Boise State.
When University of Vermont President Marlene Tromp announced the hiring of Lauren Griswold as the new Chief Communications and Marketing Officer in October 2025, she praised her as an “integral member of my leadership team at two previous institutions.” The announcement marked a significant moment: the reunification of a core administrative team that had previously run Boise State University (BSU) in Idaho.
President Tromp, who took office in the summer of 2025, had already brought on another key BSU colleague, Alicia Estey, as UVM’s Vice President for Finance and Administration in June.
The official UVM announcements lauded the new leadership, with Tromp’s biography crediting her with “shattering” records in graduation, research, and philanthropy at BSU. What was not mentioned, and what has been almost entirely absent from the public discourse in Vermont, is the turbulent and legally costly history this team shares—a history that culminated in a unanimous jury finding that one of UVM’s new vice presidents violated the First Amendment and sworn allegations that its new communications chief deliberately evaded public records laws.
As the team that weathered these storms in Idaho reconvenes in Vermont, a fuller picture of their past conduct is essential for the university community and the state to understand who is now at the helm.
Anatomy of a Lawsuit: The Big City Coffee Case
The most significant controversy centers on a multi-million dollar federal lawsuit, Big City Coffee v. Boise State Administrators.
In September 2020, a local shop owned by Sarah Fendley opened on the BSU campus. According to reporting from Fox Business and other outlets, Fendley was known for her public support of law enforcement, including displaying a “Thin Blue Line” sticker. Amid the national tensions following the murder of George Floyd, student activists protested, arguing the symbol was a counter-movement to Black Lives Matter and its presence on campus was harmful.
On October 22, 2020, Fendley was called into a meeting with senior administrators. President Tromp did not attend, but, according to her later testimony, dispatched her Chief of Staff to “help come up with a strategic resolution.” That Chief of Staff was Alicia Estey, who is now UVM’s Vice President for Finance and Administration.
Shortly after the meeting, Big City Coffee closed its campus location. Fendley subsequently sued, claiming administrators, including Estey, had “forced” and “pushed” her off campus in retaliation for her pro-police speech—a violation of her First Amendment rights.
The BSU administration, including President Tromp, who testified in the case, maintained that Fendley left voluntarily and that the university was simply protecting the free speech rights of the student protestors.
In September 2024, after a nine-day trial, a unanimous federal jury rejected the university’s narrative. According to extensive trial coverage by Idaho Education News, the jury found that Alicia Estey and another administrator had violated Sarah Fendley’s First Amendment rights. The jury awarded Fendley $4 million, which a judge later reduced to approximately $3.7 million. As of January 2025, BSU had already spent over $1.575 million in public funds on private legal counsel to defend the case, according to Idaho news outlets.
During the trial, it was also revealed that Estey had secretly recorded the contentious meeting with Fendley on her phone. According to her own testimony, the recording “accidentally” stopped, failing to capture the final 20 minutes of the meeting—the very portion where the defense claimed Fendley had voluntarily decided to leave. According to trial coverage, the plaintiff’s attorney described the act of secret recording and its convenient truncation as “shady, dishonest and deceitful.”
Allegations of a Secrecy-Driven Culture
The Big City Coffee lawsuit also brought to light serious allegations of a deliberate effort within the Tromp administration to evade public transparency.
These allegations emerged from a sworn court deposition given in August 2023 by Nicole Nimmons, a BSU Associate Vice President. As first reported by BoiseDev, Nimmons testified under oath about the handling of a Google Drive document containing information about the coffee shop controversy.
Nimmons testified that Lauren Griswold—then BSU’s communications chief and now UVM’s—personally renamed the digital file from “Big City Coffee” to “B space C space C.”
When an attorney asked why this was done, Nimmons stated unequivocally: “I believe it was for it not to be put forth in a public records request.” This tactic would ensure that any public records request searching for the keywords “Big City Coffee” would fail to find the document.
Nimmons’ testimony suggested this was not an isolated incident but part of a broader administrative culture. “I’ve been asked and told not to put things in writing at times because of public records requests,” she testified, attributing the guidance to leadership meetings concerning the “political climate overall.”
The Political Crucible
To understand these actions, it is necessary to understand the environment in which they occurred. The Tromp administration at BSU operated within a political pressure cooker.
According to reporting from both Idaho media and Vermont’s Seven Days, Tromp faced an “immediate and relentless” campaign from conservative state legislators over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Just nine days into her presidency in 2019, 28 Republican lawmakers co-signed a letter demanding she dismantle all DEI programs.
This pressure continued for her entire tenure, with constant threats of budget cuts over what lawmakers perceived as a “leftist social justice agenda.” This political climate fostered what the research analysis described as a “high-stakes, risk-averse administrative culture” where leadership was perpetually on the defensive.
This context does not excuse the conduct, but it does explain the mindset: one focused on neutralizing politically explosive problems rather than serving as a neutral arbiter of constitutional rights.
An Information Gap: A Tale of Two States
While this history was the subject of meticulous, day-by-day trial coverage and deep investigative work by outlets like Idaho Education News and BoiseDev, the Vermont public has been given a far different picture.
Local media coverage in Vermont has been largely superficial. While Seven Days correctly identified the intense political pressure Tromp faced over DEI, its reporting has not mentioned the Big City Coffee lawsuit verdict, the specific finding against Alicia Estey, or the public records evasion allegations against Lauren Griswold.
According to the research, Vermont Business Magazine appears to be the only state outlet to have referenced the lawsuit, noting in a single sentence that Estey “was a defendant in a civil case, in which Boise State ultimately lost a $3 million judgment.” This brief mention lacked the critical context of the First Amendment violation or the specific conduct that led to the jury’s decision.
The result is a significant information vacuum. The narrative in Vermont has, until now, been shaped almost exclusively by UVM’s own official communications, which focus solely on the administration’s successes.
Now, Vermonters Can Judge for Themselves
The history of UVM’s new leadership team is not a matter of rumor or partisan spin. It is a matter of public record, detailed in court transcripts, sworn testimony, and a definitive jury verdict.
The University of Vermont, a public, land-grant institution, is now led by a team that includes:
A Vice President for Finance (Alicia Estey) who was found liable by a unanimous jury for violating a citizen’s First Amendment rights in a case that has cost her former public university millions.
A Chief Communications Officer (Lauren Griswold) who was accused under oath by a colleague of deliberately altering a file name to hide a public document from a records request.
A President (Marlene Tromp) who oversaw this administration, whose sworn testimony in defense of her team was rejected by that jury, and whose leadership, according to testimony, encouraged avoiding a paper trail on sensitive matters.
This collection of facts raises fundamental questions for the UVM community, the Board of Trustees, and the state of Vermont. Was the UVM Board fully aware of the specific, adjudicated findings against Estey and the sworn allegations against Griswold during the vetting process?
What assurances has the Board received that this administrative culture—one that prioritized narrative control over constitutional rights and public transparency—will not be replicated in Burlington?
This reminds me of another on or near campus business brouhaha, in the northeast I think, where the son of the owner of a legendary university focused business confronted some students on a lark stealing some wine or something. University students and professors lined up and threw progressive nonsense at the family that had owned the business for generations and ruined them. It was quite a story. The death of our universities has monumental downstream effects, and tragic human consequences large and small. This UVM leadership triumvirate should be held at arms length by all, like a leaking bag of excrement being carried to the trash can.
https://open.substack.com/pub/martinhackworth/p/is-higher-education-doomed?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=6x6de