Discussion is Key to Campus Safety

Author: Becky Ruby ’01.5

I had originally written this Campus op-ed piece with the naive assumption that student input would be vital in the upcoming months as the College community discussed the state of safety on campus. However, after President McCardell's Jan. 14 letter to members of the Community Council, I realize that student voice will play no part in the assessment of campus safety now, or it seems, in the future.

For those of you who did not receive the letter, President McCardell announced in it that dorms would remain locked "until further notice." McCardell then stated that "locking the residence halls… must be part of any long-term safety policy." While McCardell did not respond to the bill the Student Government Association (SGA) passed in December on this very topic, his letter is indeed a direct refusal of that bill.

At the emergency meeting in December, the SGA unanimously passed a bill that, among other things, demanded that the College rescind its policy of locking dorm doors. The bill also created a committee to examine the state of campus safety at Middlebury College, with the rationale that we must first know what the state of safety is before the College can take security measures accordingly (such as locking doors). Not only did the SGA Senate pass this bill unanimously, but over 50 students attended the meeting, with many more sending emails to their senators. Overwhelmingly, the student position was that the 'lockdowns' should stop immediately.

For those of you who attended that meeting or sent the SGA e-mails, I am sorry that your opinions were ignored by the College administration. For those of us on the SGA and on Community Council, I am sorry that the time we have spent and the opinions we have expressed this past month have been in vain. To the greater campus community, I am sorry that we attend a college where student voices on issues of student concern are rendered irrelevant.

There are several deeply troubling aspects of President McCardell's Community Council letter, most importantly his disregard for logic. The letter charges Community Council to form a subcommittee to "assess campus safety." Yet McCardell states in the letter that he has been "persuaded" that the lock down is necessary, and further that "the issues of personal freedom and personal safety are now more in conflict than ever before."

If McCardell has already been "persuaded" that the state of safety on campus requires locked dorms, why should Community Council bother to form a subcommittee to study this state of safety? And if this subcommittee is needed to study the state of safety on campus, then one can assume that the state of safety is not currently known. Therefore, McCardell should not be "persuaded" that freedom and safety are in dire conflict with each other and that dorm locking is the solution.

Whether one believes the 'lockdown' to be beneficial or detrimental, the issue at hand is still relevant: meaningful student input. This is about student participation in decisions that affect the places they sleep, eat, learn and live. No other group on campus can claim this unique relationship with Middlebury College. For students, the College campus is our home. The SGA does not attempt to tell President McCardell what time his College-provided house should be locked at night. Nor should the College administration tell students when their homes should be locked without providing information to the students that definitively supports the need for this specified action.

I am disgusted that the College administration seems to think that student input amounts to "Gee, its good to know what the students are thinking. Now back to what we were doing…" Every single day, students on this campus pour their time, energy and hearts into pursuing challenges and issues on campus. It is simply offensive for the College to dismiss this effort, especially when the decision at hand concerns student homes.

President McCardell's request for a committee on campus safety basically amounts to this: "Students, we want your opinions. We are going to kill the kind of freedom and community you want, but we want your input on what weapon to use." This is not student involvement. This is an administrative attempt to give students ownership over something [the securing of their dormitories] that they have overwhelmingly expressed no interest in having.

The College infrastructure has proven ill equipped to handle the lockdown policy. Some student room keys do not open their dorm's doors. Some dorm doors unlock permanently when a student uses his or her key. The fact remains that the College has no student entry system in place now, nor will it in the near future. The College administration may choose to put in swiper systems several semesters down the road, but this is irrelevant to those of us who need to borrow a friend's textbook now. Tonight. Tomorrow night. Unless the College is willing to address this problem immediately, any talk of concern over College community McCardell's letter may espouse is simply obsolete.

Locking dorm doors that have remained open for the past 200 years will inevitably change the character of Middlebury College forever. Why are the students the only ones who can see this?

Becky Ruby '01.5 is the Senior Feb Class Senator and a member of Community Council.