PALANA, Public Safety Office Primed to Move

Author: Claire Bourne

Efforts to provide the Public Safety Office with more space and the Pan-African-Latino-Native-American (PALANA) Center with a more prominent location on campus have spawned plans to significantly remap the locations of a number of Middlebury College offices.
A 1998-99 space audit identified the Public Safety Office, currently housed in the basement of Carr Hall, as "the department with the greatest facilities needs," according to an all-campus e-mail sent Monday by Provost Ronald Liebowitz. After considering several spaces, including Centeno House, members of the administration have chosen Harnest House at 125 South Main Street as the office's new quarters.
The pending relocation of the Health Center, Counseling Office and the Office of Health and Wellness Education to Centeno has freed up Carr Hall to accommodate the PALANA Center. After 12 years in Fletcher House on the periphery of campus, residents and administrators said they hoped the move to a more central location would advance PALANA's mission to "create energy" around diversity matters, Associate Provost for Institutional Diversity Roman Graf said. Graf's office will also make the move to Carr.
Fletcher House will be converted to Cook Commons housing. The Financial Aid Office will move to Hathaway House, allowing the Admissions Office use of the entire Emma Willard House, while the Americans with Disabilities Act Office will join the Dean of Student Affairs Office in Forest Hall. Finally, the Public Affairs Office will relocate from Meeker House to a currently unused space at 33 Adirondack View.
Although the reallocation of space "may not represent the optimal solution for all the offices involved," said Liebowitz, the over-all impact of the changes would be "a positive one." All moves will be completed by the beginning of the 2003-04 academic year, although renovation to the first and second floors of Carr Hall will continue into the fall semester.
The original plan called for six offices, including Health Services and Public Safety, to occupy Centeno. The College obtained the necessary permits from the town of Middlebury to add onto the existing structure, however budgetary constraints and complaints from the Vermont Historical Preservation Society forced designs back to the drawing board. Director of Operations George Whitney said the College should be ready to submit the new plans for Centeno and the blueprints for Carr to the town Planning Commission well before the summer.
Graf said he would be meeting with residents of PALANA to create a "wish list" of the facilities they would like to see included in the Carr renovation plans.
Graf and current PALANA Resident Assistant Alexis Zain '05 both maintained that the relocation of PALANA would mark a dramatic growth in the visibility of minority issues at Middlebury. "It sends the wrong message to have a fringe group be located on the fringe of campus," said Graf in reference to Fletcher's peripheral location.
"[The move] is a win-win situation," he continued. Not only will PALANA residents have more programmatic space -- classrooms, a lounge and faculty offices -- in addition to residential rooms, but the campus will benefit from having the multi-cultural center in its midst, he said.
PALANA has faced difficulty in filling its beds in recent years, a problem Graf said would be resolved after the center's installation in Carr. He said he expected the bidding for beds to become competitive.
"More people care where they live rather than why they live in the place," said Zain, who agreed that more people would express interest in living in Carr than have applied to live in Fletcher prior to any of the last few semesters.
Zain, who was initially reluctant about moving up to the heart of campus, now views the change in a positive light. "We enjoy living a bit away from campus, but it is better that we are more on campus," she said.
Some PALANA residents were initially concerned that living in Carr as opposed to Fletcher would be less safe and that the strong relationship between the house and the town of Middlebury might suffer if the distance between the two were to be increased.
Despite these this initial apprehension, Graf said that morale among residents and between the house and the administration was now "very good."