Is it a community? An open letter to the President

Author: David Temple '06

Dear President Liebowitz,

I was shocked and disappointed by what I feel has been a lack of support from the college community for Chuck and Justin Harrington and everyone else affected by [Proctor Dining Hall Supervisor] Cheryl Harrington's death last week.

Middlebury College prides itself on its sense of community and family. Countless e-mails, college brochures and alumni letters refer to the Middlebury College community and yet, last Sunday at Cheryl's service, I was struck by how poorly this community came together for those who needed our support.

I understand that not everybody knew Cheryl. However, I feel confident in saying that had a student or professor passed away as suddenly as Cheryl did, the College would have played a far more active role in bringing all the different members of this community together in supporting the affected persons. I would hate to ever think that Middlebury College was a community in which there is any sort of hierarchy of personal importance.

I am not saying that we, the self-absorbed student body, should not be held responsible for our lack of support for those who have supported us - we should. However, I believe that this is just another step in a larger administration-led trend towards the destruction of community. With lockdowns, secret mailbox combinations and blue lights, the College has slowly but surely wrapped our school in the flag of fear, competitiveness and individualism that our country has recently claimed as its own.

I am sorry to be so pointed at time when I am sure that you, like many others in the community, are feeling such personal loss, but I believe strongly that if Middlebury is to preserve the traditions of trust and personal virtue on which it was founded, these trends need to be reversed. Cheryl's career at Middlebury was marked by compassion, openness and concern for those around her. Let us then proceed as a community built in Cheryl's likeness rather than one fashioned from our own paranoia and egoism.