Let's shut the door on 'lockdown' debate

Author: DAN POLIFKA ’06

I have a problem. I am alarmed at the lack of actual intelligent discussion on real topics at Middlebury College. When my father asked me over break what the hot issues were with the students on the campus, I was regretfully forced to respond that students were miffed, or in many cases even infuriated, by the lockdown.

As I thought about it more, the idea repeatedly popping into my head was, "Are you kidding me? Seriously, is this a joke? No one seriously thinks we are locked down here, do they? Do they?"

So what is going on? There must be something, considering that most students are livid about this? I for one have not been locked down to my bed. I am not living in a police state. I am not in jail. Someone told me his civil liberties were being infringed. He should tell that to someone at Guantanamo Bay. We might all be subject a minor inconvenience, but there is nothing resembling a lockdown here. In fact, it turns out that we have just adopted the same system most schools have.

I do not write this piece to nitpick about my fellow students' word choice. Our government does it all the time. The Clear Skies initiative is actually making the skies less clear. No, word choice is but a symptom of a more dangerous disease - we are not seriously discussing anything, choosing instead to complain without thinking about what we are whining about.

I frequently hear people say that we live in a bubble and are therefore out of touch with the world. This somehow excuses us, they claim, from thinking about what is happening elsewhere. The fact is there are a lot of messed-up things happening in the world. My uncle was just volunteering on a ship hospital off the coast of Indonesia and he reminded me of the scope of the disaster there. At home we are delving into a dangerous period where it appears a fanatic religious minority is trying and succeeding in gaining the power to run this country. There are lots of people who can't eat or vote or get an education. And there are people who are actually locked down.

As my dean is fond of saying, whenever he gets upset with things going on at the College he remembers that there is a lot in the world that is cause for far more concern than whether we need to carry a magnetized piece of plastic with us at all times or just sometimes.

The problem is that while we all probably agree with him in theory, I guarantee that most students spend more time complaining about the lockdown than reading a newspaper.

I know that we are busy and that it seems that the lockdown impacts our lives more directly than anything else in the world. But the truth is that reading The New York Times or The Boston Globe provided for free in the dining halls and on the Web is easy and does not take very long. Furthermore, the notion that the lockdown affects us more directly than what is happening in Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa, the civil liberties abuses on American military bases - or than the debate regarding the role of government concerning the right to die, gay marriage and other issues is preposterous. In a world growing ever smaller, it is naive to think what happens outside the bubble does not affect us inside the bubble.

I do not mean to belittle our debate here. We should consider the issues of our College, the Commons system, the student-faculty ratio and, yes, even locking of the dorms all day - presuming we do it in a manner that reflects the fact that we are intelligent, educated adults. Students' whining is not intelligent. And frankly this newspaper needs to do a much better job leading the way.

In searching The Middlebury Campus Website for the word lockdown, I found 13 hits, eleven of which referred to locking the outside doors to dorms. This newspaper is given a large amount of college money annually not only to report on what is happening here, but to lead the way in supporting a vibrant, well thought-out discourse on what is happening that affects us, both here and elsewhere. The editorial board, writers and especially many of the columnists and those who pen opinion pieces are guilty of advancing what I am calling lockdown level debate. And as a place of learning, this belittles all of us.

If we are going to improve on this we must be a little more intelligent, objective and careful than publishing pictures of Guiliani resembling Hitler. We must be a little more intelligent, objective and careful than dismissing important events outside the bubble and a little more intelligent, objective and careful than indignantly discussing a nonexistent lockdown.