Floor plans ruin plans for year

Author: Jason Siegel

On Aug. 26, just four days before he was slated to come to campus, Tim Foley '06 and his suitemates received an e-mail from their dean with an unusual message: They had been moved from their suite with a kitchenette to one without, due to errors in the floor plan during Room Draw.

The suites equipped with kitchenettes are indistinguishable from those with just a common room on the floor plans. These floor plans were the ones used to preview rooms both before Room Draw and during the Draw itself. Many of the seniors drawing into these dorms were thus mistakenly under the impression that their suites would have a kitchenette. When they found out they were wrong, they contacted Dean of Atwater Commons Scott Barnicle to find out why they had no kitchen.

In an interview with The Middlebury Campus, Barnicle said he first found out that there had been confusion about kitchens on the night of Room Draw, and had been looking at solutions from the spring onward. "I tried to be as equitable as possible," said Barnicle.

Unfortunately, that meant that some people would have to be switched. "Being seniors with [increasingly] crazy schedules, a kitchen was key in our decision," explained Foley.

However, Barnicle said he based his decision entirely on the order that the suites had been selected. Had the kitchens been clearly marked on the floor plans, Foley and company would not have been able to get a kitchenette anyway, and quite possibly might not have been able to get into the Atwater suites at all. In all, only two sets of suites out of the twenty or so in the Atwater Halls were switched.

Barnicle has guaranteed that such an error will not happen again. Starting this year, the Atwater Commons Residential Assistants will write directly on the floor plans which suites lack kitchens, so that it will be impossible for any student to claim ignorance again.

"I feel terrible about what happened," Barnicle said.

He also added that during the planning process, he had originally questioned the value of adding kitchenettes in senior suites, wondering if it would prevent intermingling of the classes in the dining halls and if it would drive up expectations for all senior suites to have kitchens in the future.

If this incident is any indication, his worries were well founded.