Commons assert campus presence Brainerd, others make splash in campus social scene

Author: By Kathryn Flagg and Ben Salkowe

In a score for Brainerd Commons, a steady crowd of over 200 turned out last Friday night for a late October pool party, complete with more than $2,200 worth of inflatable tubes and rafts and a two-story high projection screen showing "Jaws." Telling students not to worry about "rapidly paling Vermont skin," the event planners shut down the Natatorium lighting and cranked up the pool's underwater lights. But for the commons system, which has been a perennial student aggravation from its inception, last Friday's grand event - which cost the College nearly $6,000 - was significant not because of its scale or creativity, but due to its success.

There is a sense among many students and administrators involved with the commons that the residential life system is at a uniquely important point in its evolution. "My sense is the social houses, especially now with more restrictive alcohol regulations, are less of a weekend social enterprise than they once were," said Karl Lindholm '67, acting faculty head of Brainerd Commons.

"That naturally puts some pressure on the commons to provide weekend activities," he added. "Where in the past I think we were big on lectures and readings and concerts, we are getting some encouragement from the Finance Committee through funding to think in larger terms, in terms of purely social activities and parties."

As the College's social houses have declined in number in recent years and face growing restrictions on large open parties and alcohol, the commons are feeling pressure to become the dominant social force on campus.

Students within the commons administration agree with Lindholm, and some feel the system is already there. Ross Commons will be throwing its annual Viva Ross Vegas/Orange Crush Party on Nov. 18, according to Eric Vos '05, Ross Commons Residential Adviser. "[It] is widely considered the largest on-campus party of the year. Without the commons, I do not think that an acceptable, alternative infrastructure could take on such a task as planning and throwing Viva Ross Vegas," he said.

The Student Government Association Finance Committee, which administers commons budgets, is also pushing for an expanded role for the commons in social events. "This year, the Finance Committee allocated an extra $6,000 to each commons for any single event in order to encourage the commons to work on a grander scale," said Erin Bell '06, Brainerd Commons Council co-chair. The money is what made Brainerd's pool party possible, and each commons has or will pursue its own unique large-scale event.

The new budgetary and programmatic focus on the commons has given commons councils a new and more influential role in campus social life. "Given the level of resistance and downright hostility when I began in 1999, I have been very pleased to see the commons take off, students develop a sense of identity with their commons, and for the commons councils to take a prominent role on campus," said Cook Commons Dean David Edleson.

Lindholm believes that if social houses are truly being weakened, the commons will have no choice but to step up to the plate. "If that's a trend and not just a blip, then it's going to be necessary for the commons to assume a larger role in weekend social events."



A tumultuous past



The current commons system - a well-oiled machine in which students, faculty and staff coordinated a large-scale social endeavor - has only recently found its footing at the College. Programming such as the pool party, the Cook Commons Fall Festival and weekly Atwater and Wonnacott "Fondue Fridays" signal the growing presence of the commons on campus, but these events follow years of resistence to the system.

The commons system as students know it today originated in 1998, but the system itself has a much longer history. While the commons initiative was most fully realized in the late 1990s, the impetus for social and residential change was born out of decades of transition.

"For a long time, certainly in post-World War II Middlebury College, the College was structured socially on a Greek system," said Lindholm. "We had fraternities, and they were pretty strong."

During his own time as a student at the College, said Lindholm, practically all male students belonged to fraternities. "There was no 'fraternity type,'" said Lindholm, because all types belonged to an organization. "The weekend social life was dominated by fraternities."

But, according to Lindholm, the Vietnam era was not kind to the fraternity ethos on campus. The drinking age across the nation dropped to 18, and the College's weekend social life moved downtown. While fraternities survived, the organizations were severely crippled.

"From the late 1960s to when they were eliminated in 1990, 1991," said Lindholm, "the fraternity system was dysfunctional."

The fraternity system reemerged as the center for campus social life after the national drinking age was raised to 21 in 1984. But, as Lindholm pointed out, the heyday of the 1950s was not to be replicated. "It was a different era. The women's movement had happened, and there were objections to all-male organizations ruling campus," he said.

And then, in the early 1990s, one galvanizing event dealt the fraternity system a fatal blow. After a bloodied female mannequin was displayed in the window of a fraternity house one weekend, appalled members of the College community called for the formation of a Task Force on Social Life. The task force ultimately recommended the removal of all-male national social organizations on campus.

Out of this task force also came the recommendation for a commons system - an offshoot of the residential college traditions of Cambridge and Oxford and a reflection of programs at Harvard and Yale. The new system, in its idealized form, was designed to bridge the gap between students, faculty and staff, fostering neighborhoods within the larger community. Since 1991, the College has had a commons system of some form, though the initial program included a sixth, non-residential commons that was eventually abandoned.

President Emeritus John M. McCardell, Jr., particularly championed the system. "The historian in me is naturally disposed to look back over the College's 198 years to find a generalized meaning for today's discussions of student life," he wrote in an open letter on residential life in 1998. "The president in me, however, insists that the view must be forward as well as backward - considerably forward, beyond this year, next year and even beyond the 10-year horizon that often represents the outer boundaries of thought for educational institutions engaged in strategic planning exercises."

It was in 1998 that the commons system began to adopt its most recent form. "It became clear by the late 1990s that we had to really go after [the commons system] in a more serious and aggressive way if it was going to really be the way we organized life on campus," said Lindholm.

Under this imperative, a Residential Life Committee undertook the task in 1998 of formally evaluating the system in place. The Committee identified, in its Enhanced Residential Plan, the "fully articulated commons" as a "system with three components: decentralized dining, faculty presence and continuing membership."

In summary, after a year of planning, the Residential Life Committee recommended that the College pursue a dining hall for each commons, housing for faculty heads and decentralized organization of the Dean of Students office. Each commons was granted an individual dean and administrative team, first-year seminars were associated with the system, and, for the first time, room draw was restructured with the commons as the organizing force.

Under this new umbrella of organization, the College commissioned the construction of Atwater and Ross Commons - the first, and currentl
y only, fully realized commons. As this infrastructure began to come online, however, student dissatisfaction with the system reared its head. Housing inequities between commons have, for the duration of the commons' early years, proven the most contentious issue among students.



Looking forward



In meetings and updates on the College's strategic planning process, it is becoming increasingly clear that the immediate future of the commons will be in expanding programming and social events. While commons vary in their infrastructural improvement needs, many commons administrators believe the focus on programming could be beneficial.

In some ways, the new buildings have clouded the underlying purpose of the commons and have created additional equity concerns, according to Edleson. "Cook, for example, has never gotten new housing or dining, and yet we've done a good job of building a sense of community and making the commons work as envisioned. For most of us who work in the commons, it is not about buildings, but about people and community," he added.

"Students frustrated by their housing or dining situation should learn how to accept and be thankful for what they have, because dorms and dining halls will always be a mainstay at any institution of higher learning," said Vos. "However, it is the programming and social life that can truly set us apart."

Moving forward to expand commons programming, however, will likely introduce new controversies. The Brainerd pool party, for example, garnered significant criticism for its cost and high energy consumption. In addition, while the event was well attended, it was entirely substance-free and far different from the large "basement" parties of the social houses. Lindholm acknowledged that niche was something the commons would likely never be able to fill.

While it may still be a while before the commons are firmly entrenched on all fronts, the system has "Making News Profit made tremendous progress. "I do believe the commons are beginning to take the role they were intended to take, and they are certainly becoming more accepted," said Edleson.

"It has taken time to work out the kinks, so to speak, but I genuinely believe that the people who are working for the success of the commons will continue to strive for the content of everyone," said Vos. "I'm beginning to wonder what life was like before the commons system came to pass because it seems as though the situation is so much better, from an administrative standpoint, now that we're pushing for decentralization."