op-ed Blinded by Construction

Author: Emily Adler

Throughout my time at Middlebury, I have watched the administration, faculty and student body exercise and boast about their environmental ethic to a growing extent. Middlebury's "green" efforts seem to be highlighted in every magazine or Campus publication, mentioned on every tour and referenced in every large speech. The recent announcement that the Trustees approved a plan for the College to become a carbon neutral campus by 2016 is clear evidence of this fact - a bold and positive effort in a good direction. Yet at the same time, this increasing push towards environmentalism is fraught with a particular irony, which my thoughts just cannot get away from: we keep building and are constantly manicuring.

Most recently, on a sunny May morning, I walked out of my dorm to see all of the large square bushes that lined the front of Forest Hall, between the East and West entrances, being ripped from the ground. I like to think of this place as my home, not just my school, and it is shocking to see the landscape constantly being torn up around me, in nearly every direction I look. Besides this project, the building formerly known as Hillcrest is being renovated, the Axinn Center at Starr Library is being constructed, there's some sort of water main replacement going on in the Coffrin area. In short, it seems as though every corner of campus is being worked on. Not one single day of my college experience has gone by so far, in the three and a half years I have chosen to make this place my home, without the sight and sound of construction all around me. And every single dollar spent on these projects, is one less spent on increasing financial aid, decreasing the student-faculty ratio and other such academic aspects of the school, which is first and foremost the reason we are here.

To be fair, I must admit that there have been a few examples of creative re-envisioning of space. Most recently, and most notably, a few students got permission to transform the basement of Adirondack House, previously used as a storage space, into a working Bike Shop. The shop is open a few days a week, and offers classes - a resourceful use of an already existing space.

Unfortunately, this ingenuity is not the norm. Our response instead? Tear out, tear down, rebuild. My curiosity and frustration led me to stop and find out exactly what was going on this time. Turns out the bushes were "browning" and had been "badly damaged" by this winter's heavy snowfall. Later, in an e-mail based on the reasoning behind this project, I read the phrase "look good for graduation" three times, in a total of six lines. Thus, we have decided that the aesthetic importance of the bushes is worth more than the economic and environmental waste derived. As my friend Carol noted: "Is having an imperfectly manicured campus going to reduce our number of applicants, or worse, what alumni and Bill Clinton think of our school? Probably not. Hey, it might even make us look better. We'd appear to be less of a story-book rich kid school, and actually have some character." And even more, maybe we'd prove to the greater world that we are okay with natural cycles of browning of our bushes, or mowing our lawns slightly less often to use less gas, due to the fact that we are serious about one of the things this College prides itself on: environmentalism.

As we begin the effort towards campus carbon neutrality, I'd like to propose a careful reexamination of our definition of necessity in our construction, renovation and landscaping projects, therefore avoiding the all-student survey asking if to support yet another $100 raise in the comprehensive fee for funding carbon reduction initiatives on campus. Many of the resources are already here; it's just a matter of using them wisely.

Emily Adler is sophomore from Greenwich, Conn.