Old Chapel enters blogosphere

Author: Brian Fung

Though some may have difficulty imagining top College administrators to be as plugged-in as the students they are responsible for, the newfound popularity of user-supported sites such as YouTube or Flickr has made it possible for virtually anybody to create a personal presence online. It should hardly come as a surprise, then, that President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz and Dean of the College Tim Spears have also caught the digital media bug.

On Sept. 4, Spears launched a Weblog named "One Dean's View." In his first post, Spears welcomed students back to campus and introduced a number of issues he hoped to discuss. A week later, Liebowitz wrote an inaugural post on his own blog, "Ron on Middlebury."

But lest one mistakenly believe that Spears and Liebowitz are actually closet technophiles, complete with iPhone and Bluetooth headset, Spears said that they are still new hands at the game.

"I'm a complete beginner," said Spears, "[but] the most attractive reason for blogging is to speak directly to your audience. There's things you can do in a blog, there are ways you can communicate that you can't in an e-mail."

Spears does not claim to know exactly what he is doing, but said he is confident about the experiment because he expects the online medium to improve communication between his office and the student body.

Meanwhile, Liebowitz plans to use blogging as a way to efficiently disseminate information to the community beyond the College campus.

"Experienced bloggers advised me that, as president, other constituencies would be looking in," wrote Liebowitz in an e-mail. "And so, though I still hope students will check in and read the blog, I realize others are as or more likely to do so."

Indeed, while Liebowitz pledged to touch on issues that lie close to students' hearts, such as campus social life and work load, the president devoted somewhat more space in his opening post to the College's upcoming fundraising campaign and the growth of the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy.

But no matter what the content of the posts, the adoption of blogging by high-ranking administrators suggests that, despite its growth in popularity, the College is still willing to tinker with an already successful formula by exploring new ventures.

Spears and Liebowitz are part of a growing trend in information technology. As recently as a few years ago, social networking sites like Facebook and viral video sites such as YouTube were the sole domain of 18- to 25-year olds. These days, however, older Internet users have found themselves increasingly attracted to the sites.

According to Internet information provider comScore, since May 2006, Facebook has seen the percentage of its users aged 25-34 nearly triple, while the number of users over 35 has doubled. Internet 2.0 has clearly spread to older generations of Americans - and it was only logical that after discovering social networking, they would be introduced to the blogosphere as well.

"There are a number of people and students who may be surprised by this, but there are people my age that are as fully wired and digitally oriented as any student," said Spears. "It's hard to say anything original about this kind of thing because this phenomenon is taking place all over the world, but the Internet and virtual communities have great capacity to make change."

"It'll be interesting to see how [Spears' blog] develops," said Jason Mittell, assistant professor of American Studies and Film & Media Culture. "The thing I'm really interested to see is how comments work on it, how dialogic it is. In my mind, good blogs are about an author saying something, and a conversation develop[ing] around that."

Mittell, one of the College's most tech-savvy faculty members, maintains his own Web site called "JustTV," a running "academic blog" about television. But while Mittell has seen an explosion in the popularity of academic blogs in recent years, he has yet to observe a similar surge with respect to administrator blogs.

"I don't think that Tim and Ron are following a well-worn trend here," said Mittell. "They're doing something that's still fairly new."

While novelty may be exciting, however, neither Spears nor Liebowitz have any illusions about their late adoption of blogging as a method of communication.

"I'm a little bubble on a wave," said Spears. "This blog is hardly original - blogging has been around for quite a while now. I have to be careful in my blog. 'Don't appear to be too cool,' that sort of thing."

Spears is also aware that while blogging is a rather spontaneous medium, self-restraint is the first rule of thumb.

"It's this interesting tension between, on the one hand, wanting to let it out a little bit, to 'keep it real,' but not to say anything you're not willing to stand behind," said Spears. "[But] I'd like to be frank. I'd like to be quite frank. That's one of the things that make this genre of writing attractive and also a challenge."

Luckily, the College boasts plenty of experienced bloggers to help Liebowitz and Spears get up to speed. Ryan Kellett '09.5, a student who helped develop MiddBlog, a forum for student opinion and commentary, advised Spears to "cut the administrative speak."

"[If he] is real with students," wrote Kellett in an e-mail, "the blog format could become central to fostering good ideas from students as well as discussing administrative decisions."

Spears welcomed the feedback, even if they were complaints.

"I understand that comes with the territory," he said. "I'm hoping people will write back because presumably it could become a place or a space where students offer their own suggestions."

To read the blogs featured in this article, point your Internet browser to:
http://rononmiddlebury.wordpress.com/ Ron on Middlebury
http://deanofthecollege.wordpress.com/ One Dean's View
http://middblog.blogspot.com/ MiddBlog