Op-ed A college of success or excess?

Author: Chris Anderson

Over the summer, I worked at the College. Two of my friends drove here and visited me, and were parked in the visitor's lot at the Mahaney Center for the Arts. They registered their car (and themselves) at Public Safety, and wanted to verify that they'd parked in the right space.

"You can park at Q Lot," the woman said.

They asked, "Which building is Q Lot behind?"

The woman didn't answer, but shoved a map in front of their faces and walked away. Which, to me, was incredible. Working in a customer service job myself, I know that there are right and wrong ways to speak to someone, to respond to questions and to maintain poise and professional courtesy. She couldn't care less because this is our condition. This is the kind of customer service we've come to expect from those who can tow and fine us. Which is reasonable, I guess - they have that right, and no one can strip them of it - but it seems a little juvenile. To be fair - a point that can't be reasonably made from one example - this isn't the only illustration of poor customer service on campus. It just serves to highlight what most students (and a lot of faculty) would say is the "status quo." But that's not the worst thing.

We're wasteful. Tire art (see Brian Swenson's response to H. Kay Merriman's recent article) leaves us incredulous. The new "Middlebury seal" was laughed into extinction. Exhibitions. Student initiatives. The primping and posturing that we employ in our lavish dinners (not "ours," but the ones allotted to visiting guests and potential donors). It's all outrageous. And any other term is euphemistic. Aren't there better ways to dole out our endowment?

What about the kids whose parents don't swim in gold? Let's massage our coffers and subsidize their books. Let's buy those books and rent them out more cheaply. Let's alleviate someone's burden of brutal student loans. Let's do something good, instead of making terrible modern art, or catering to the one percent who gets us better seats on U.S.News.

These are a few examples of our college's excess, and more can be found in every department, every committee and every other resource we squander so cavalierly.

What may look like a piling of grievances is a response to a general condition - an actual problem - that plagues this college and makes us a lot less genial than the Princeton Review would have us look. We're often unkind. We're inhospitable and not understanding. And what should be the earmark of our college (what should make us stand out from the Ivies and their imitators) is left by the wayside of "How Much Money Can We Raise in Five Years?" This college can be so great and it sometimes is. I'm not ashamed to be here - far from it. But to say that we don't need change is to be dangerously na've. How about a Committee for the Betterment of Our Campus? How about its betterment?

We can only hope, and swallow our disappointment when bureaucracy comes back with better rhetoric.

Chris Anderson '10 is from La Crosse, Wisc.