Editorial From Wall Street to College Street

Author: [no author name found]

Around 4:00 p.m. on Sunday the campus lost Internet access. The only Web sites that campus computers were able to access were those associated with Middlebury College - the College homepage, bannerweb and email. For a few short minutes, College students lost touch with the information superhighway and were sentenced to experience the true isolation of our small Vermont college. By 4:30 p.m. the Internet was back on and the campus let out a collective sigh of dexterous relief, logging onto facebook.com, cnn.com, si.com, et al.

When the Internet went back on, students were inundated with the monumental news of America's ailing economy. By Sunday's end, two of America's oldest and most storied financial institutions, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, had disappeared. The cascade of bad news on Wall Street has ramifications that spread far beyond those short blocks in Manhattan. To be sure, as Merrill Lynch famously brought "Wall Street to Main Street", Wall Street's woes are our own.

Here at Middlebury, seniors will no doubt have greater trouble landing jobs both in finance and in other sectors of corporate America. Additionally, Lehman Brothers was a great supporter of Middlebury College and was led by a member of the College's Board of Trustees. We understand well the importance of Wall Street financiers' support for College initiatives (this paper is written in a dorm named for the former president of Chase National Bank), and we recognize the trouble that the economy will present for the College's fundraising efforts, especially with the ambitious Middlebury Initiative.

But how does the worsening economy translate into changes for students? Just as seniors awoke on Monday to news that they could not apply for jobs at Merrill and Lehman, they also awoke to a comprehensive program by the Career Services Office (CSO) to help future graduates find meaningful employment. We are grateful to CSO for their work on behalf of the student body. What's more, students went to class on Monday morning largely bereft fears about the economy. They discussed Chinese history and molecular biology, they read Chaucer, Shakespeare, Fukuyama and Huntington while hardly thinking about the American recession.

As much as technology has brought Middlebury students into greater touch with the outside world, the education here remains proudly independent. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to expand our minds in a place hedged by the Adirondacks on one side and the Green Mountains on the other; here we are afforded a separate peace. The study of the very things at which this college most excels is indeed the best preparation for the working world. In times like these, we cherish the opportunity to study at a supportive, bucolic, and isolated liberal arts college.