OP-ED The perils of Club Midd

Author: Adam Irish

I am happy the recession has come to Middlebury College. I welcome it. I hope for more budget cuts and less generous donors. I look forward to paying for printing and a halt to perpetual construction. No, I don't hate my alma mater. I despise what is known as the "Middlebury bubble," or more tellingly, "Club Midd." Few would question the existence of this shadow institution - we've all seen it printed on t-shirts. Many, however, would dispute its influence on the mores at Middlebury College. After spending four years in the bubble, I believe Club Midd breeds egotism, improvidence and avarice in its 2,350 inductees.

First, an anecdote, a story that The Campus didn't print and probably never would. A couple years ago I went on a Middlebury Model United Nations (MUN) trip to Chicago. Our airfare and hotel fees were subsidized by an endowed fund and we even received a meal allowance. The conference was great, and worth the expense. Two students in the group, however, decided to skip all MUN events in favor of shopping and a concert. Here at Middlebury, where "riding the Panther" is a favorite pastime of many, this story might induce laughter and even congratulations for the clever absentees. And why not? They got a free vacation out of it, worth at least $2,000 per person. Best of all, one of those students was the treasurer of MUN. For those of you initially inclined to snicker, welcome to Club Midd. Now that you're in, though, you should know that it's rather difficult to get out.

Certainly, the ivory tower has shaped students since the dawn of higher education. But the Middlebury bubble fosters something more than mere superciliousness. To illustrate, pardon an extended metaphor. Club Midd is like a cruise ship. It's an all-inclusive luxury package. The vessel boasts three distinctive restaurants with all-you-can-eat buffets. For leisure activities, enjoy regular dances, concerts, free movies and clubs. Play golf or swim in the pool on deck. Keep fit in the gym. There's a maid service, of course. And no tips necessary.

Many attempt to deemphasize this depiction of Club Midd by pointing out students' weighty workload and constant high stress. What they fail to see is that academic slavery is essential to the Club's design - in fact, its members are the rowers powering the vessel. Club Midd's purpose is to produce an industrious, obedient, elite professional class with a blind and all-consuming devotion to work. Furthermore, as a natural reward for its lofty service, the class feels entitled to a seamless, insular lifestyle in which it can both work and pursue pleasure in the same concentrated and thoughtless manner as it labors. Like the pendulum on a clock, the members of Club Midd swing from extreme work to extreme recreation, never slowing down to think, to see, to feel, to recognize right from wrong.

It's no coincidence that L. Dennis Kozlowski is a former Middlebury College trustee. The Tyco CEO was convicted of stealing over $400 million from the company, some of which he used to set up an endowment at Middlebury. And why not also mention Ari Fleischer '82, the Middlebury alum and Bush mouthpiece, who admitted to endangering the life of covert operative Valerie Plame when he broke federal law by leaking her name to the press? Then there's Richard S. Fuld Jr., a major donor, current trustee and the CEO of Lehman Brothers before the firm collapsed and took our global economy with it. Arrogance, greed and shortsightedness authored Lehman's unscrupulous and frankly idiotic investment practices. Those foibles were not merely endemic in the firm's culture, but were also in the reproductive system that supported it - until recently, Middlebury boasted a longstanding contract to manufacture and deliver new Lehman employees. Indeed, membership in Club Midd still remains necessary to become such a "Master of the Universe," to quote Tom Wolfe. And look at what those Masters of the Universe do.

I'm thrilled to see the inevitable result of Club Midd coming back to threaten its own existence. Cuts in budget, the obstacles to College indulgence, mean that the bubble grows less resilient, the Clubhouse a little shabbier. And this is a good thing. Having served on the SGA and the Comprehensive Fee Committee, I know the College budget is not merely overweight, but morbidly obese. In recent history, the whole of American higher education embarked on an amenity and endowment arms race, pushing tuition up and up and up with no conceivable ceiling. Unfettered by budgetary constraints, giddy administrators force-fed the College whatever they fancied. These excesses are buried under the umbrella "comprehensive fee," today the price of a Jaguar. As one example of this deliberate institutional sleight of hand, many students refer to the dining hall food as "free," an important illusion for the maintenance of Club Midd.

But what of other local effects? On a small scale, take the fellow who liked to poop in Forest Hall showers one semester. On a medium scale, how about the snowboarding club's founder, who spent over $7,000 of student activities funds on himself? And then on the large scale, there's 51 Main, although I prefer its absurd first incarnation as a "chocolate bar." The pinnacle of College extravagance, we justify this socialized restaurant because a donor promised to pick up its $800,000 expected annual deficit, leaving the College off the hook. But wouldn't that money be better spent paying the salaries of eight more professors? Or why not the tuition of 16 Middlebury students? I can't imagine this donor would say no.

But certainly we find the most illustrative example of Club Midd in the stairwell of Hepburn, beside the door of Ross Dining Hall, in the kitchens of Forest. We spend over $40,000 annually to replace broken dishware because students fail to return plates to their personal dishwashers. Naturally, the College does nothing to lessen the mountain of lost and broken ceramic. After all, what lowly staff member would dare tell a budding Master of the Universe that he can't use a coffee mug like a Starbucks paper cup?

I will not pretend to be outside of the Bubble. I am in it like everyone else. Simply by being here, Club Midd has instilled in me, as in all Middlebury students, a certain moral framework, worldview and set of behavioral tendencies that will persist for years to come. That said, I think an awareness of Club Midd helps to ward off its poisonous effects, and maybe, with the help of an obliging stock market, will someday pop the Middlebury bubble.

But I doubt it. People like those t-shirts for a reason.