College Revamps Security for Dalai Lama

The weekend of October 12-13 brought with it much excitement as the College welcomed His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. However, behind all of the excitement of his visit lay a logistical challenge that took just under a year to plan.

The planning process was handled by a number of committees including the logistics committee comprised of Associate Dean of the College and Director of Public Safety Lisa Buchard, Director of Public Affairs Sarah Ray and Director of Event Management Lisa Ayers, among many others. These groups were responsible for choosing and handling the venue, accommodations and security of the event. Likewise, the student advisory committee and the faculty advisory committee helped develop a campaign to promote the event.

“We had done some research even before he had accepted the invitation and already knew that there were going to be some pretty major security issues,” explained Chaplain Laurie Jordan.

The U.S. State Department guided the College on logistical security and provided the the Diplomatic Security Service, DSS, whose primary job is to make sure that foreign diplomats and heads of state are safe while on American soil.  In addition, the Dalai Lama brought his own “entourage” of about 11 people.

“I was impressed by how thorough security was and they seemed to have the best interests of both the welfare of the students and of the Dalai Lama,” Daniel Amar Pena ’16 said.

Jordan travelled to another Dalai Lama speech in San Diego last April to gain insight into the security measures that other organizations were taking. She did notice differences between security measures taken at these venues and what Middlebury was asked to provide.

“I think the fact that we are in a rural area allowed the DSS to be more confident that we could just have the wands as opposed to walk through metal detectors,” she explained.

However, though this was not the Dalai Lama’s first visit to campus, security was clearly more prominent than  during his visit 22 years ago. The press had to arrive several hours early to have their equipment screened by electronic means as well as trained security dogs. Likewise, students, faculty and other visitors were required to go through security and could not bring large bags and backpacks into the venue.

“For a number of reason, for example, that he is older and we have to take more care in planning.  And because he is even more of a global figure then he was before, the security was intense. And I think for the people who lived here before and worked here during the last visit, it was kind of surprising,” said Jordan.

Besides security, other parts of the visit provided logistical challenges. Lodging was difficult, because many hotels within the town of Middlebury are very limited in capacity. His Holiness stayed at the Middlebury Inn with his own entourage of people as well as some DSS agents. The rest of the DSS agents were housed by the College.

Another big question was the date. Some students found the date of the event to be a challenge because it fell at the beginning of fall break.

“It was a little disappointing that the Dalai Llama was scheduled for the long weekend, because it did not give me and a number of students the opportunity to see him,” explained Annie Borque ’15.

The official invitation for the Dalai Lama went out from the College in August 2010. “It wasn’t until November of last year that we were given a date from them and we subsequently gathered our logistics committee in December” Jordan said.

“That aside, I had fabulous colleagues, amazing people that we could trust who worked really hard before-hand and during — people who make this place work deserve a lot of credit,”Jordan said.