Community Council Update

The Community Council met on Monday Oct. 22 to outline an ambitious list of tasks for the 2012-2013 academic year.

Issues on the preliminary agenda for the council include: communication methods between faculty, students and staff; restricting first-year on-campus parking; access to health services on campus; sexual assault on campus; public spaces and dorm damage; social house membership; stress culture; student participation in MCAB and other college sponsored events; and implementing recommendations from the Alcohol Task Force.

A large part of the meeting was spent discussing the relative urgency of each of these issues, and their relevancy to the interests of students, faculty and staff.

The first issue addressed  was membership in social houses. School policy on the issue dictates that students may not join social houses until the second semester of sophomore year; however the council has proposed considering more lenient membership guidelines.  This discussion could affect the membership as early as this spring, when the five social houses are up for review.

The Community Council is hoping to initiate an ongoing conversation with the social houses on this issue.

“I want to bring in the social houses and give them a chance to say this is who we are and this is our mission, explained Community Council Co-Chair Barret Smith ’13. “That way we are building an understanding and not just seeing them for the first time during the social house review process.”
The council also discussed campus communication methods during the Oct. 22 meeting. Council members are seeking a way to increase student participation and attendance of College-sponsored events through more effective communication.

“There is a stigma on campus to not go to MCAB events or go to college sponsored events, and a lot of that can be changed just by the way we communicate,” member Zach Marlette ’13 explained.

In an effort to increase on-campus communication, the Community Council is working with the Student Government Association and the Dean of the College’s office to start an “open-mic” initiative as a time used to discuss issues on campus.

“My hope is to create an open time for anybody who wants to share something with the student body that there would be topics that are of enough interest to students,” said Dean of the College and Council Co-Chair Shirley Collado. “It is really to promote face-to-face dialogue and to really engage one another without relying on email. We just don’t know how to get people there.”

In light of the recent editorial published in the Amherst Student on on-campus rape, sexual assault was a pertinent topic at Monday’s meeting. The council discussed inviting staff from Parton Health Center and from the Sexual Assault Overview Committee (SAOC) to give a presentation of this issue to the committee and how to initiate an ongoing conversation around this issue.

“The Amherst sexual assault case has gotten a lot of attention and so if we are going to work with the SAOC on sexual assault, we should do it sooner while people are talking about and concerned with the issue,” said Isabelle Dietz ’13.

The council also raised the idea of adding residents of Middlebury as members of the College’s Community Council. Opinions were divided on this matter — some felt that it was a way to bridge the gap between the College and the town on certain issues, while others felt that the council focused on issues that were too unique to the College and would be of little interest to the town.

Lastly, the council discussed the formation of a Residential Life Committee whose mission is to act as an advisory group and discussion forum on residential life, as well as review social houses and special interest houses each year. The committee will be comprised of one staff member, one faculty member and two student members.