For two hours on Sunday, Nov. 2, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, along with Dean of the College Shirley Collado, Dean of Students Katy Smith-Abbott, Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard, Director of Health & Wellness Barbara McCall, and others held an open forum during which students and administrators engaged about social life on campus.
Liebowitz started the conversation by asking students, “What issues are problematic?” He stressed that this forum was not limited to the issue of tailgating and off campus party issues.
“I feel the frustration, and we do want to help to make this a better place,” Liebowitz began.
Students expressed a general discontent for party options on the weekends. Many commented that parties are shut down too quickly, and students flock to the one or two options that they have, creating crowds and noise complains.
Taylor Custer ’15, President of the SGA, was the first to speak about the party-monitoring program as an opportunity for common ground between students who want to throw parties and take ownership of social life and administrators who are worried about the safety of students and liability of underage drinking. The role is to support the party host and make sure regulations are being followed.
“This is a two-way street and students are not stepping up,” Liebowitz said. He went on to emphasize the potential for students in the Party Assistant program, where students have the opportunity to get paid the highest level of student work wages and play an active role in social life, while Public Safety would have a smaller role.
Many students admitted after the forum said they had no knowledge of the Party Assistants position, indicating a need for the administration to be clearer with students.
Ola Fadairo ’15 brought up this problem of disconnect and that students don’t know anything about how policy is made at the College.
Liebowitz quickly responded that the Task Force on Alcohol and Social Life was created to assess the relationship of alcohol to social life at Middlebury. Fadairo replied “that exact marketing and advertising was poor. We know exactly what the administration wants us to know about Carbon Neutrality by 2016, but other things such as how policies are made are kept in the dark.”
Collado also mentioned that though Public Safety often gets blamed for shutting down parties, the requests often come from students.
“Frequent calls from students asking public safety to shut down parties because they got out of hand. On the surface, Public Safety is the face of it, but it is often your peers who are requesting help,” she said.
Blake Shapskinsky ’15 spoke next and said, “Students don’t take advantage of groups, such as Community Council or SGA, where grievances have been discussed before.”
He continued, “People are busy, and the administration can’t wave a magic wand, there’s no ‘one-page-all-you-need-to-know’ memo, it’s more complex than that.”
Kelsey O’Day ’15, president of the InterHouse Council, added to this and commented on student’s lack of initiative to host parties.
Emily Alper ’15 stated that registering a party is a hassle largely because Public Safety shuts them down too quickly. She referenced a party that was shut down because of five underage drinkers. Both Burchard and Liebowitz justified Public Safety’s actions by citing incidents in the past where Middlebury Town Police would step in to these situations, leading to more severe consequences.
Emma Cree Gee ’16, co-president of Chromatic said, “We’ve really enjoyed the creative freedom in building the house, but there are structural and administrative ambiguities that have created a few challenges for us in getting up and running.”
Octavio Hingle-Webster ’17 shared this frustration. He claimed a “lack of administrative transparency regarding issues not included in this discussion but pertinent to our definitions of social life at Middlebury that deeply affect our senses of safety and belonging here.”
Hingle-Webster continued, “This discrepancy between the issues of the privileged and the issues of people often marginalized and targeted on this campus demonstrates a severe lack of administration response towards the well-being of all students.” Hingle-Webster was joined in his call to action by a group of other students who together demanded that the administration holds similar evening discussions among other things.
Liebowitz responded immediately after a great majority of the room stood in solidarity with Hingle-Webster’s call to action. Liebowitz said, “I make a pledge for each of us to continue conversation.”
Liebowitz also asked Hingle-Webster, “What is the administration doing to deconstruct the hierarchies within the ‘Middlebury identity’ that privilege white upper-class cisgendered heterosexual able-bodied identities by normalizing them, while tokenizing and exoticizing marginalized identities as the ‘other’?”
Jeremy Stratton-Smith ’17 had to clarify the meanings of tokenizing and exoticising during the forum, “which speaks to the very issue of unspoken bias towards white, upper-class, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, and US citizenship bearing identities in that there is not an awareness of the problematic power structure intrinsic to the idea that people of diverse backgrounds have the responsibility, on top of being full-time students, to educate their peers about their experience. This expectation puts an unjust amount of pressure on minority students here on campus because it asks them to become spokespeople for the identities they carry that are seen as different from the traditional Middlebury identity.”
Collado mentioned that the creation of the Intercultural Center will provide a place for students to discuss these issues and be provided support.
McCall responded to a question presented regarding why the administration had taken a reactive stance as opposed to preventative measures surrounding sexual violence and rape culture.
“Middlebury received a three-year grant of $272,528 from the Department of Justice to enhance the College’s efforts to prevent and respond to sexual violence on campus,” she stated.
With the Sexual Assault Oversight Committee and MiddSafe, Collado stated many actions are being taken to be proactive and preventative.
Andrew Snow ’15 spoke about his group of friends going to the administration to get funding to throw parties, and so far have all been successful.
“Student agency made that happen,” he stated.
Liebowitz was asked if there could be a party initiative fund for students to pull from, to which Liebowitz responded, “You got it. My commitment is there.”
Stratton-Smith and others in solidarity would like to hold President Liebowitz to his statement that more such forums will continue to happen, “particularly around the five additional questions that were presented to him around Middlebury identity, campus inclusivity, and the campus environmental commitment.”
