Social Architectural History of Carr Hall

Space is always changing. In our four years here, students see spaces on campus created and old ones taken down or repurposed. At the same time, four years is a small window into the larger history of the college. Carr Hall, the small stone building on College Street, which currently houses the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) and International Student & Scholar Services (ISSS) may undergo another change.

Dean of the College Shirley Collado and Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity Roberto Lint Sagarena, with student input, proposed the creation of an Intercultural Center for to be housed in Carr Hall for Fall 2015. For years, students have been advocating for a safe, student-focused space in which relevant programming, student organization meetings and discourse on intersectionality of identity and culture can occur.

Despite its small size, Carr Hall has a very dynamic architectural and social history. Construction on Carr Hall was completed in January 1951. The building cost $150,000, donated by Mrs. Carr, and is designed with a modified Georgian style. Its exterior is fashioned from limestone from Middlebury’s quarry. Carr Hall is named after Mr. Reid Langdon Carr, class of 1901, and was used as the fine arts building.

In 1968, Carr Hall became repurposed as the health center; lead by the college’s first physician George Parton, for whom the Parton Health & Wellness center is now named. There were offices on the second floor and a room for the live-in housekeeper and cook, with six double rooms on the third floor for both men and women. A nurse aide stayed during nights and weekends to care for inpatients and manage emergencies.

In 1984, the Health Center was downsized due to a need for faculty offices coupled with a sense from the administration that inpatient rooms were underutilized. As a result, the college renovated the third floor to house the counseling center. The Department of Public Safety was housed in the first floor basement of Carr Hall, with one telephone room and one radio room.

One staff member recalled this year, “It was awful down there. We had two small windows. When it rained hard it would flood the hallway. This is a much better space.”

After the Health Center and Public Safety relocated in August of 2003, the space was renovated yet again. PALANA (Pan-African, Latino, Asian, and Native American), the intercultural academic interest house, began on the third floor from 2003 until 2007. In 2008, International Student & Scholar Services moved into the first and second floors.

Should the Intercultural Center by approved, ISSS offices would have to move, ideally to a centrally located building on campus.

“Roberto and I have already been talking about making sure the new Intercultural Center will be an appealing and engaging place for international students, too,” Associate Dean and Director of ISSS Kathy Foley said.  “I am optimistic that we will be able to come up with a positive outcome that will allow both the Center to succeed and ISSS to continue to thrive.”

Some students will feel support from the staff members at Carr Hall regardless of where ISSS will be placed.

“I consider Carr Hall a safe space because of the great staff that works there,” Rafael Manyari ’15 said. “They have always been so helpful to international students. But I will still feel the support, so the space itself doesn’t matter as much.”

ISSS, though, is just one important aspect in the complex puzzle of creating a dynamic, effective center.

The Intercultural Center will have Roberto Lint Sagarena as Director, an Associate Director and a Coordinator for the CCSRE and Intercultural Center. There would be cosmetic changes to Carr Hall, such as changing of carpets, paint color and furniture in order to make the space feel more welcoming and allow multi-purpose use of vacated offices.

The first floor would remain open in the evenings, and be an informal space for students to talk, hold meetings, meet with study groups and do schoolwork.

The second floor will remain the large lounge and kitchen space, which can hold lectures, film screenings and discussions. Currently, student organizations such as Alianza and Queers & Allies hold meetings in the second floor of Carr Hall on weekday evenings.

The third floor would be office space for the Director, Associate Director and Coordinator.

Students of underrepresented identities, who have advocated for a space like the Intercultural Center for years, note the lack of safe spaces on campus and the binary between academic and social space. Many students feel that the CCSRE is too academic of a space, and the changes to the space will allow it to be more hybridized.

“I do not see the Intercultural Center having faculty spaces. I think that should be separate,” Zeke Caceres ’15 said. “Having a space with a large social component, less influenced by academics, is something that is valuable here.”

Dean Collado has hopes that the space will bring faculty, staff and students together meaningfully to blur the academic and social binary.

“One of the most important things that Carr Hall will offer is to truly integrate the academic with the cultural, the social and the personal, so that students won’t compartmentalize their lived experiences from what they learn academically,” Collado said. “Students are eager to have spaces in which their multiple identities can intersect and their intellectual curiosities can be fueled.”

“Carr Hall can serve as a nexus for great things that are already happening on campus put on by other centers like Chellis House, the Scott Center and Hillcrest,” she added. “Students don’t have to be pulled to one space, but can see how they all connect. Having something exist in only one place is a real waste for such a small community.”

“My voice is one of many, but I think one of the reasons spaces like Carr Hall are so necessary is because in places like Middlebury, and higher education at large, students should inhabit space and feel that it belongs to them,” Debanjan Roychoudhury ’16 said. “In my experience, students of color, queer students, first-generation students and international students feel that the space of Middlebury is not for them. I hope students use the space, feel welcome and feel like it is theirs.”

The kind of ownership over space that Roychoudhury talks about aligns with administrators’ vision of the Intercultural Space.

“Ultimately, the biggest change is the creation of a community, one that serves multiple constituencies and allows different groups to retain their coherence while working meaningfully with other groups,” Sagarena said.

“The biggest goal is that underrepresented students feel that this is a home base from which they feel they can take ownership of the campus,” Sagarena continues. “That’s not to say that everyone who is ‘other’ gets siloed here, but that it can be a springboard for feeling comfortable in that space, then taking that feeling into spaces they feel less comfortable in.”

The answers to whether the proposal is passed should be clear within the next month. There has been a high level of care and thought put into the proposal for the Intercultural Center, so that it fits as seamlessly as possible into the fabric of the campus. Ultimately, the success of the Intercultural Center will rest on the voices and participation of students, faculty and staff of all backgrounds to shape the space according to their shared needs.