College admissions have been a source of controversy for decades, but the topic has been of particular interest to this campus over the past month. Students and faculty have long wondered which traits the College prefers and whether the biases that shape these preferences are racist, classist or otherwise illiberal. An important result of this discourse is that the opaque admissions process at Middlebury has come under scrutiny.
In my time at this school, admission preferences has been one of many issues people debate. I have heard cries for change echo across Chapel Lawn over and over again, always with the same demand: more transparency. More transparency in the endowment! The board of trustees! The administration! Access to information is proposed to be a panacea for all our social ills and injustices, so I naturally assumed it would be prescribed to cure this admissions ailment. But, by and large, it has not been.
As a student organization that allegedly embodies the ideals of the free press, it is the Campus’ duty to uncover the truth, whether on our own or through the help of others, and to share it with those who need it most. As a member of that organization, I am baffled by the lukewarm response to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. This newspaper has editorialized on the importance of increased transparency many times before. However, now that FERPA has made such transparency possible, instead of doing our duty we are shirking from it.
The change of heart concerning this particular bout with transparency is the result of students seriously contemplating its consequences, perhaps for the first time. People’s feelings could get hurt, social divides could widen, the campus could crumble from instability. But these objections could be raised any time someone calls for transparency. Why is this time different?
Because it is only now that we have what we want that we realize how much we are afraid of it.
The same goes for other organizations that adopt credos of social justice and institutional accountability. Transparency is terrifying for all parties. There are reasons why information is safeguarded other than to mask corruption. So forgive me when I say that it doesn’t take real courage to bang some pots and pans and shout at Old Chapel for more transparency, because it isn’t required for writing a Notes from the Desk either. Real courage means after all the demonstrations end, after all the articles have been written, and the door is finally open, you walk in.
Undoubtedly, what is on the other side of that door is a can of worms. In light of the current buzz around FERPA, Admissions departments of major colleges all over the country are concerned about what opening it may bring. Middlebury’s Admissions department and the Campus editorial board have suggested a few outcomes, ranging from the dubious and irrelevant to the probable and important. However, what is certain to crawl out of that can is more information and more conversation.
To every student who has ever bemoaned the lack of diversity on campus, been outraged that athletes are given preferential treatment or advocated for a more transparent Middlebury College: now is the time to do something about it. Send the Admissions department your FERPA Access request and go in to see your file. One of the sections you will see on that file is a collection of numbers that represent scores for a number of factors that were given to you by the Admissions office based on how desirable a candidate you are. Write them down.
The Campus, in the spirit of good journalism, should work with any willing student(s) of the hundreds that are near-experts in data management software to create a database to which students may anonymously their submit scores and relevant demographic information. From there, we can look at trends and compare the scores of Middlebury legacy students with first-generation college students, of white persons and non-white persons, of athletes with NARPS. This is what transparency can do — if we are brave enough to take advantage of this unprecedented possibility.
If we truly value increased transparency, institutional accountability, and social justice, it is imperative that we use the tools at our disposal to do what we believe to be right. To do anything else would be an utter failure of principle.
