Notes from the SGA Pres: On Student Spaces

I hope everyone has had a great start to their semester!

This week, I thought it would be a great idea to talk about something that has been on the minds of many students,--dining changes. Specifically, the recent Grille closure two nights a week and the changes to the dining hall hours that has worried many students. In conversations with Dan Detora and David Provost, we discussed the reasons behind it, how it impacts students, and where to  go from here. This is all part of a larger issue concerning space.  Because students use the dining hall as a social space, any changes are bound to affect the way students access food and ultimately each other. 

While these changes are in dining, they are also part of a bigger financial picture. Currently, we are planning to have an event where David Provost can present on the challenges and changes we now face to a larger student audience. This will allow students to not only understand the issue, but provide them the opportunity to offer informed suggestions about space, dining, and how to better improve these areas. Hopefully this will not be the only event of this nature. Along with MiddWorks, a series that allows students to learn about administrators and what they do, presentations like these can invite students to understand challenges and how they influence Middlebury and its students. More details will be provided in the future, but I hope students see these steps as moves towards transparency and encouraging student involvement.

I also want to take part of this column to talk about space and how important it is to everyone’s experience. We never acknowledge places like the dining halls or McCullough as places to do homework, eat, and socialize until changes make us realize it. Similarly, we fail to acknowledge the general disrespect these same spaces are shown when we leave parts of our meals on the table for someone else to clean up. If we are going to talk about The Grille and dining hall as important centers on campus, we also need to treat them, and the people, that way.

Nia Robinson is the president of the Student Government Association and a member of the Middlebury College Class of 2019.