I joined Omega Alpha — more commonly known as Tav — three years ago. Last year I became the president. I’ve watched as increasing regulation has prevented social houses from creating community spaces and recruiting new members.While a return to the system of fraternities is neither being discussed nor desirable, Middlebury College should allow the social houses to operate more independently and to demand more from their members in order to create spaces that can better build community within the school.
The purpose of the social houses is to provide a space on campus that gives students opportunities to participate in a close community. The campus at large clearly can’t provide this — when was the last time that any campus-wide event at Midd pulled in even a small fraction of the student body? Providing opportunities for close-knit groups is key to a vibrant campus social life, and social houses provide that in a way other clubs do not. Social houses currently face restrictions on almost every aspect of their existence, particularly their abilities to host events and recruit members. It would be difficult to find a student who has never been in Tav basement, and social house parties with hundreds of attendees are not uncommon. But social houses can, and should, do much more than throw parties on the weekends.
Events for members such as game nights, house meetings or just opportunities to hang out as a group are key to forming tightly-knit communities. However, the requirement to register every event with the Student Activities Office (SAO), the prohibition on holding unregistered events and the lengthy, sometimes week-long process for registering an event hamper the creation of a close community. Having to plan social engagements days in advance makes it difficult to take advantage of momentary opportunities. While beautiful fall weather could make for a perfect time to have a house hangout in the courtyard, by the time you’ve received the three separate approvals for the event, there might be snow on the ground.
The process of approval can also feel arbitrary and purposefully opaque. The SAO and Middlebury Events Management, who review event applications, do not communicate consistently about our events. Multiple times this semester, Tav has gotten the first two necessary approvals for an event only to be told days later that the third required approval had not been granted. The process feels capricious. For example, when applying for approval on a party this semester, we were denied one of the approvals because it was during the recruitment phase, and parties were not allowed as part of that process. We wrote in bold on the application that the party was unrelated to the recruitment process and recruits would not be allowed to attend in order to comply with school policy. It still took days to resolve. For any reader who visited Tav basement the last Saturday of October — and I know many did — that event nearly didn’t happen because an administrator couldn’t be bothered to read the application.
As institutions with nearly 100% turnover every four years, social houses rely on strong recruitment processes to bring new members in and integrate them into the house. This turnover can make it difficult to craft community, as other recent op-eds have noted. The social house recruitment process is naturally restricted by the administration, as it has the potential to go wrong in ways that reflect poorly upon the school. Many of the regulations on the process make sense; others are mandated by state law. The prohibition on alcohol during recruitment, for example, exists to protect the school, new members and the social houses themselves.
That being said, social houses must be able to demand commitment from their members for that membership to mean something. Current restrictions at Middlebury go far past state law, and our campus is poorer for it. If just signing up for a “New Member Education Process” guarantees entry and all the benefits that this membership entails, then there is no reason to actually engage with the house consistently, and no true integration into a community. It’s no wonder that the process doesn’t produce committed members.
Social houses should be able to set the length of their education process, when it occurs in the semester, and to compel a level of attendance in that process. None of these things are possible now. Recruitment is limited to a predetermined, two week period, and the total process needs to be limited in terms of the number and length of events to prevent time commitment from being too high, according to the SAO. While the limit for the amount of time a process can be planned for isn’t specified, Tav’s original recruitment plan last year called for less than an hour each day for two weeks, with one two-hour session on a weekend. It was rejected for being too time-consuming. Without that commitment however, the process can’t hope to integrate new people into the house.
I remember recruitment as one of the highlights of my Middlebury experience. I was in that basement, almost every day, for three weeks. That commitment tied me irreversibly to the house. Just a few years ago, Tav could reliably count on 40–50 people to show up for a weekly update meeting. Now, we’re lucky to get ten, and I think that the drastic change in expectations surrounding the process of becoming a member is responsible for that.
The goal of creating social spaces not tied to a particular sport or organization is a noble one, and forms an important part of community living here at Middlebury. But if we want that to extend past the occasional Friday or Saturday night party, we need to rethink the regulatory structures that these organizations are beholden to. We must let them actually create communities. Making events easier to host and allowing social houses to demand participation from members as a condition of membership would allow for stronger, more vibrant communities that existed not so long ago.
