What we have in Commons: on the intellectual community at Middlebury

Every other week in the second half of the 1980s, students gathered for what began as a book club. As Associate Professor of Political Science Sebnem Gumuscu tells the story, students and faculty packed onto sofas and rugs to socialize and discuss what they had read. The event, which inspired the commons system, put into practice the understanding that newly acquired ideas should change how you live your life. The commons system, which lasted from 1992 to 2019, was the institutionalization of such a principle. 

The commons represented a culture of innovation that sought to bring about the ideal education. Our administration, students and faculty pushed to be less like everyone else; to create something better that embraced and cultivated the values of a liberal education. We believe that Middlebury has lost this spirit: Realism and market pressure have replaced passion as the chief arbiter of institutional direction. 

We want to tell you the story of the commons so that everyone can know what Middlebury was just 10 years ago. 

Five residential communities — Ross, Brainerd, Wonnacott, Atwater and Cook — housed students for their first two years at Middlebury and provided Residential Assistants, counselors and deans to help establish a healthy community. Every commons had a central house where events were held, and where a professor, the “Commons Head,” lived. Students’ First Year Seminars were directly tied into the commons, and events, like champagne socials at graduation, helped students stay close. Middlebury education under the commons continued after class ended; scholarship, beyond just studying, is a practice of living well. The commons system embodied this. From day one of the student’s experience, the commons structure intentionally stitched together the realm of ideas with everyday life.

Multiple times a week, lectures, club meetings and social events took place in the commons house living rooms. Students fondly remember the first German Coffee Hours, long, student-catered dinners and champagne send-offs at graduation. Students sometimes donned shirts with their mascot, like Cook’s flying pig. Events were not mandatory, but former commons heads like Professor of German & Comparative Literature Roman Graf and Maria Hatjigeorgiou remember the crowds these occasions attracted. Events weren’t always intellectual in activity. Still, they got students and professors talking, removing the intellectual intimidation and divide between academics and “life” at Middlebury today. Curiosity cannot be taught, but it can be uncovered.

The commons existed only as long as our idealism. When a new administration was brought in to stabilize the school financially, the system was phased out, ostensibly to save money. While we need balanced books, the question of how exactly to define “cost” arises. The last decade has seen our focus from undergraduate experience to postgraduates at satellite campuses and administrative growth. Monterey is a financial blackhole with declining enrollment, and while the Princeton Review once said our administration “runs like butter,” we can only recommend that headline to The Local Noodle today. 

The commons system was not perfect. A 2019 campus survey found that while 50% of students were satisfied with the commons system, discontent stemmed from a “lack of interclass interaction that creates an isolating environment.” However, the urge for “interaction” in the criticism of the commons legitimized its very purpose: community. These critiques were and are valid, but our primary concern is not that the commons itself was dismantled but that no meaningful replacement was instituted to address the central need of our community. 

Our current administration promised us a replacement in the Compass mentorship program. Brian Conde-Martinez ’25 and Vanessa Dator ’25 remember Compass as a single meeting with their first year seminar, from which no lasting relationships sprouted. Neither of their originally assigned mentors ever met with them individually. Dator met with a replacement Compass mentor once in her second year, but she said that was the extent of the relationship. Conde-Martinez had no such luck. Speaking for ourselves, we did not even know these mentors existed. 

Middlebury College is a different institution than four years ago when we arrived. We tracked the change with our own eyes. Student traditions, like exam-week midnight Ross, died out with the class of 2022; weekend frenzies at the Grille ceased in 2020; and it seems that even the social house Tavern might be in decline. Friday nights are eerily quiet compared to when we first arrived on campus. Covid-19 was billed as the bromide to our community’s inability to form. Certainly, this was the explanation given to the class of 2024. This cannot be the case; this trend has been marching on for far longer than any pandemic.

We have been fed a “noble” lie: that the continuous erosion of our community is an act of fate. That there is nothing to be done, that this is natural, and most importantly, that there is no one to blame.

Without institutional memory, our administration can abuse the student body's myopia. Classes rotate in and out every four years. When we do, whatever knowledge of the institution we have vanishes unless it is recorded. We can not use history to correct the ills of our school if it does not exist. 

Our forgetfulness benefits the administration, whose primary obligation switched from students to a balance sheet. Even this, they do not seem to do particularly well. Our satellite campuses lose the college millions every year, and our Vermont campus cannot retain their librarians. Our mismatch of priorities is reflected in the college’s steady fall in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Historically, our community has been Middlebury’s greatest strength. Relationships between faculty and peers have fostered intellectual curiosity, boldness and creativity that can only come from an institution with its students' interests at heart. Our administration’s priorities have changed over this last decade. 

Today, the commons are now reduced to meaningless memorials for a system we never experienced and our malnourished student-faculty community. We stand at a crossroads, and we hope that through this brief history, our paths can be made more clear. We can continue to watch our institution decline in complacent silence, or we can demand better, record the history we need to rely on to argue our case. Our college is endowed with a noble mission and the funds to pursue it; we should not settle for less.

Editor’s Note: The discussion of social life under the 20th century commons system in this article has been updated for online publication.