Coming down the mountain: What should Winter Carnival mean to Middlebury?

Their neon ski goggles glint against the snow and their cowboy hats are pulled snug over their beanies. Glitter freezes to their cheeks as they grip their numb fingers around the cans tucked into their jackets. It seems like everybody who knows everybody is at the Snowbowl on the third Saturday of February. There’s a DJ playing music from the lodge, too faint to really hear, and it’s bitterly cold of course, but none of that really matters because it’s the Winter Carnival and we came here to see, be seen and feel like Midd Kids. 

If this weekend of festivities can tell us anything, it’s that when Middlebury students have enough collective buy-in to gather as a community in the cold, cheer their classmates on and check each other out in snowpants, they know how to have some fun. 

At a small, liberal arts college where we rarely gather as a community to celebrate our school, Winter Carnival is a unique opportunity to show some spirit — it’s a prime example of students coming together and having fun simply because they decide to. 

But it is also worth acknowledging that while it may seem like the entire school attends the ski races at the Snowbowl on Saturday, this is clearly an illusion. With a student body of 2,800, the few hundred that may show up to the main carnival event are far from representative of us all. The races and their splendor could be seen by many students as disproportionately ski-culture centric and therefore alienating, and partying during the day — colloquially known as “dartying” — is certainly not for everyone. 

Middlebury’s party culture comes in full force to the Snowbowl on Carnival day. Ski patrol have to worry about students behaving unsafely due to intoxication, and it’s undoubtedly a challenge for the Snowbowl staff to maintain the students coming in droves. As young adults, we should be able to come together as a community without endangering ourselves or making life more difficult for the people who keep us safe and keep the ski mountain we love up and running. 

When Middlebury students think of Winter Carnival, the ski races are at the forefront of our minds, often at the cost of making room in our schedules for the other festive events organized by the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB). The ice sculpting on the Proctor Dining hall patio provided some excellent post-dinner discourse, and the ice show at Kenyon Arena filled the stands on Saturday — though mostly with locals, not students. 

The Winter Carnival Ball, though not without plentiful funding, is attended sparsely, and mostly by underclassmen who are just figuring their social lives out, while the event is popularly shunned by upperclassmen who may sleep through it in favor of partying more later in the night. While often neglected, the ball and ice show are traditions nearly as storied as the ski races — did you know we used to crown a Winter Carnival Queen?

We believe that the campus is better off when more students feel invested in the many events, clubs and activities that occur across campus daily; a similar energy should infuse our attitude toward non-skiing activities in the Winter Carnival. 

There are other events and annual occasions on campus to feel yourself part of a larger school community. Nocturne Arts Festival and the Día de los Muertos celebration, for example, are not centered on drinking and don’t feature a demographic of the Middlebury community already heavily represented. It’s a testament to our shared ability for creating hype that we can make the Winter Carnival into Coachella in the snow — why not bring that same energy to events throughout the whole academic year?

Let’s have fun carving ice sculptures, building huge snowmen, drinking hot chocolate, dancing at the Winter Ball and cheering at the Winter Carnival Ice Show — even skiers clad in their neon may find an event or two worth coming down the mountain for.

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