Editorial Maintaining Middlebury's Core

Author: [no author name found]

The last decade has been a honeymoon period of expansion for Middlebury College. The College added summer and international programs, acquired an institute for international study, grew the student population, and adorned the campus with huge, shiny, top-notch buildings. For these things we are thankful. Now the global financial crisis, which we promised would not touch our campus in this space just six weeks ago, has arrived on College Street, or more specifically Old Chapel Road. After meeting with the Board of Trustees, President Liebowitz announced a series of public meetings to discuss the financial challenges confronting Middlebury, and his recent letter has had top billing on the College's website for over a week. To be sure, Middlebury's most pressing concern today, along with many other institutions, is how best to preserve its way of life.

To say nothing of the Middlebury Initiative's goal of raising $500 million, the College's endowment will be hard-pressed to reap the high returns of recent years, let alone maintain its value. The endowment has been stretched thin in the past; in fact, the aforementioned building boom is due in large part to an above-average increase in endowment spending, beginning in 2001-2002, of up to 7.1%. Now Old Chapel is forced to reassess its spending habits and conduct a thorough investigation into what aspects of this College are most important and which will be most permanent. President Liebowitz has sent two major letters out to the college community detailing the struggles and institutional changes as well as encouraging community involvement in the conversation. We're glad that he has been so forthcoming.

While the financial struggle may have a negative impact on Middlebury, we nonetheless see this as an opportunity to re-examine the core values of the school and re-emphasize what it is we most stand for. We applaud President Liebowitz's dedication to keeping Middlebury's admissions process need-blind and for expanding the financial aid budget; we see these as imperative in maintaining the vitality of the student body. The increase in faculty positions as outlined in the strategic plan is also of great importance and we are disappointed to hear that the hiring of new professors will be slower than originally planned. Middlebury is lauded for its beautiful campus and impressive facilities, but the faculty is at the center of the College's success.

Above all, we feel that the College needs to devote its attention to maintaining and continuing to improve the undergraduate experience. Although expansion to Monterey was funded largely through a gift, and the varied summer and international programs are often defended as "helping the bottom-line," we feel that institutional attention is just as important as institutional spending. The College administration must remember to devote its greatest attention to this very campus and to the very undergraduate students who spend four years at Middlebury, rather than those who spend only a limited time in its midst.

We undergraduates are glad for the notoriety and financial support of the College's summer and international programs. We think they, in many ways, improve upon the undergraduate experience and no doubt the College's reputation. But the core of that experience is here on our small Vermont campus. The Middlebury Initiative strives to make Middlebury the first "global liberal arts college for the 21st century," but reconciling this new credo with the small, balanced liberal arts college of the 19th and 20th centuries will be difficult. We trust Old Chapel, positioned at the center of Old Stone Row, will proceed carefully. Middlebury College has weathered many crises only to emerge stronger, we have no doubt that this tradition will continue.