Liebowitz’s Army

The highlight of this week was undoubtedly the rhetorical season-opener given by President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz in Mead Chapel on Wednesday. Unfortunately, since The Campus goes to press on Tuesdays, I have yet to hear the heart-wrenching oratory of our great leader. The options for obtaining a transcript of the speech — breaking into Old Chapel or using a time machine — are both unpalatable and technologically difficult. Instead, I offer the speech Liebowitz should have given. Actually, since the evil despots of the Opinions section keep me on a strict 600-word diet, I offer you some important things I hope Liebs covered in his speech:

New Economic Initiatives for Seniors
I’m pretty confident that Ron’s speech will focus on the financial situation of the College. He probably reminded his rapt audience that no employees were laid off or fired in the “Big Staff Freeze of 2009,” that the College is still on its way to going carbon neutral in 2016 and other sober, yet cautiously optimistic statements on the economic progress of Middlebury. Despite the fact that the College has been pretty successful at navigating the recession internally, the truth remains that seniors are heading out into a scary world where you are lucky if you can snag a gig as a barista at Starbucks. CSO’s mandatory meeting last week, with its never-ending repetition of the dirtiest word in the English language — networking — was quite terrifying.

I recommend that Liebowitz follow in the footsteps of two of the greatest leaders of the modern age — Albus Dumbledore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt — in offering seniors a modicum of job security. If Liebowitz truly wanted to capture the hearts of the Class of 2011 yesterday, he would have unveiled a revolutionary initiative: Liebowitz’s Army. Combining the best features of the scholastic dark arts fighting brigade of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the Civilian Conservation Corps, created as part of the New Deal legislation passed during the Great Depression, Liebowitz’s Army could recruit unemployed seniors, giving them temporary employment, the guarantee of three meals a day and the ability to go to bed knowing they did something idealistic and nominally important: spreading the Middlebury gospel to the masses. Also, the creation of such an army would make it much easier for my dream — the erection of a monument in the new traffic circle on Main Street of Liebowitz on a rearing horse, a sword in hand pointing defiantly towards the College — to come true.

More Opportunities for Us to Waste Money
No Juice Bar. Grille hours severely reduced. MiddExpress always depressingly dark when you walk by. A tragedy of this magnitude at the College can only be rivaled by such calamities as the disappearance of juice at dinner and the sudden end to Atwater Dining Hall, the cacophonous home of yelling diners and the weirdly verdant roof. The way to a Middlebury student’s heart is through their stomach, and they will protest most loudly when they are forced to scavenge for food. Not only are the auxiliary operations on campus hardly ever open, but it has become an exasperating game to find out exactly when you can buy a Dr. Feelgood or a cup of coffee. It is also frustrating that there is no place to get change on a Sunday when you desperately need to do laundry.

I advise Liebowitz to expand the operating hours of these businesses, not only to make sure that Middlebury students are not deprived of their God-given right to have whatever they want, whenever they want it, but also to increase cash flow in our little economic bubble. The College could also encourage a more vibrant economy by providing Panther Points tax breaks. Limited to the Bookstore, Panther Points are … pretty unremarkable. Earning a $10 gift card after four years at Middlebury isn’t something I’m liable to get hot and bothered over. Imagine a world though, where you earned Panther Points after buying deodorant at MiddExpress. Where you didn’t feel guilty after ordering cheese fries because you were earning … FREE MONEY!!! This is a world I want to live in, and it is a world that Ron Liebowitz has the power to create. I will be the first person to enlist in Liebowitz’s Army if he can provide change I can believe in. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, while desperately searching for somewhere to get my late night caffeine fix.