Op-Ed Midd student life headed for hell

Author: Maddie Terry

Here on Middlebury's campus, the chemistry students in my class felt compelled to remain in our recent midterm examination until 2 and 3 a.m., their heads lowered over worked and re-worked calculations since a 7:30 p.m. start time. In this same environment, students opt to skip multiple meals to finish papers and edit drafts, and go without sleep to create projects and compositions that cannot otherwise be factored into overscheduled days jammed with resume-building committee meetings. Many professors even refused to reschedule evening exams on Oct. 24 that would have allowed more students to attend Justice Roberts' lecture.

After the particularly horrendous grind that spanned the week of Oct. 22, a fortuitous event loomed on the horizon for Middlebury students. This year's Halloween Party, held at FIC in a joint sponsorship by VACA and Atwater Commons, involved collaborative efforts, decoration and planning by these two different groups. Posters for the event invited all students to attend, and was meant to include all would-be party goers who just barely survived the academic week. The vibe was one of a cooperative effort to stimulate the otherwise stagnant nightlife on campus, and to infuse the evening with rare flair that makes the party memorable each year.

What resulted from this hype and excitement was a mood that hasn't seen much action this semester. Whether or not students had planned costumes for Saturday night's event, hopes were certainly high that the evening would finally allow room for a certain piece of the college puzzle that has been missing for weekend after weekend: a chance for Middlebury to let its hair down. This fall has seen the disappearance of a major social house on campus, a continued crackdown on all social house operations and unprecedented low attendance at MCAB-sponsored events.

It seems more students work in Bicentennial Hall early on Saturday mornings and late on Friday afternoons than last year, and more cars full of underage students also head away from campus on Saturday nights - cars driven by those who, whether intoxicated or sober, feel forced to search outside the neighborhood for a place where they are allowed to party. Last weekend's VACA party lacked the usual exclusivity of parties at Midd that require guest lists or connections: It was planned on campus, located on campus and looked forward to on campus and this made Saturday evening a rare option for students.

At 12:45 a.m., I started down the crowded North Lang stairwell with about 15 friends dressed up to meet other groups in-transit who were planning to convene at Freeman. After descending two flights of stairs, an eruption of phone calls and text messages communicated that the party was already over, and had been abruptly closed to all students by Public Safety. The alcohol brought by students in violation wasn't simply and efficiently confiscated, which could have allowed the party to continue. Instead, all of the planning by invested students and staff that would have made possible a memorable night for a recently disimpassioned student body was negated. For the majority of students who did not attempt to bring alcohol to the party and who had chosen to stay on campus for the party, the prospect of Halloween at Freeman quickly and predictably became a non-option. Some students of legal drinking age headed to bars, and some tried houses down the hill to gather in smaller, isolated groups in an exodus that is increasingly characteristic of Middlebury weekends. Others trickled into the Grille for nine or ten minutes before Public Safety shooed them away for a second time when the kitchen closed. Most alarmingly, however, is the reality that many disappointed students, both underage and of legal age, were then more inclined to then engineer transportation off-campus to drink the alcohol that waited there, which could have lead to any number of hazardous binge drinking situations or potentially fatal drunk driving incidents in the early morning.

On Sunday, I woke up to a trashed bathroom and hallway in one of the quietest dorms on campus. I wondered what difference it would have made if the overworked, sleep-deprived, sinus-infection-fighting students who ended up black-out drunk on Saturday night had been able to safely spend their time at Freeman socializing instead. If the social scene remains as partitioned, cramped and reprehensibly mismanaged as it was this past weekend, student life at this college is headed in a regrettable direction.

MADDIE TERRY '08
A STUDIO ART MAJOR
From Concord, Mass.