It won’t win me any friends, but here is my suggestion. Close Rehearsals and take the staff and menu from there and open 51 Main for lunch. It will be a nice alternative to the other fares in downtown, give us (faculty, staff, students) a place to meet for lunch, and close an operation that by the college’s own reports, is loosing money without costing those people their jobs. It will likely attract some townspeople in for lunch as well. All the better to keep the money flowing. It also give people from town an opportunity to mix with faculty, staff, and students at midday. A lot of people go home in the evening and never return to town/campus. A wonderful way to extend that town/gown bonding.

Oh yes, untie the hands of Dining Services and Ms. Doyle-Welch. Let them advertise! How can you expect 51 Main to make it if it is dark and unknown.

Thank you for the forum.

What year did you graduate, and we get you involved in more campus causes?

First, town-gown balance? Has the College ever been so generous to the town as it has been in the past 3 years? Guaranteeing the sucessful completion of the Town Hall Theater project with a $1 million gift, and financing a new bridget that had been sought and needed sorely for 50 years are just two remarkable contributions the College has done for the town since 2006. It is true the College has its own interests in these projects, but show me another institution that has done a similar thing on this scale when it didn’t have to (remember: the College provides a payment in lieu of taxes each year to supplement the town budget).

Second: if 51 Main were not there, it is most likely that another restaurant would be in that space, as it was before. That restaurant would be operating full time and rwould epresent a greater source of “competition” than 51 Main does today. So perhaps the merchants in Middlebury who “fear” competition should applaud the College’s use of the space, as it operates less than 50% of the time and therefore is less of a competitive threat.

And third: Professor Katz — if I were a student reading your post I would ask how often you are around on campus after 6 p.m. — no make that 5:30 p.m.? Probably very rarely. So who are you to suggest that closing 51 Main, and taking away one of the very few social outlets the student have today, should happen immediately? What exactly would we be solving? Making sure everyone suffers during the economic downturn? The College would be leaving a space open that, if filled, would create greater, not less, competition for the businesses you claim to be so interested in protecting, and if it were left unfilled because nobody wants to or can start a business in this environment, would reduce the tax revenue that 51 Main now produces for the town and state budget.

But most important, we would be removing yet another successful option for student social life on campus in s rural area, already short on options. I fear your training as a Russian scholar during the Soviet era has locked you into the old Soviet ideology of “nobody can have something unless everyone can have it.” In this case, you want to somehow protect other businesses in town, or make sure those who suffer from budget cutbacks at the College aren’t alone in their sacrifices and suffering, by closing down 51 Main Street. Get a life: better yet, I suggest you stay on campus from 5:30 p.m. to 3 a.m. for a week and then rethink your absolutist sentiment about closing 51 Main.

And by the way: if you are so concerned about those refreshments for your students, buy them with your own resources: since the average full professor at the College earns more than $125,000/year, it would seem you could afford it. Finally, with that level of income, we should, using your logic, redistribute some of it to those less fortunate in the community. Then others might take more seriously your dire concern for the closing of 51 Main.

Dolce is but one example of how students can increase traffic at 51 Main (and what a great move this was: thank you Mr. Biette or Mr. Jordan, or whoever was responsible!).

I for one hope 51 Main is with us for a long time.

(1) For faculty in general and young faculty in particular, one of Middlebury’s largest liabilities is its lack of metropolitan culture. Impressionistic evidence suggests that if a candidate for a faculty position rejects an offer from the College, it is often because the candidate would prefer to live in a more urban environment. A similar argument can be made for faculty members who leave the College for other positions. While Middlebury will never have the social spots and cultural attractions of a major city, 51 Main provides at least one venue that feels familiar to those of us who are from big cities. So while it is an admittedly an indirect causal link, I believe an argument can be made that 51 Main is important in attracting and retaining many professors who would otherwise be alienated by a rural Vermont town.

(2) Closely related, I have found that 51 Main provides the best available venue for certain events that straddle education and recreation. To name three that I have organized:

a. Percussionist and sculptor Mario Schambon performed a concert at 51 Main after being an accompanist in a dance class, leading a discussion about his sculpture for the Cafecito Hour Lecture Series, and playing music with a number of student musicians at the Middlebury Open Improvisation.

b. The Chicago Afrobeat Project gave a lecture on the history of Afrobeat music and then performed at 51 Main.

c. The jazz trio the mi3 led a workshop and performed at 51 Main.

All three concerts were very well attended and, as the workshops, lectures, etc. indicate, had an important educational component. Equally important, while I certainly don’t have access to 51 Main’s books, my guess is that these were nights where it made a profit. So, at its best, 51 Main can be economically viable AND complement an educational agenda.

Now it might be argued that none of this required 51 Main, so let me address this. The genres of music discussed above (avant garde, afrobeat, and jazz) are not regular fixtures in the College’s musical programming, and don’t seem well-suited to being performed at the CFA. For a College that aspires to be international, diverse, and intellectually ambitious, it is desirable to represent a wider variety of music, and because it is the only place in town/on campus that has the feel of a real club, 51 Main is the kind of venue that can attract fairly elite musicians in these other genres. I’m also confident that, if allowed to continue, the musical programming for 51 Main will improve as it gets more exposure and more artists begin to recognize Middlebury as a good stop in between Montreal and Boston/NYC on their tours.

As I said above, there’s a lot here that I’m not addressing–financial concerns being chief among them–but I hope that what I have said here illustrates some of the ways in which 51 Main is a unique asset to Middlebury.