Task force co-chairs, Dean of Students Katy Smith Abbott and Coach Bob Ritter, have provided an update about the status of the report with important news about some of the recommendations.

Your comments and feedback continue to be valuable to our work in this area. Please don’t be shy about communicating your thoughts in the comments section below.

Shirley

Dear Students:

Welcome and welcome back! It is wonderful to have you on campus and to have the College newly energized. We hope that your summers were restorative and that you are looking forward to a year of adventure, hard work, and meaningful friendships.

We are writing to you in our roles as co-chairs of the Task Force on Alcohol and Social Life. As many of you know, the task force, a 15-member group of students, faculty, and staff, met throughout the 2011­–12 academic year and submitted over 40 recommendations to the president and the dean of the College at the end of May. You can read the full text of the report and those recommendations here. You will need to log in with your Middlebury username and password. The Campus highlighted some of the major recommendations in the final issue of the year, and we shared an overview of these recommendations with the senior leadership of the College and the Board of Trustees at their May meeting.

We’re now eager to update you on some of the work that has been undertaken over the summer and some of the changes you are likely to notice as we move into this new academic year, as follows:

Student Social Life

Some of the most promising work has occurred in the arena of student social life, in direct response to feedback we received from students in focus groups and other small-group conversations. We initiated a new practice last spring, that of scheduling a “Social Summit” each semester. At these summits, student organization leaders and members of the Student Activities staff come together to share ideas and to actually begin scheduling the social calendar for the following term. Extra support for this initiative is in the works: the task force’s recommendation to hire a social events coordinator—a dynamic individual who will serve in a key programming role—was accepted, and that interview/hiring process is underway. The social events coordinator will be pivotal in supporting efforts at Crossroads Café, the Gamut Room, 51 Main, and elsewhere, and in supporting scheduled Pub Nights, Trivia Nights, and performances of Verbal Onslaught in the Grille this fall and beyond.

One thing we heard loud and clear from students is a desire not just for more programming, but also for more varied programming. We count on you to stay involved and to bring these ideas to Commons Councils, MCAB (including the Small Concerts Initiative), the Gamut Room, your social house or special interest house leadership, or to any other student organization that is prepared to make things happen. But our hope is that you will already detect a shift in the way things are scheduled and supported.

Health and Wellness

One area of particular focus and concern for the task force was that of health and wellness. We are delighted to report that the task force’s strong recommendation that the College hire a director of health and wellness education was accepted. A hiring committee met and interviewed candidates over the course of the summer, and we are bringing our first candidate to interview on campus on September 17–18. She will offer a public presentation on Monday, September 17, at 4:30 p.m. in Hillcrest. We hope that many of you will plan to attend.

Once hired, the director will oversee many of the educational and preventative measures recommended by the task force and endorsed by the president and dean of the College. These include the online course that all incoming first-years take, MyStudentBody; creating a social norms campaign on campus; actively programming with student wellness leaders and members of a wide range of student organizations; developing a sexual-assault advocacy program; and implementing assessment tools that provide us with good information on what’s going well and what we could be doing better.

Prevention and Support

Last week, all new students went through a peer-led Bystander Intervention Program during orientation. Known as PAWS (for Pause. Assess. Worried? Speak Up!), this is a Middlebury-specific program that is intended to give students the tools and some of the language to intervene in situations that could be dangerous or threatening. BASICS, a nationally recognized substance-use-assessment program, was piloted last spring and will continue to be administered through Parton Center for Health and Wellness. A new session entitled “Alcohol and Social Life at Middlebury: What Parents Need to Know” was offered during new student orientation, part of our commitment to partnering with parents and sharing information in the most transparent way possible. Finally, and significantly, we are in the process of developing an alcohol/drug support group on campus. The task force recommended the support group in response to widespread student feedback. If you would like to participate in shaping the focus and format of the group, please contact Virginia Logan at vlogan@middlebury.edu.

Alcohol and Social Life Surveys

The 2010 Middlebury College Survey on Alcohol and Social Life that led to the creation of last year’s task force was also the basis for a NESCAC-wide alcohol survey administered this past spring on nine NESCAC campuses. It will continue to be administered every four years. The survey results are important and will be shared in an open forum for all members of the Middlebury community on Thursday, September 20, at 7:30 p.m. in McCullough Social Space. We hope that you will plan to attend.

As members of the task force learned throughout last year, many of you have strong thoughts about what’s working and what isn’t, and we will continue to depend on you to ensure that the campus culture is defined by diverse social options and an atmosphere of respect for self and others. The more information we can share (whether it’s the NESCAC data or the realities of party registration), the more effectively we can work as partners in ensuring that this campus is both fun and safe.

Underage and Problematic Drinking

Of all the task force recommendations, those requiring the greatest attention and consultation fall under the category of “Underage and Problematic Drinking.” While the task force discussed the potential benefits of policies such as a ban on hard alcohol, this was not ultimately what we endorsed. Instead, we urged the president and dean of the College to consider a three-tiered response system (focused on education, intervention, and response/discipline) that would work in concert with our current citation and judicial response protocols. The recommendation calls for very specific responses when College policy is violated and alcohol is a major contributing factor or when underage students are in possession of hard alcohol. A final decision on these policy changes will occur during the course of the upcoming year and will depend on the input of a wide range of stakeholders, including Public Safety staff, Commons deans and heads, judicial board members, and others.

Making Good on a Promise

In closing, we want to bring special attention to another key recommendation and invite your feedback and your participation. “Community” is one of the major categories in the task force report. It encompasses recommendations that range from increasing knowledge of the College’s Community Standards to facilitating connections between students and the custodial and public safety staffs who support them. The task force strongly supported the implementation of a yearlong working group that focuses specifically on the question of Community at Middlebury. Community is a word and a concept that we refer to with great frequency, but we learned last year that many students question whether we are doing our collective best to make good on this promise of life at Middlebury. Please let us know if this is a conversation you would like to take part in.

The work of the task force represents not the final word but rather a big piece of an important and ongoing process. We strongly encourage you to continue sharing your good ideas as well as your critical feedback. We hope you do so in the interest of strengthening the social fabric of this place and, yes, of doing your part to create and support a real sense of community for every student on campus.

Sincerely,

Katy Smith Abbott, Dean of Students

Bob Ritter, Head Football Coach

Middlebury’s perceived “tired,” somewhat “stale” social scene may be ready to bust wide open, and I want to encourage every student to be a part of it, because the more who join in, the more long-lasting and comprehensive this change will be.

What’s changing? Well for starters, the administration is trying to get out of students’ way—to accommodate activities, get rid of red tape, and make venues available. And some students are taking the lead in creating options and formats we would never have imagined. They are redefining and recreating campus spaces and events that are intimate, inviting, and inclusive—and that don’t rely on alcohol as the central attraction.

Just one example is the small concert held in Brooker House on January 14. It was an alcohol-free event with two bands—“Thank God for Mississippi,” a new campus band, and “Sigmund Droid,” from Brooklyn, New York. This wonderful concert, which more than 200 students attended and, from all reports, thoroughly enjoyed, was conceived and organized by Erik Benepe, Eyal Levy, Max Eingorn, and Jebb Norton. It was totally student-run, including crowd management. A student who was there reported that she was “blown away by how much fun everyone was having. They just danced and danced and danced.”

It seems as if the music scene is burgeoning and creating a powerful way for students to get together, have fun, and express themselves. More bands are forming, small get-togethers for jamming are showing up on the calendar, Middlebury Music United  is coming up with new ideas all the time, and anyone can apply to bring a band to campus through MCAB.

Beyond music, other artistic endeavors are in various stages of germination. To name a few: Verbal Onslaught, an open-mic presentation, where people share spoken-word poetry with appreciative, supportive audiences;  Middslam, the competitive poetry format that this year will take a team to national competition; the Moth, modeled after the acclaimed Moth in New York City with storytelling around a theme; and other student organizations that host concerts, fashion shows, dinners, and more.

What began as a trickle of ideas to generate fun on campus will hopefully become commonplace. And as more and more ideas are generated and tried, that trickle might become more dynamic and take on a life of its own. The process of planning and holding events will get easier, since each can be used to inform the next.

I want to thank the students who have taken an active role in helping to create a culture that feels right and works for them. And to all of you who have had a good idea: Go for it! Ask your peers to get behind it and make it happen. Tap into the many resources on campus and don’t be afraid to hold MCAB, SGA, Commons Councils, and your peers accountable.

If we don’t have what you want here, I hope that you will join in and create what you do want. Only you know what you like and need. After all, if the dean of the College threw a party, can you imagine what that would be like?

Last spring, I was fortunate enough to study at Swarthmore College for a semester through the Middlebury-Swarthmore domestic exchange program. One of the striking differences I noticed between the two schools was how openly “Swatties” of all ages consumed alcohol without facing disciplinary action.

When I returned to Middlebury last September, I submitted an Op-Ed to the Campus about how Swarthmore enforces its alcohol policy. One reader thought I should take a look at the differences between Pennsylvania and Vermont law to better understand why Swarthmore and Middlebury students are treated so differently. This is a valid critique; still, I don’t believe that Middlebury’s hands are completely tied by the law, and I am concerned about the stifling effects our current policies have had on student social life.

Earlier this year, I witnessed a group of first-years sprint out of a social house because it was rumored that Public Safety was passing through. These particular first-years were still on their orientation week, and as such, they had no idea that they were allowed to stay as long as they were not holding drinks. I was inside the social house, unaware of their presence, so it is hard to say if any of them were drinking.

When I thought about it further, I could not help but wonder: were they drinking, or terrified of Public Safety, or both? And should we really devote such a massive portion of our institutional resources toward stamping out moderate drinking?

Middlebury’s student alcohol studies have shown that potentially destructive drinking patterns have worsened in the past few years. Halfway through the 2008 fall semester, 40 percent of first-years engaged in “high-risk” drinking at least once in the two weeks prior to when they were polled. At the same point in 2010, the figure had increased to 55 percent of all first-years.

Some might read this data as evidence that a more rigorous enforcement policy is needed to reduce overall student drinking, and that a more hands-off enforcement policy could exacerbate the problem when students realize that they can drink as much as they want without having to check over their shoulders for Public Safety. But it is important to note that there must be other variables in this equation, because Middlebury’s policies have changed very little in recent years, and yet there seems to be more drinking happening on campus.

This increase in alcohol consumption is troubling, especially when paired with hazy standards of how students are supposed to conduct themselves when they drink. For example, in 2009, I was at an Atwater dance on Halloween Night, called Baile Terror, which was shut down by Public Safety. The reason for the shutdown was that some students were too drunk to wait in line to get into the dance and decided to give security a hard time. Our campus never had a serious discussion about what role students played in this incident, mostly because many assumed that the security officers hired by the College didn’t handle the situation well.

Several parties have been shut down every year since then for similar reasons. Most incidents, such as one last October that resulted in a broken window at the Bunker, usually only involve a few students.

My guess is that the sentiment of most students on these matters is similar to a comment posted on Middlebury Confessional: “BROS: STOP BREAKING SHIT. ADMINISTRATION: BACK OFF.” Unfortunately, the dysfunctional aspects of Middlebury’s drinking culture go well beyond “bros [just ‘bros’?] breaking shit.” Moreover, it seems likely that some level of destructive behavior will persist, even if the administration decides to “back off.” My point is that the dominant drinking culture here is something that a lot of students either participate in or tolerate, even if they are not necessarily the ones who are kicking over trashcans in front of Atwater Hall (to name one example).

On that note, I would like to conclude with a few questions. In the context of alcohol use at Middlebury, which is more influential, in your view—institutional policy or student drinking culture? Is Middlebury’s drinking culture a problem? (Leave comments by clicking here.)