An Open Letter on Residential Life

Over the past five months, our campus has been involved in a serious discussion about the present state and future direction of student residential life. Our very willingness to take so large a topic on is a testimony both to our ability as a community to engage in constructive debate and to our recognition of the intrinsic importance of the topic itself. The discussion has been lively and civil, the participation broad, the points of agreement numerous, the points of disagreement clear. As we near a time when talk must end and specific recommendations will need to be framed and specific decisions made, I want to place before the community, at the start of this new term, my own sense of where the discussion now stands, what I have learned from the discussion, and, more important, the strategic context for the decisions that impend. In so doing, I do not mean to pronounce, nor do I intend to limit debate. At the same time, I hope to make clear my own views and the reasons why I believe this issue is of paramount importance to us as an institution and why our resolution of it requires bold, broad strokes.

First of all, now is the right time for the College to engage the issue of residential life on campus. The historian in me is naturally disposed to look back over the College's 198 years to find a generalized meaning for today's discussions of student life. The president in me, however, insists that the view must be forward as well as backward -- considerably forward, beyond this year, next year, and even beyond the ten-year horizon that often represents the outer boundaries of thought for educational institutions engaged in "strategic planning" exercises. Indeed, all of us need to try as best we can to think beyond the limited confines of our own experience, our own needs, and our own time. I claim no premium on vision. I have an obligation, however, to insist that we lift our sights to more distant horizons.

The future of higher education in general, and of Middlebury College in particular, is and will be shaped in large part by external forces over which we have little control. Those forces include, first, demographic changes among the country's 18-22 year-olds; next, changes in the way students learn before they ever arrive at college, changes that have largely to do with technology; next, increasing expectations on the part of students and their families concerning what a college experience should provide given the large financial commitment they are asked to make; and finally, changes in the social norms and behavior of those we educate—behavior that largely has developed before our students arrive on campus.

Middlebury and its peer institutions have done a reasonably good job of recognizing the short-term implications of these changes. We have developed programs, with varied results, to address them. Recruiting strategies have become more sophisticated as the socio-economic profiles of the 18-22 age cohort change. The College has dramatically improved its technological infrastructure and instituted faculty development programs in response to the increased technological sophistication of our incoming students. Middlebury, and similar colleges, now offer what are frequently called "amenities" -- some of which alumni, especially older alumni, may not recognize, understand, or endorse -- born out of new expectations on the part of our students and their families: a career services office as large as some academic departments; a counseling service; an office to monitor students' learning disabilities and their accommodation; a campus dietician; an office of academic support; a health educator; a fitness center; an indoor climbing wall; an on-campus health center; an external affairs office that is as numerous in staff as our entire foreign language faculty. These are simply examples of things that may appear to have nothing to do with the "academic" mission of the College, but which enhance the quality of our students' experience, and which could be curtailed only in the face of loud protest on campus and off. And, to address the changing social norms of 18 year-olds arriving on campus, the College has developed informational programs as part of first-year student orientation and enlarged its student services staff to respond to the problems and needs that arise on a daily basis. At the same time, the College is somehow miraculously expected to serve as both a haven from and an arm of the law where drinking is concerned, educating our students in the appropriate use of alcohol while simultaneously recognizing that only about 25 per cent of our student population is of legal drinking age.

Most of these responses have been effective. Indeed, I believe we have responded to these external forces better than most colleges of our kind. But if we are seeking to ensure the College's long-term strength, then short-term, reactive, incremental policies and programs can do only so much. Although we must remain fully aware that the pace of change in some areas central to higher education will only accelerate, and that we need to remain nimble enough in thought and prudent enough in managing our resources in order to respond to the changes around us, we must not allow ourselves to lapse into a wholly reactive mode, nor must we forever hoard resources against some imagined day of greater need, to which our wealth may in fact blind us, and which well-intentioned parsimony may in fact hasten.

I believe that day of greater need has arrived, and that the decisions we make now will determine the position, the health, and the quality of the College for many years to come. We have already begun to act in this belief. While other institutions are hedging their bets on the impact of electronic communication and education, we have boldly invested in a new center for educational technology. In the center, we are developing materials and pedagogies that will not fight the increasing role technology is certain to play in the education of 18-22 year-olds in residential colleges, but rather will expand our reach in educating students here and beyond the Champlain Valley. It is also a center where teacher training in the use of technology for disciplines ranging from foreign languages to economics to environmental analysis to classics will commence in the coming year. The widening gap between our incoming students' and our faculty's knowledge of technology needs to be bridged; however, because graduate schools (perhaps waiting to see what other institutions do or postponing investments in anticipation of more attractive opportunities that never arrive) are not likely soon to include in their preparation of newly-minted Ph.D.'s the use of educational technology, we need to take the lead and ensure that our faculty understand and use the power of technology as it is understood and used by the 18 year-olds they will teach.

Our curriculum is adapting as well, and we have wisely, though singularly, chosen to enrich that curriculum by expanding the size of our student body and adding 30 new faculty. These faculty will teach the "real" curriculum -- the courses students actually take -- as opposed to some institutional prescription, and they will adapt to the needs of a student population less than half of which now majors in a single department. We are recognizing, embracing, and managing this change, not reacting to it. Our International Studies Major is but one example.

And so, in this context of change, we now address how and where our students live and dine, and how that part of their college experience can most effectively contribute to their educations. This is not an insignificant matter. The College's rise in national prominence is certainly in part attributable to the growing distinction of our academic offerings. But one might be hard pressed to persuade those in admissions, or even high school counselors, that academics, narrowly defined, is as important a determinant for choosing a college as it used to be, or as we might wish to believe. Aside from students who seek a particular program or a highly specialized curriculum (which is antithetical to the spirit of a liberal arts education), choosing from among the leading liberal arts institutions -- Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Pomona, Wellesley, Haverford, Carleton, Bowdoin, Middlebury -- is as likely to be based upon the quality of life, or the quality of the complete educational experience, each college offers as it is upon a set of course offerings. Important now, and more important than it has ever been, is the quality of housing, the number of opportunities in athletics and student organizations, the quality and variety of food and dining facilities, the quality of the career services office (which translates into how poised one will be to land a job after graduation), the likelihood of being a part of a supportive community, the options for study abroad, the degree to which a campus can offer counseling to students in need, the quality of facilities -- some academic, such as the library and sciences, but others not, such as athletics and student activities -- and the extent to which residence halls and academic buildings are "wired."

Some of these "amenities" may seem distant from our stated mission, but they are crucial to the successful recruitment and retention of the able students we seek to attract. As one looks at what Middlebury offers its students, it becomes evident why the College has become competitive with the very best liberal arts institutions. Yet as one thinks about what will ensure Middlebury's high national profile, especially as the competition for the very best students intensifies, one is forced to consider the student not only of the present, but also of the future, the distant future. Where will today's kindergartners want to go to college? What will they and their families expect of the residential liberal arts college? What will we expect of them? What skills will these students bring to college? What kind of educational environment will they require?

The short-term answers to these questions are easier to provide. Indeed, the ongoing discussions of residential life on campus have tended, understandably, to focus on the here and now. There has been no shortage of suggestions for how we might make some immediate improvements to residential life at Middlebury so as to integrate better what have become virtually separate and unrelated academic, social, and residential spheres: strengthen our academic departments (though more than half of our students now have double, joint, or interdisciplinary majors); add academic interest houses (though we stress the benefits of a broad acquaintance with many different fields of knowledge); eliminate social houses (though many of us have never visited one); de-emphasize athletics (though, after academics, the quality of our athletic program regularly receives the highest marks in our annual parents' questionnaire); make it easier for faculty to dine with students (though such a program has been in place for years). All of these proposals might help address some of what have been identified as problems with our current system of residential life, but none of them addresses the larger question of what will make the residential college in general and Middlebury in particular relevant and worthwhile to future generations of students. I do not believe that simply enhancing what we now do will strengthen Middlebury adequately for the future or make the residential college necessarily desirable in the long term. The 18 year-old eighteen years from now will require, and expect, more.

What might those expectations be? And what should we be preparing now to provide? I would argue that the successful residential college of the future will be characterized by three distinguishing features. First, the educational experience it offers must be seamless. An approach to residential liberal arts education that takes for granted, and therefore creates or maintains structures and policies that reinforce, the continuing existence of separate spheres of activity -- with the accompanying separate standards of behavior -- is doomed to failure. Such an approach does not prepare students well for the world in which they will live their lives.

Second, the educational experience it offers must be comprehensive. It must include an excellent academic program, of course, created and maintained by a faculty of distinction. But it must also include, in a seamless whole, those other elements of college life that contribute to a superior education and that foster in students lifelong habits that, for want of a better term, we might call a sense of civic responsibility. Those habits are as apt to be learned on a playing field, in a club, or over extended conversations at mealtime as they are in the classroom. The residential liberal arts college of the future will acknowledge this, and provide as best it can for it.

Finally, the educational experience it offers must be -- and here I shudder as I employ a dated, sixties term -- relevant. By this I do not mean trendy or fashionable, bending to the latest set of prejudices masquerading as principles. Rather, I mean relevant in some sense to the lives students have led before they arrive on campus and relevant to the lives they will lead after they graduate. A faculty colleague who is also a parent of a college student opened my eyes to this point in a recent conversation. The concept of "in loco parentis," he noted, spoke to a time when there were strong, two-parent families, and opposition to the concept came from students who sought freedom from these constraints. It is far different today. There are fewer two-parent households, fewer still where a parent is home with a child for extended periods, and as a result, the concept on which much of the rebellion of the student generation of the 1960s was based (and on which much of that generation's world view as parents continues to be based), is utterly alien to the experience of the current generation of students. And so we witness, in reaction to stresses we ourselves can hardly comprehend, behavior that suggests too often that students somehow feel themselves exempt from behavioral rules that give society shape and order, with a license to act as they choose and be protected from the consequences. It is, he concluded, rather like expecting a student to be able to write without knowing the fundamentals of grammar. No one along the way thought grammar was important. So grammar must now, belatedly, be taught, lest writing be juvenile, sloppy, and imprecise. This is oversimplified, of course, but comes uncomfortably close to describing the attitude that condones excessive drinking and destruction of property. And it is an attitude that is largely formed in other environments and long before students apply to college.

The three cornerstones of the enhanced residential life proposal -- continuing student membership in clusters of residence halls, decentralized dining, and faculty leadership living in proximate residences -- in my view will best enable us to become the residential college of the future, and to offer an experience that is seamless, comprehensive, and relevant. This system will provide a supportive educational environment in which no student should be able to remain anonymous. It will offer opportunities to accept greater responsibility for one's actions and the actions of one's friends while learning that with responsibility comes accountability and that actions have consequences. It will create an environment that encourages leadership, in all its forms. It will afford opportunities to meet and learn from faculty and staff outside the confines of the classroom. It will provide greater involvement of adults.

The proposed system seeks to address the harsh accusation that higher education has abandoned its students by, quite ironically, giving them greater freedom. On most college campuses (including Middlebury) there are few adults present between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. For half the day our campus is virtually void of adults, and yet we wonder why there has developed a disconnect between what goes on in the classroom and what takes place in other spheres of a student's life. The issue of an "adult presence" is sensitive. Students believe, even as more of their number visit the Counseling Office, that to raise it is to question their maturity, their independence, their assumed right to be left alone in the name of learning one's limits, or under the assumption that they are, already, adults. Faculty fear playing the role "in loco parents," begging the question of what moral obligation the faculty have to provide a more supportive environment for students. A former colleague once observed that there are in fact some things an 18 year-old ought not to be expected instinctively to know. Otherwise, why have any adult presence on campus?

I believe that institutions that claim as their mission to educate young men and women in the tradition of the liberal arts must define education broadly and acknowledge that education takes place around the clock and in all venues. I believe that our faculty and staff need to be encouraged and supported as they fill an adult void in the lives of our students, not as policemen or oppressors, but as role models, as educators. I also believe that we need to develop the facilities -- housing, dining, and places for planned and serendipitous interaction -- to foster the kind of supportive educational environment that will ensure the survival of the residential college of the future. Our survival is of little consequence for its own sake. It is of vital importance, however, to a world that badly needs broadly educated, humane, and purposeful leaders and thus needs more than ever educational institutions that recognize that change is a constant, and that seek to prepare students for leadership in an environment of change.

These are challenging times for higher education. Every natural impulse in such moments is toward caution, especially because, for us, things could hardly be better than they are right now. We have been largely insulated from the buffeting effects of change. Every instinct is to wait to see what happens next or how some other institution chooses to act. One hundred years ago, Charles Duell, head of the U.S. Patent Office, boldly announced, "Everything that can be invented has been invented." We laugh at the absurdity. Yet we hear its echoes.

Significant change requires, in addition to a compelling rationale, both dollars and will. Few institutions have both in sufficient measure. Middlebury is among those few. Reactive, tactical decisions made in a time of rapid change may, by accretion, achieve strategic results. More often they simply enlarge the status quo, often to the point of dysfunctionality. As we move from talk to action in the coming months and make significant decisions, which will define the experience that is Middlebury long after all of us are gone, let us do all that we can to disenthrall ourselves from the concerns of the present, from the comfort of our own limited experience, and from the nostalgia for a selectively remembered past, and look as best we can to a future of greater possibility. I am more confident than ever that we have set ourselves on the right course, and I look forward eagerly to the progress we shall surely make in the months ahead.

John M. McCardell, Jr., President