Tour of Duty

Thinking quickly and stepping lightly with an admissions tour guide.

By Sarah Tuff '95 

It’s an uncomfortably muggy September morning outside the red brick Emma Willard House, Middlebury’s longtime admissions office. A gauzy haze drapes the distant hills. Wearing a blue and white sundress, a ponytailed Hannah Burnett ’10 corrals a mass of high school students and their parents and efficiently sorts them into smaller groups for a 90-minute tour of the College. Her cobalt blue Nalgene bottle, filled with cold water, sweats.

“Campus is a little crazy today,” Burnett tells the dozen moms, dads, and potential Midd grads as she leads them toward the Mahaney Center for the Arts. “Upperclassmen are moving in, so there will be people everywhere. But that’s a good thing. It got to be kind of quiet the last couple of weeks.”

Hannah Burnett '10, leads a tour through McCullough.

In the winter, Burnett pulls on sturdier L.L. Bean boots for the backwards walk. “When I first called my mom and told her I was going to be a tour guide,” Burnett has confided privately to a reporter earlier, “she was like, ‘They’re going to let you walk forwards, right?’ Because I am probably the clumsiest person alive.”

Burnett grew up in Granby, Connecticut, and visited 17 schools before choosing Middlebury after a spring visit. “It was a beautiful day, everyone was outside and seemed so happy to be here and would say ‘Come to Middlebury!’ as we were walking around,” she says. After being gently turned away as a guide her first semester (“they kind of giggled at me”), Burnett began giving tours last spring and logs up to 20 hours a week of walking backwards. “I lose a flip-flop every once in a while, but it’s actually a really good workout for your calves,” she says.

A student topples over on her bike outside the CFA, momentarily distracting the herds. Burnett lassos them back in with a story about a mummified child from 300 B.C. who is buried in the graveyard across the street. Then it’s time to go inside the CFA and see the concert hall, meant to be one of the tour’s highlights. But Burnett tugs on the door only to find it’s locked. She shrugs and talks about the space’s capacity and the performers who visit Middlebury during the year before leading the group back outside.

Crossing back over Route 30, Make Way for Ducklings-style, she reels off statistics about the College’s sports facilities.

“Does the skiing start up in two weeks?” asks a woman, half-jokingly. “How cold does it get?”

“That’s a good question,” says Burnett. “We do live in Vermont. It’s cold. It snows. I’m gonna be honest. But for those of you who may not be huge winter people, the spring and the fall make it all worthwhile. The first day of spring, everyone’s outside, reading, throwing Frisbees. You’ve never seen so many happy people in one place.”

Middlebury’s tour guides (there are usually between 60 to 80 who volunteer their time during the school year) have a manual that coaches them on how to handle tough questions. But so far, the group is lobbing only softballs: “What’s the square mileage of campus?” asks a woman with curly auburn hair. (350 acres.) “Are freshmen allowed to have vehicles?” asks another mom. (Yes.)

Every so often, Burnett glances over her shoulder to check her position and, perhaps, conduct discreet surveillance on approaching students. Earlier, she has revealed one of the most awkward moments of shepherding prospective students around campus: a male friend sneaked up, dropped his books, kissed Burnett, and then walked away like nothing happened. “I just stuttered a little bit,” she recalls.

Pausing in the foyer of first-year dorm Stewart, Burnett explains the commons system. “It’s like Harry Potter without the personality stereotypes,” she says over the sound of KT Tunstall before pulling the group down a hall for a peek in at a polka-dot bedspread and a nearby bathroom. “Fab-u-lous!” says the auburn-haired mom in falsetto.

The sight of flags fluttering from Mead Chapel triggers a story from Burnett’s evening last March with Rwandan humanitarian Paul Rusesabinga. “I heard he was coming and e-mailed the dean of students, who said, ‘Sure, come [for dinner] at six,’” she says. “So I got to sit over chocolate cheesecake and talk to [Rusesabinga] about the U.N. and international peace and then sit in the front row for his talk. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve gotten to do so far, but opportunities like that pop up all the time. Bill Clinton was our graduation speaker.”

Volvos and Explorers are parked haphazardly across campus as students unload duffel bags, laundry baskets, and posters into their newly assigned rooms. As Burnett walks backwards over by Ross Commons, she narrowly misses a collision with a Subaru, thanks to a last-minute heads-up from one of the fathers in the group. Despite her self-described clumsiness, there has been only one such collision, Burnett has admitted—with an SUV parked in front of McCullough. “I’ve actually had more people on my tours fall; they’ll slip on the ice because they’re looking around,” she says.

Over the din of the Ross dining hall, Burnett describes the outdoor terrace at suppertime, when the sun is sinking behind the picturesque Adirondacks; the exam-time midnight breakfasts of eggs, pancakes, and bacon; and the wild Alaskan salmon that’s flown in for meals. Then Burnett continues backward through the arch of Milliken Hall.

“On Valentine’s Day we got three feet of snow in 24 hours; they canceled classes for the first time in 33 years,” she says. “I was jumping out of the second story of Battell into the snow. We went to dinner in our snow pants and ski goggles.”

By the time the tour has reached Bicentennial Hall, everyone has wilted from the unseasonable heat. Burnett ushers them into a cool seminar room and plops on the counter to discuss academics and her own aspirations. She’s planning to be an independent scholar in medical anthropology and public health and hopes to work with an international nonprofit, or maybe the Centers for Disease Control.

Then it’s on to point out Bi Hall’s enormous window, rumored to be the largest in Vermont. “When you’re in there in winter, it feels like you’re in a snow globe,” says Burnett. She gestures toward the large grassy area known as Battell Beach, site of regular Quidditch games. “I wish I was kidding sometimes, but they do run around with broomsticks and capes, hurling dodgeballs at one another,” she says.

As fat raindrops finally begin to splatter on the sidewalks, Burnett picks up the pace toward the new library. Somebody yells, “Come to Middlebury!” from a window.

Burnett finally ushers everyone back to Emma Willard. “Middlebury has unique students,” she tells the group, trying to sum things up. “And their knowledge and enthusiasm are so great, you just want to soak it all in.”

Sarah Tuff  ’95 toured Middlebury in the pouring rain during the summer of 1990 and immediately decided to apply early decision.