Residential changes at Middlebury have not come easy. The liberal arts college, Williams' Vermont peer, implemented what it calls a ``commons'' system of residential life in 1992, years before current students arrived on campus.
Despite an ambitious construction program and reorganization of residential life along academic lines, some students still see the commons years later ``as an administrative attempt at social engineering,'' Tim Spears, dean of the college, said last month. ``For students,'' Spears said, ``'commons' is a loaded word.''
While most at Middlebury tend to agree with the premises of the system, frustration remains with the fashion in which the commons have progressed. Spears said, ``Some students ask, why do we have this?''
``There's not a great sense of commons pride,'' said Amanda Goodwin, a sophomore and member of the Student Government Association's finance committee.
There is consensus among all students and staff members that the commons continue to evolve. Goodwin said, ``There is a sense at Middlebury that the commons are still in a development stage.''
The initial decision to adopt the system came out of a decade-long effort to enhance the relationship between intellectual and academic life, which began with the recommendation by a campus committee in 1989 to abolish the fraternity system and replace it with commons and social houses.
Middlebury implemented the Enhanced Commons System, a model that decentralized the campus into five clusters in 1999. The system, controversial since its conception, called for the decentralization of the dean's office, the creation of five dining halls and the construction of several residence halls in order to create smaller communities within the college.
One of the first strategies for making the college feel smaller was to shrink the size of the student body to under 2000. ``[Middlebury] had outgrown its status as a small college,'' Spears said. ``We needed a new structure to have small communities.''
Middlebury ultimately decided that making several smaller communities would allow the college to expand its size to 2400.
Middlebury established the first generation of the commons system in 1992. Spears said that some believed at the time that the commons were a conspiracy to kill social houses, the last vestiges of the fraternity system. Spears called the first implementation ``a loose confederation of would-be communities of various dorms on campus.''
By 1997, after administrative review, it was clear that the commons needed more energy. ``They were not doing what we wanted them to do,'' Spears said.
The committee developed a recommendation for a more ``fully-Enhanced Commons system.'' Middlebury's president at the time, John McCardell, gave a taped speech in 1997 to the board of trustees at their summer retreat.
At that retreat, the board voted to begin a new commons system based on the three pillars of proximate faculty housing, decentralized dining and continuing membership (that students would stay in the same commons for four years.) McCardell's speech circulated around campus following the meeting on what became known as the ``Secret Tape.''
The tape incensed students who viewed the board's decision to implement a commons system as a top-down regulation of their social lives. The entire 1997-98 school year became a community-wide discussion of the commons, with forums held and an online survey that resulted in considerable response. The final report of the Residential Life planning group was accepted by the board of trustees in May 1998. The college spent the following year ironing out the logistics of full-scale decentralization.
Objections at the time were plentiful. Some professors objected to the use of so much money going to ``student amenities'' instead of academic use. Others argued that Middlebury was too small to need smaller communities. Others said the commons system was better suited to urban environments and that the building spree would make Middlebury's rural campus ugly.
The text of the Enhanced Residential Plan recognized the polarized environment into which it was released. ``Students in particular have been upset by the prospect of changing the school they know and love,'' the plan said. ``Despite the many good things that happen on this campus, the Middlebury experience is not uniformly excellent.'' It urged the community to use its imagination to meet the challenge of closing the gaps between various campus constituencies.