Editorial challenge us to challenge you

Author: [no author name found]

President Ronald D. Liebowitz cleared his schedule on Tuesday for a series of seven open lunch meetings with students in the coming weeks. The President's invitation came only hours after Student Government Association (SGA) President Alex Stanton announced the creation of an SGA blog for students to exchange ideas and post thoughts on pressing college issues. And all of this listening and reflection could ultimately be nothing compared to a proposed weekly, college-wide convocation that was outlined last May in the College's strategic plan.

Listening is good. But will busy students, faculty and staff make time to show up and talk? And what will they do all this talking about? And if they do not show up, will important issues be left waiting in committees and councils across campus?

History has shown that it takes bold leadership, urgent challenges or creative proposals to spark substantive debate on this campus. Simply making the time or creating the space is not enough.

Sometimes it has taken the threat of immediate action on a sensitive issue.

Two years ago a group of faculty members intensified their push for the elimination of J-term, and not only did students push back with petitions, campaigns, websites and t-shirts to express their disagreement, but even faculty attendance at faculty meetings was reportedly the highest it had been in decades.

Other times leaders have found that only by challenging the community did they learn what community members really wanted.

When outgoing President John M. McCardell decided only weeks before leaving office to unilaterally ban smoking in campus dorms, against loud threats from a few SGA senators that such an action would leave a "sour taste" with students, in the end the President's action was implemented without controversy. It even met some community praise.

Such a dynamic is hardly unique to Middlebury. Leadership includes not only listening to those represented and enabling their participation in a group, but also influencing and motivating them to participate.

Influencing and motivating people as busy as the members of this community is no easy task. For better or worse, most Middlebury students are too busy to ruminate at length about the betterment of the College. College leaders, therefore, must be bold and decisive, sometimes without us. They must be willing to take risks and ready to listen to the community's response.

None of this is to overlook the myriad important issues and open forums for discussion already before the College, and leaders cannot be entirely responsible for maintaining engaging debates across campus. Students could and should take their own initiative to address their grievances or just improve college life.

But if students do not show up for lunch or flood their new SGA blog, leaders should not wait for them. Every leader on this campus was selected for his or her position because he or she had a vision that the community believed in.

To get students to talk, leaders may need to act. Challenge them to challenge you.



The Middlebury Campus would like to consider itself a vital piece of this puzzle. As we report on student and staff efforts to address College challenges, the readers of this paper should hold us to equally high expectations. We hope the pages of this paper will be enlivened with thoughtful debate on our coverage, our leaders and the challenges before our College this semester.