Editorial

Whether you hear of it through e-mails from your RA or by looking down your decimated hall, the problem of dorm damage is a reality. With several weeks still remaining in the academic year, the College’s monetary tally for dorm damage exceeds $53,000 — more than the cost of one student’s yearly tuition. Recklessly damaging campus property is reprehensible and certainly a punishable offense; but attributing this issue to unrelated problems could lead to poorly designed policies and an inaccurate view of the statistics.

Data show that the majority of damage occurs in senior housing and social houses, which is logical seeing as those student spaces host the most parties, when damage is more likely to occur. But the assertion at last week’s Community Council meeting that the increase in damages reflects a lack of community in the student body seems unfounded. Our commons system, commons’ deans, social houses and residential system are all designed to promote this sense of community. To assume that a dorm or house that has a few holes in the wall is devoid of a sense of community is an insolent supposition. Dorm damage is, unfortunately, a perennial problem — even though it has increased this year, we do not think calling the complex student social network something less than community is the answer.

It is true that damage fines would hit their intended mark more often if more students would report the source of the damage on specific occasions, but we at the Campus find the push for more reporting of perpetrators to be counterproductive. If the goal is to foster community, do we really want to establish one rife with distrust? Promoting a sense of accountability should not involve students tattling on others. Instead, we need to educate students on the extent of dorm damage consequences for their peers, for the College and for Facilities staff; we need a staunch and informative awareness campaign instead of an army of informants.

Though it is reasonable to assume that dorm damage is an issue at all institutes of higher education with students who drink and occasionally party, Middlebury’s cost estimates do seem disproportionately higher. When you consider that our damage costs include furniture missing from dorm rooms in the spring, however, lowering those numbers might be as simple as emphasizing the gravity of not returning furniture to its designated room at the end of a semester. Even if a desk or bed is safely stored in a dorm’s bike room, students are still charged if the missing item is not in its original room. If more students realized that moving furniture back at the end of their term could save them money, we hope that would decrease some of the reported damage costs.

We can also look at the issue from the perspective of immediate versus delayed consequences. Any damages incurred are tacked onto a future bill rather than administered right after the incident. The immediate consequences of destroyed property are often lost on the student and are instead transferred to a bill that student might not even see until several months later — sending a damages bill directly to a student’s campus mailbox as soon as possible after an incident might make more of an impact.

Ultimately, we feel that an awareness campaign should give students the tools and mindset to take personal accountability for their dorm­ — we want students to feel empowered to acknowledge their mistakes and to talk to each other, not the administration, about how we can maintain our living spaces. By informing everyone of effects of dorm damage — on the standard of living as well as the financial effects — we hope we can continue building a respectful atmosphere on the community foundation we already have. We can never eradicate this problem, but we can limit the degree to which it has progressed.