IDK about these IDs!

Around 9 p.m. on Sunday night, as I traversed the windswept tundra forming between E Lot and the Chateau, I was devastated to realize that I had left my wallet — along with my one and only Middlebury ID card — inside my room. Clutching my cardboard box from the Grille to my chest in a fruitless attempt to preserve the heat of my meal, I berated myself for once again forgetting my “Key to the City.” It was snowing, and the wind boldly declared it would not settle for a temperature in the double-digits.

I worried that Public Safety might not arrive promptly on a weekend night, and decided my only option would be to stick it out until a kind stranger granted me entrance into the building. Although Middlebury students, staff and faculty all deserve to feel and be safe from external threats while at the college, I have seriously begun to question the effectiveness and fairness of our ID-based system. While I believe a more substantial reconsideration of these security protocols is in order, we should at least consider dropping the $20 penalty for a lost ID to avoid financially punishing community members for simply being human.

I, and doubtlessly many others, believe that a good security system achieves a balance between providing individuals with protection against the highest possible number of dangerous situations and ensuring that security features are not such an impediment that the very individuals supposedly made “secure” by the system cannot reliably access their amenities, or circumvent the system altogether. 

At Middlebury, each person receives an ID permitting them entry into certain dormitories, dining facilities, academic and professional spaces depending on their role on campus. For students, a lost ID incurs a $20 replacement penalty, as well as a wait of indeterminate length for an email from the college store indicating that the replacement is ready. In the meantime, students must contact Public Safety for a temporary ID. If a student’s ID is not working as it is supposed to, they are instructed by Middlebury’s “Student ID Cards” webpage to call dining services for assistance during their weekday hours (9 a.m-5 p.m). 

I spoke with my friend, Violet Gordon ’26.5, about the unnecessary toll of this replacement process, as she lost her ID last semester. She explained that while the fee may seem like “pocket change” to some students, that is not the case for many others. While Middlebury seeks to ensure that students can receive financial aid and other financial assistance — the Student Access and Support (SAS) grants, for instance —to take full advantage of the school’s resources, there remains this seemingly arbitrary and potentially burdensome cost for replacing these required IDs. 

Seeing as Middlebury recently raised $35 of the $50 million needed to finance the new museum replacing Battell, I highly doubt this fee is a necessary source of income for the school. But, you might say, the financial cost might make students more attentive to protecting their IDs. Unfortunately, no matter how careful we are with these little plastic cards, we will never be able to control every situation or remain singularly focused on something like an ID amidst academic, personal and other stressors inherent in the college experience.

When one loses their ID card or leaves it in a locked building, one is theoretically prevented from using dining, housing and academic services to which they are entitled. In most cases this is not literally true — students with lost IDs can have a friend use one of their three guest swipes per semester to let them into a dining hall, or wait, as I did, for a passerby to allow them entry into a building. But for new students adrift in a sea of unfamiliar faces, or those trapped outside in the cold and dark, the simple and predictable mistake of losing an ID can potentially be just as dangerous as leaving a door unlocked.

Of these solutions, the guest swipe is the only one that does not directly contradict the security system IDs are meant to enforce. Following ID theory, one should not allow an “unknown” person asking for entry into a locked building entry without proof of identity, such as an ID card. To do so defeats the purpose of the card-as-security-measure entirely. Yet, this is probably the quickest and easiest way to resolve lost ID difficulties temporarily, and is what saved me on Monday.

I think a credible explanation of proximate risk to the institution being secured must undergird this entire balancing act. I by no means intend to minimize the inherent risks of existing as a human being in a world rife with natural and constructed threats; I think we all remember the horrible stabbing attack which severely injured a student in town last year. I am not recommending that we throw away the IDs and leave every door unlocked. But, to this day I have yet to hear or read about any significant, consistent external threat to the safety of the Middlebury College students and employees coming from the town of Middlebury and its surrounding locales. 

Though perhaps we can all agree that, even if only for the sake of appearances, Middlebury must maintain a high degree of security for its wards and workers, in practice the system seems to prevent the free movement of community members around campus and impose undue penalties upon us more than it consistently or verifiably prevents external threats from entering the indoor Middlebury community.